Brigitte Bardot inspired many fantasies, from the wanton, panting reveries of assorted French auteurs in the 1950s and 60s, to the perky-nippled bust created in 1969 as a model for Marianne, the embodiment of the French Republic itself. With her death on 28 December, another more contemporary Bardot illusion was shattered. The singer Chappell Roan, responding to Bardot’s passing at 91, posted a ph...
Brigitte Bardot inspired many fantasies, from the wanton, panting reveries of assorted French auteurs in the 1950s and 60s, to the perky-nippled bust created in 1969 as a model for Marianne, the embodiment of the French Republic itself. With her death on 28 December, another more contemporary Bardot illusion was shattered. The singer Chappell Roan, responding to Bardot’s passing at 91, posted a photo of the actor in her beehived prime on Instagram, saying she had inspired her song Red Wine Supernova and writing": “Rest in peace Ms Bardot.” The following day, the post was hastily deleted. “Holy shit,” Roan wrote on her Instagram Stories, “I did not know all that insane shit Ms. Bardot stood for obvs I do not condone this. very disappointing to learn.” Which insane shit, Roan didn’t specify, but in truth there is plenty to choose from. The iconic mid-century image of the actor may have remained frozen in time for some, but in the real world, the persona of Bardot had long since curdled into something much uglier. View image in fullscreen Brigitte Bardot in A Very Private Affair, 1962. Photograph: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy Later-life Bardot was a passionate defender of animal rights, true, but she was also a committed, enthusiastic racist, who wrote of Muslims: “They slaughter women and children, our monks, our civil servants, our tourists and our sheep, one day they’ll slaughter us, and we’ll have deserved it.” Elsewhere, she wrote: “Illegal immigrants … desecrate and storm our churches, transforming them into human pigsties, defecating behind the altar, urinating against the columns, spreading their nauseating stench beneath the sacred vaults of the choir.” These views didn’t just get Bardot “cancelled”, in the modern parlance – they saw her convicted of incitement to racial hatred, five times. She also referred to gay people as “fairground freaks” and denounced #MeToo victims as “hypocritical, ridiculous, and pointless”. And yet, after her death, France’s preside...