Recasting Carla as a housewife insults our intelligence

Sacré bleu! Supermodel, first lady, fashion plate, psychology devotee, pop and political paramour caught in grey-sweatshirted reality TV-viewing shocker! For, in a move that must be regarded as nothing short of a castration of one of the world’s most belovedly batty icons, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy has been asked by her husband’s campaign managers to normalise herself ahead of spring’s French elections. Or, as she herself might croon it: “I am a butterfly / You are my junk / I roll you up and smoke you / Deadly prime-time soap opera”. First Sarko, aka President Bling, was expected to de-glam his act after his election in 2007, shedding Rolex, Ray-Bans and his habit of sneering at members of the “dumb-ass” public. Now his inamorata is being required to ditch the Dior in favour of leggings and a slobby sweater. Worse still, she debuted this image on the cover of a lowbrow TV listings magazine – rather a humiliation for the woman who once graced the covers of Vogue and arms of Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger. Indeed, she was actually holding a remote control. This most unlikely metamorphosis is naive on several counts. First off, in terms of mere practicality, if you want to appeal to the great unwashed by emulating the great unwashed, do not pick a fabulously flaky, acoustic guitar brandishing, supermodel heiress by way of consort. Recasting Bruni as a lower-middle class housewife is an insult to the intelligence of the (not so dumb-ass) electorate. Besides, ordinariness abounds; glamour is a pleasure in an otherwise drab world. Not least, when said world is going to hell in a handcart. Comparisons between Bruni and Marie Antoinette make an amusing diversion. The analogy was first posited in an eight-page feature by Paris weekly Point de Vue in October 2009, presenting Bruni as a daffy, multi-millionaire socialite floatily detached from the real world. Both women, the magazine argued, are famed for their love of costume and image manipulation, comparing Marie’s chosen portrait artist Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun with Carla’s Annie Leibovitz. They both issued from inherited European wealth, share a love of music and performance, and similarly faddish tastes that remove them from hoi polloi norms. Albeit that Madame Sarkozy’s diet strategy renders her more “Let them eat quinoa” than cake. However, while the global economic situation may be unremittingly dire, and “monarchal” an epithet oft hurled at the presidential regime, the French public is not quite at the stage where it will go a-head-lopping. Moreover, not only do we thrill to a glitzy La Bruni, we also relish an unhinged one. She who obliviously labels the British “eccentric”, while penning lyrics regarding a room without walls, but an infinity of trees, in which she hears a harmonica. Such a heroine is a match not only for our fantasies, but for Sarko himself: the diminutive, testosterone-pumped despot, who – although much satirised – operates somewhere beyond parody. With his nepotistic endeavours for the son known as “Prince Jean”, droit de seigneur-ial selecting of wives while officiating at their weddings [second wife Cécilia], habit of lashing out at “scum”, and fanciful self-insertions into historical events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, last year’s satirical French biopic, La Conquête, about his rise to power was rivalled only by reality. Besides, from a Brit perspective, Bruni is French (never mind that she was actually born in Turin). If she isn’t to be running about indulging in couture-clad nymphs-and-shepherds fantasies to her own purple-prosed, psychobabble-inspired pop anthems, then who is she? This is what we rosbifs demand of our Gauls, Gallic poster gals still more so. Let her be willowy, winsome and witchily in control of her puppet-scale spouse. Let her sing, pout and seduce her way into the history books’ more colourful pages. Let her not be compelled to slouch in her stockinged feet enslaved to the idiot box.