For Nidra’s post on more serious matters, go here and check out the update.
I haven’t posted much on France because the electoral campaign hasn’t been all that interesting. However, leave it to the magnificent Nidra to deconstruct Ségolène Royal’s wardobe in A CATTY ARTICLE ABOUT SEGOLENE ROYAL.
What irritates me about Ségolène Royal is that she is playing this coy game of I’m so authentic, so close to real people and their quotidien, when in fact she is authentically phony. The more you think about it the more the pieces fall apart. If the idea was to restyle herself from Socialist bluestocking into some kind of charming, attractive, feminine woman why go Jackie Onassis? She wasn’t president, she was the first lady. If Madame Royal is supposed to represent la grandeur de la France, it’s a lost cause. You can’t do grandeur in little pink jackets and all the less in that white outfit decorated with hyphens. If she wants to look like a woman who can handle the affairs of a mini-great power in troubled times, then she shouldn’t dress like the wife of a real estate broker.
The clothes don’t go with the woman, they clash with her ambitions…and her hair doesn’t go with the clothes. She has that thin, shapeless schoolgirl hair that never grows up. You can’t style it, shape it, keep apace of the years by cutting it shorter. It just hangs there. She tucks it behind her ears. In dire circumstances she twists it into some kind of approximate chignon, but it’s too severe for a présidente charmante.
As I had noted before, Segolene wears bobby pins to press conferences.
Nidra goes on,
And her voice! Her voice is terrible. It’s harsh, it breaks easily, it’s shallow, there’s no heart to it. When you’re parading as Madame Authentic, I hear you, I feel for you, trust me, and the voice comes out sour, you’ve got a serious problem.
Find me a political woman who sounds like Diana Rigg or Lauren Bacall, and I’ll show you a President.
Especially if she doesn’t take trips to China on the Chinese government’s dime.
I’ll buy Nidra lunch the next time she comes to NYC! We’ll have to talk about clothes, trips to China, men, women, and politics.
