Pablo Picasso was 62 when he met the beautiful 22-year-old Francoise Gilot in 1943. The two went on to have two children together but they never got married. Francoise was the inspiration behind many of Picasso’s paintings but she later left him claiming that she was frustrated with his relationships with other women. Eleven years later, she published a memoir, Life with Picasso, which spoke about their relationship.
Now, aged 93, she has co-authored a book with American writer Lisa Alther, About Women: Controversies Between a Writer and a Painter. The book claims to cover the ‘dilemmas, benefits and demands of womanhood.’
Francoise states that a sure shot way of stopping rapes is to embrace the ‘eroticism of the streets,’ rather than getting offended, angry or talking legal action.
“There are probably fewer rapes in France because people are less repressed,” she claims in her new book. “If a man whistles at you and you smile, that oils the social wheels and eases the tension between the classes and sexes. It’s a kind of give-and-take that acknowledges that the other person exists, so in that sense it’s not treating another person as an object. To take offense all the time makes every relationship disagreeable,” she further adds.
“Each time a man says something to me, if I take it as an insult, then I’ll be insulted several times a day by strangers I’ll never see again. Whereas if I smile vaguely and go my way, it doesn’t cost me very much,” she further writes.
“There’s always a subtle ambiance of eroticism in the streets, in the air, of Paris. For instance, when you go to the market to select peaches, if you ask the vendor, ‘Are your peaches ripe? He’ll often say yes with a wink because the peach is considered a fruit similar to the female sex. Sometimes having intercourse is referred to as ‘eating a peach’.”
“So there will often be a little innuendo that isn’t rude but just reminds you of the eroticism of life.”
Wow, we would really love to get our hands on this book just for an amusing read but then we also hope that this book makes it to India’s list of #Bans because honestly such justifications for eve-teasing is going to do no one any good. Having dealt with eve-teasers on a daily basis, women are now finally getting the courage to report them and take a stand. This book will sure set the whole movement of feminism a decade behind.
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