In Brigitte Bardot’s death I see the passing of a generation: the Frenchwomen who tried to find a path to autonomy in the 1950s and ’60s. One of the last things Ms. Bardot did was write a book, published earlier this year in French, an abecedarium titled “Mon BBcédaire.” The book, a not very chic compendium of thoughts scrawled in her own handwriting, received a tepid reaction from the French press, who were mostly disappointed by her portrayal of France. (“F is for … France, dear country of my youth! She has grown dull, sad, submissive, ailing — damaged, ravaged, banal, vulgar.”)
Young Brigitte Bardot, the actress, was a vessel for the imagination. Her sun-drenched, instinctual sexuality onscreen thrilled France, and then the whole world. She seemed to be without artifice, feral and physical. Men projected onto her, but she could not be possessed. She was the very idea of a postwar Frenchwoman: provocative, apparently in control. They liked men, and were convinced that they could manipulate them to their whims.
As a girl, Ms. Bardot left her strict, bourgeois, Catholic industrialist family for the life of a bohemian; at 39, she gave up being a film actress and retreated from the public’s adulation (and later foreclosed any potential return to it). She pursued animal liberation with intensity. “Animals saved me,” she once said. “Without them, I would have committed suicide.”
As her life progressed, Ms. Bardot provoked in new, often bigoted ways. She tarnished her legacy with her frequent racist, Islamophobic, homophobic and anti-trans comments and by mocking the #MeToo movement. I grew up around strong Frenchwomen of Ms. Bardot’s type, beautiful and independent, yes, but often cutting and cruel. They said horrendous, retrograde things with a mischievous twinkle in their eye.
I admit I loved those women, even as I strongly disagreed with their beliefs. They were not sweet; they were formidable. My grandmother lived alone on a houseboat on the Seine after divorcing my grandfather in the early 1970s. She gave me advice about men: “You must keep them like a pretty puppy on a leash, nice to show off but never to be taken seriously.” And to my surprise, she was completely accepting when I told her I dated women. She told me that she, too, had been in love with a woman once — a famous tennis player who drove a racecar, owned a pet cheetah and looked a bit like my grandfather. She would never date a woman again, she said. It was far too painful.
Brigitte Bardot died on Sunday. Let her memorialize herself in her own words.
Reading them, I laugh, often despite myself.
A comme ABANDON (A IS FOR ABANDON)
Absolute distress.
D comme Désir (D is for desire)
An erotic compulsion for another, which can go as far as murder!
E comme Enfer (E is for hell)
It exists on Earth.
F comme Fumer (F is for smoking)
It’s marvelous! It’s forbidden! Everything that does us good is forbidden. I’m sick of it!
I love smoking, I’ve always smoked and I always will. I like to defy the forbidden, it is my passion!
G comme Grossesse (G is for pregnancy)
A degrading punishment imposed on women’s bodies after they have given themselves to the love of a man … it transforms the lover into a disfigured progenitor who no longer inspires mad desire. It is the beginning of the deterioration of a couple’s relationship.
H comme Hepburn, Audrey (H is for Audrey Hepburn)
Mythical actress from the ’50s, very chic and proper, a model for all American girls. Full of charm and jewelry but with zero sex appeal.
That last part, at least, was not Ms. Bardot’s problem. Nor my grandmother’s. My grandmother is still alive, at 95, and I love her still. These women, of a passing generation, expected nothing from anyone, and gave little grace in return. I wish they had known how to be gentler — with the world, and with themselves.
Nadja Spiegelman is a culture editor for Opinion. She is the author of the memoir “I’m Supposed to Protect You From All This,” about her mother and grandmother.
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