Published on 11/09/2024 09:35
Video length: 9 min
VIDEO. Louise Chennevière talks about her book “For Britney”
Writer Louise Chennevière regrets that a woman is always first considered as “a body”. In her book “Pour Britney”, she questions the way women are scrutinized in our society.
(Brut.)
The writer Louise Chennevière regrets that a woman is always considered first as “a body”. In her book “Pour Britney”, she questions the way women are scrutinized in our society.
Louise Chennevière, writer, explains that from a very young age, girls’ bodies are perceived as sexual objects. “They are constantly told to close their legs,” she says, adding that people made these comments to her even at the age of 25. “The problem is not looking at a pair of panties, it’s that we look at these panties and we know that a young girl’s panties are a sexual object,” she said. Girls learn from a very early age to be the center of attention and to constantly judge themselves on their physical appearance in public spaces.
Louise Chennevière explains that Britney Spears was first presented as the “young virgin, America’s bride”, an image of innocence hypersexualized by the outside gaze. When the American singer wanted to assume her sexuality at 18, she was strongly criticized. The writer also mentions the Quebec writer Nelly Arcan, whom she describes as “one of the greatest” literature despite her past as a sex worker. “She is at the heart of this alienation (…) she has an implacable lucidity about what it is,” says Louise Chennevière. Nelly Arcan “keep saying: I want to be the most beautiful woman”, embodying this quest for an alienating feminine ideal. For the author, Nelly Arcan offers “the strongest criticism of patriarchy” that she has read.
