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Hundreds of French Women Send Nudes to Famous Author to Fight His ‘Misogyny’

By Pluralist / January 21, 2019

“The body of a 50-year-old woman isn’t extraordinary at all.”

French writer Yann Moix outraged middle-aged women around the world when he admitted this month that he isn’t attracted to them. Their response: Send him nude selfies.

In a Jan. 8 interview to promote with French magazine Marie Claire, Moix said that he prefers to sleep with women in their 20s.

“The body of a 25-year old woman is extraordinary,” he said. “The body of a 50-year-old woman isn’t extraordinary at all.”

Moix, 50, added that women his own age are “invisible” to him.

He also shared that he’s into Asians. White Western women are boringly frivolous and self-centered, he explained.

Research has suggested that most men share Moix’s preference for young women. But in the #MeToo era, that did not stop the backlash from French women, including journalist Énora Malagré, who have accused the well-known novelist, filmmaker and commentator of shallow sexism.

Women elsewhere also piled on the anti-misogyny bandwagon.

At the same time, in an effort prove Moix wrong, middle-aged women have inundated him with photos of their naked bodies, according to The Times of the United Kingdom. One 52-year-old French writer shared a photo of her bare derriere with him online.

Other women have posted photos of over-50 female celebrities as evidence that the female form can be beautiful later in life.

As have women’s magazines.

Consistent with his stated taste in women, Moix has begged for an end to the flood of nudes, saying: “I would like 50-year-old women to stop sending me photos of their bottoms and breasts.”

He has also sought to explain to the women that, in so many words, “It’s not you, it’s me.”

On a French talk show last week, Moix said his love of women in their 20s has to do with his fear of aging, and that his dalliances often come to a painful end.

“It’s not something enviable, it’s something sad,” he said.

His new novel, which is the reason for the media tour, is based on his misery after a breakup.

The reaction to Moix’s statements reflects changing attitudes about gender in France. Although robust male sexuality has traditionally been celebrated and remains more tolerated there than in the United States, the #MeToo movement has had an effect.

Moix is one of “the last salvos of an erotic masculine power that’s less and less socially acceptable,” the journalist Cécile Daumas wrote last week in the newspaper Libération.

Feminists have generally celebrated the advance of women’s equality and the loosening of gender roles. But critics have characterized the movement as part of an out-of-control social justice agenda that flies in the face of human nature and social order. Anyway, some have argued, women don’t really want their men weakened either.

To date, Moix said, he has received hundreds of photos of nude women.

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Pluralist

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