La Barbe: France's bearded feminists

[dipsydoodle]

A group of French feminists has found a new way to fight inequality - with sarcastic humour and fake beards. Only rarely is there a violent response.

Colette Coffin unzipped her handbag and pulled out a small piece of artificial fur. "This is my speaking beard," she explains.

>

Deftly, she hooks the string loops around her ears and turns to face me. The effect is bizarre. With the little ginger triangle on her chin, the schoolteacher wearing a prim summer dress resembles a wannabe Lenin.

>

The name comes from the group's pantomime style of protest. Its members infiltrate high-level, male-dominated meetings. In due course they get to their feet and silently don false beards before one of them reads out an ironic statement congratulating the men on their supremacy.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18497881

This is to help make themselves be heard as opposed to :

[Skittles]

1. OK this just sounds so wrong

"I've got a much bushier one but this has a wider hole so I can talk without getting too much fluff in my mouth."

[dipsydoodle]

2. I've edited that out

and inserted another para instead.

I obviously can't remove it from the article.

[Skittles]

3. I quizzed someone by IM to tell me the subject matter from that quote

he will never guess BEARD

[JHB]

4. Obligatory when speaking of women with fake beards...

Last edited Mon Jul 2, 2012, 07:29 AM - Edit history (1)

...is men dressed as women with fake beards:

[HopeHoops]

5. I'm a guy. I have a beard. I'm a feminist. I've got a bumper sticker on the back of the van...

"A man of quality is not threatened by a woman seeking equality."