People and Faces: Ségolène Royal is not an elephant
The following are the introductory paragraphs of a New York Times Magazine feature (May 14, 2006) by James Traub on Ségolène Royal a French politician currently being touted as a future president.
There's a reason that the leaders of France's Socialist Party are called "elephants": They live forever. Among the elephants now vying to become the party's candidate for president in next year's election are Laurent Fabius, who served as prime minister 22 years ago, and Lionel Jospin, who served as Socialist Party leader a quarter-century ago and suffered a defeat in the last presidential election so devastating, both for himself and for the party, that you would have thought prudence alone would dictate political retirement. But in France, politics is a profession; once you arrive, you stay.
No one has thought to call Ségolène Royal an elephant. For one thing, it would be unbecoming, since she is a woman — and a woman who, when she works her smile up into her eyes, bears a passing resemblance to Audrey Hepburn. Royal is, remarkably enough, the first truly présidentiable woman in French history. But what is most striking about her candidacy, which so far consists of a highly orchestrated media seduction, is not the fact that she is a woman but rather that she has positioned herself as a nonelephant, indeed, almost an antielephant. She is, in effect, running against France's political culture, which is to say against remoteness and abstraction, ideological entrenchment and male domination itself. And that culture, which is embodied by her own party, has struck back, ridiculing her as a soap bubble borne aloft by a momentary gust of public infatuation.
James Traub, 2006, "La Femme" NYT Magazine May 14 2006
This is a very tightly composed introduction. It positions Royal in the context of French political culture using the evocative symbol of the elephant.
Traub's description of Royal is effortless and simple yet through a careful choice of words and phrases he gives a very particular impression and visual picture of this woman who would be president.
Traub's initial description of Royal is entrancing: "a woman who, when she works her smile up into her eyes, bears a passing resemblance to Audrey Hepburn." Note how this works so much more powerfully than a more simple version such as "she looks like Audrey Hepburn" or even "when she smiles she looks like Audrey Hepburn" or even "there is a quality in her eyes that makes her look like Audrey Hepburn". Traub's description works because it gives us a scene and an action: we get the impression of the performing politician who "works" her image. This is an active image where we see something happen, a movement as the smile works its magic, rather than simply a static image where we are told about the end result.
Traub uses very particular words to describe Royal's actions which emphasise her femininity against the male elephants. Her candidacy is a "media seduction" rather than a media "campaign". Her enemies dismiss her as a "soap bubble" and her popularity as a momentary "infatuation". In another context this certainly could be read as a dismissive male point of view, however here it goes to the heart of the contrasts that are explored as a key part of the article.
