The French language must not lose the term of address favoured by Chanel and Deneuve.
Mademoiselle Anne-Elisabeth Moutet
By Anne-Elisabeth Moutet
8:01PM GMT 23 Feb 2012
It may feel like a victory to all those new feminist groups who’d decided to campaign over it, but I for one shall be sorry to see my Mademoiselle disappear from official French forms. The agitators had been after it for some time, but it is a truth universally acknowledged that if you want a quick media victory, you need only ask Nicolas Sarkozy when he’s running for a difficult re-election.
The issues that really matter to French women – like, say, equal salary in the workplace (women currently earn 27 per cent less than men in the same job) or the dearth of female bosses in the top corporations (current number: 0) – aren’t about to be addressed any time soon. Far too complicated. But a purely cosmetic change that few, apart from a handful of spin-savvy groups such as Les Chiennes de Garde (Guard Bitches) really cared about? A push two months before the first round of the Présidentielles will get you an administrative decision guaranteeing headlines around the world.
It’s not that I disagree with everything the brash French women’s groups have been fighting for. But was it really necessary to deprive the French language of such an interesting nuance simply because it gives an indication of one’s married status? And don’t give me the line about demoiselle meaning “a virgin” in the 16th century. Nobody remembers that any more, and even back then, it only applied to the noble 1 per cent. The others had to make do with fille or jeune fille; a spinster, until about half a century ago, was known as une vieille fille.
But Mademoiselle? It always had its own panache, from princess to Grande Cocotte to stage diva. Think Sarah Bernhardt or Miss Howard, Napoleon III’s mistress. In French history, La Grande Mademoiselle (as court protocol correctly styled her) is a true heroine: Louis XIV’s first cousin, Anne Marie Louise d’Orléans, Duchess of Montpensier, led the aristocratic revolt known as the Fronde at the age of 25 against her young cousin’s project of absolute power. The Grande Mademoiselle led troops, rallied Orléans under siege, and had the Bastille cannons fired against the king’s army. At the age of 43 she married, against the wishes of the king, a nobleman who was six years her junior and whom she had freed from prison; she did eventually kick him out when he cheated (too much) on her.
By Emile Zola’s time, in his great novel of the late 19th-century department stores, The Ladies’ Paradise, Mademoiselle was being used as a class put-down. A staid bourgeois lady deploys it pointedly when addressing a shop assistant. But these days, Madame used in the same context sounds unbearably dowdy; it’s Mademoiselles who dress in Stella McCartney, Isabel Marant or Jean Paul Gaultier. Karl Lagerfeld, meanwhile – a man of variegated insults distributed with easy abandon – used the familiar “dadame” to describe to me the House of Chanel BK (Before Karl). In his mouth, it was the supreme term of abuse.
By Anne-Elisabeth Moutet
8:01PM GMT 23 Feb 2012
It may feel like a victory to all those new feminist groups who’d decided to campaign over it, but I for one shall be sorry to see my Mademoiselle disappear from official French forms. The agitators had been after it for some time, but it is a truth universally acknowledged that if you want a quick media victory, you need only ask Nicolas Sarkozy when he’s running for a difficult re-election.
The issues that really matter to French women – like, say, equal salary in the workplace (women currently earn 27 per cent less than men in the same job) or the dearth of female bosses in the top corporations (current number: 0) – aren’t about to be addressed any time soon. Far too complicated. But a purely cosmetic change that few, apart from a handful of spin-savvy groups such as Les Chiennes de Garde (Guard Bitches) really cared about? A push two months before the first round of the Présidentielles will get you an administrative decision guaranteeing headlines around the world.
It’s not that I disagree with everything the brash French women’s groups have been fighting for. But was it really necessary to deprive the French language of such an interesting nuance simply because it gives an indication of one’s married status? And don’t give me the line about demoiselle meaning “a virgin” in the 16th century. Nobody remembers that any more, and even back then, it only applied to the noble 1 per cent. The others had to make do with fille or jeune fille; a spinster, until about half a century ago, was known as une vieille fille.
