telegenic pose
Les Bleues missed their match, but, rest assured, Prisca Thevenot succeeded in her photo. Saturday August 12, to attend the quarter-final of the Women’s Football World Cup which saw the France team lose to Australia on penalties, the Secretary of State for Youth and Universal National Service positioned the presidential portrait behind her. Then she sat nonchalantly on a corner of the desk, her gaze intently fixed on her flat screen, as if caught up in the spectacle before her… Communication? No, art.
Inlet
On her wrist, Prisca Thevenot wore a bracelet decorated with cowries, which allows us to spread our culture on the subject. Small coffee bean-shaped shells, white in color, cowries are often used in the manufacture of inexpensive beach jewelry, but have long served as convenience money, especially in Africa and the Indian Ocean from the 10th century. At the time, the Maldives was the main supplier of this shell nicknamed “porcelain money”. The latter was even present on Maldivian banknotes.
logo cache
A few centimeters lower, it is on a white mug decorated with the logo of the SNU (universal national service) that the Secretary of State has placed her right hand. The opportunity for a little etymological point. Indeed, if several theses are opposed on the subject, the most widespread affirms that the word “mug” is a derivative of the word “mogue”, historically used in the Channel Islands to designate a cup. Let us add to this subject that a mug, nowadays, also designates, colloquially, in England, a moron, while it qualifies, in the United States, a thug.
Right in the eyes
To the left of Prisca Thevenot, the gaze planted in the axis of the camera, therefore throne Emmanuel Macron. Taken in 2017 by Soazig de La Moissonnière, and renewed in 2022 (François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac had also recycled their initial official portrait in the light of their second mandate), this official photo allows us to make a reminder, always useful, on the tie width. This one, less wide than the node itself, appears much too narrow. Concretely, a tie worthy of the name should never be less than 8 centimeters wide.
tortured artist
Finally, let’s take advantage of the opportunity given to us to admire this portrait placed on its easel to remind us that before designating the work tool of painters, the term “easel” covered a much darker reality. Before the 18th century, the easel referred to the tool of torture by quartering. Concretely, the condemned man was lying on a table, his feet and hands tied to two cylinders which were slid until the body was heard to crack… Some trestles were even equipped with blades intended to lacerate the back of the accused. But, sure enough, none of that here!