But Mademoiselle? It always had its own panache, from princess to Grande Cocotte to stage diva. Think Sarah Bernhardt or Miss Howard, Napoleon III’s mistress. In French history, La Grande Mademoiselle (as court protocol correctly styled her) is a true heroine: Louis XIV’s first cousin, Anne Marie Louise d’Orléans, Duchess of Montpensier, led the aristocratic revolt known as the Fronde at the age of 25 against her young cousin’s project of absolute power. The Grande Mademoiselle led troops, rallied Orléans under siege, and had the Bastille cannons fired against the king’s army. At the age of 43 she married, against the wishes of the king, a nobleman who was six years her junior and whom she had freed from prison; she did eventually kick him out when he cheated (too much) on her.
By Emile Zola’s time, in his great novel of the late 19th-century department stores, The Ladies’ Paradise, Mademoiselle was being used as a class put-down. A staid bourgeois lady deploys it pointedly when addressing a shop assistant. But these days, Madame used in the same context sounds unbearably dowdy; it’s Mademoiselles who dress in Stella McCartney, Isabel Marant or Jean Paul Gaultier. Karl Lagerfeld, meanwhile – a man of variegated insults distributed with easy abandon – used the familiar “dadame” to describe to me the House of Chanel BK (Before Karl). In his mouth, it was the supreme term of abuse.
Madame was deemed an insult, too, by Coco Chanel herself. A thoroughly modern woman, she always insisted on being Mademoiselle Chanel. She had lovers, but no husband; she had an English duke, Bendor Westminster, stamp every signpost and lamp in London with her initials; she used men’s shapes and fluid jerseys to build clothes in which women could run, play, show their bodies.
Take another famous Mademoiselle-by-choice, Catherine Deneuve. Never mind that she was married to David Bailey and had high-profile affairs and children with Roger Vadim and Marcello Mastroianni. She was resolutely never Madame. Compare her with Vadim’s earlier wife, Brigitte Bardot, who did become a Madame, several times over. It’s difficult not to see Bardot, who gave up her career early on to devote much of her time to animal welfare and the cause of Marine Le Pen, as more of a victim than a feminist star.
By contrast, Deneuve, a style icon and a stunner at 68, comes off as a winner. When I interviewed Vadim, a surprisingly spiteful serial seducer of great beauties, he was still resentful of Deneuve, decades later, for never marrying him. She had dropped him! Like une tonne de briques! She controlled their son’s education! She went on to have a better career after she left! As far as Deneuve was concerned, calling a woman Madame certainly meant making her walk three paces behind, metaphorically speaking.
Far from indicating a kind of mere real‑woman-in-waiting status, Mademoiselle had become pretty useful to sandbag some people into realising that you are making your own way on your own terms. I plan to keep using it, and intend to encourage my independent‑minded friends to do the same.
After all, now it’s no longer official, we can truly celebrate it as the ultimate rebellion.
© Telegraph Media Group & Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, 2012
Take another famous Mademoiselle-by-choice, Catherine Deneuve. Never mind that she was married to David Bailey and had high-profile affairs and children with Roger Vadim and Marcello Mastroianni. She was resolutely never Madame. Compare her with Vadim’s earlier wife, Brigitte Bardot, who did become a Madame, several times over. It’s difficult not to see Bardot, who gave up her career early on to devote much of her time to animal welfare and the cause of Marine Le Pen, as more of a victim than a feminist star.
By contrast, Deneuve, a style icon and a stunner at 68, comes off as a winner. When I interviewed Vadim, a surprisingly spiteful serial seducer of great beauties, he was still resentful of Deneuve, decades later, for never marrying him. She had dropped him! Like une tonne de briques! She controlled their son’s education! She went on to have a better career after she left! As far as Deneuve was concerned, calling a woman Madame certainly meant making her walk three paces behind, metaphorically speaking.
Far from indicating a kind of mere real‑woman-in-waiting status, Mademoiselle had become pretty useful to sandbag some people into realising that you are making your own way on your own terms. I plan to keep using it, and intend to encourage my independent‑minded friends to do the same.
After all, now it’s no longer official, we can truly celebrate it as the ultimate rebellion.
© Telegraph Media Group & Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, 2012
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