Is it the French? See that image on the right? That’s a Phrygian cap, and it was the inspiration for the mascot for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
“It’s the symbol of liberty, and it’s also a very strong message linked to the revolution that we want for those games. We want those games (to be) a big success,” says three-time Olympic champion canoeist Tony Estanguet, who is the Paris 2024 president.
Silly, but cute. But wait. There’s a different interpretation.
Fair enough, Mr Estanguet, but on closer inspection, it’s also a very strong message linked to the female anatomy. Because the mascots – quite aside from looking like lunatic Smurf hats – unmistakably resemble gurning plush clitorises with the cold dead eyes of a killer, who could be right at home in a particularly traumatic Cronenbergian fever dream.
Huh? What? That’s a stretch. It only fits if you have an image of a vivisected, chopped out deep chunk of a woman’s genitalia in your head. I don’t. That’s not at all what I picture if I try to visualize a clitoris. Somebody has the gross mind of a serial killer.
But I was wrong. It’s not the French. The people responsible for bringing up this stupid comparison are the English at the Vagina Museum, a London-based exhibition. The English are trying to corrupt the innocent French!
Hmmmm… I don’t see it.
I wonder what Freud would have to say about this.
Maybe they think that little soft-serve fold at the top looks like a clitoral hood.
I’m wondering if this has something to do with the mascots from the London Olympics in 2012. Maybe France is trying to out creep Britain for some reason.
https://a4.espncdn.com/combiner/i?img=%2Fphoto%2F2016%2F0804%2Fr110234_1296x729_16%2D9.jpg&w=570&format=jpg
Anyone else remember Wenlock and Mandeville?
Given that the French Revolution very quickly betrayed its intentions (and even turned on many of its founders) and quickly led to Napoleon?
I don’t in any way see the French Revolution in any positive light. France would go more than another half century before it finally had a real democratic republic that was accepted by its population…by which time, that hat was very much out of fashion.
There’s also a penis museum in Iceland.
At some point (starting at least four or five decades ago) some sexologists, on the basis of (what they asserted was) progress in anatomy—I have no qualifications to evaluate any such claims*, were promoting a physiological model of the clitoris as a rather large, mostly internal (or at least subcutaneous) organ of which the glans clitoris and its hood are only the externally visible manifestations. A Google search for “internal clitoris” finds a lot of details, at websites of various sorts. Here is a link to one illustration from Glamour magazine. It does resemble those “Phryges”.
*I learned about this at a film festival in Manhattan dedicated to sex-education videos (which covered a wide range…). I was there as a guest of two friends, one a sculptor who had made some anatomically realistic sex-ed models of human genitalia (modal XX and XY), the other a videographer who was promoting a stop-motion video pitched to high-school sex-ed classes (which had been commissioned for a Massachusetts school system) in which two of these models acted out scenarios of courtship etc. (The video was very earnest, and you can just imagine how cringeworthy it would be today. But, hey; it was the early 1980s.)
Meh. These appear to be some kind of early Cambrian organisms. In which case, they might attempt to digest your scalp.
The Phrygians fought the Medean empire to a draw on the day of a solar eclipse. Or was that the Lydians? Anyway, they were scared enough to accept the river Halys as a mutual border as the eclipse was seen as a bad omen.
I do know a huge royal burial mound in the Phrygian capital Gordion
contained timbers that were very useful for making a dendrochronology sequence.
They look more to me like red versions of this year’s weird FIFA/Qatar mascot.
I don’t in any way see the French Revolution in any positive light. France would go more than another half century before it finally had a real democratic republic that was accepted by its population…
That’s okay, America took even longer to get one. Democracy is hard.
No, the French paper Libération got there a day before the museum: https://www.liberation.fr/sports/jo-2024-vive-les-phryges-les-mascottes-clitoris-qui-en-mettent-plein-la-vulve-20221114_QE3ICJC3ZZCYTLIZJYDCEBQXTQ/
and the French paraded an inflatable version in 2021: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/nov/15/mascot-paris-olympic-games-2024-likened-to-clitoris-in-trainers-phryges
There’s also a penis museum in Iceland
Whose penis?
It’s our national sport.
Given that the French Revolution very quickly betrayed its intentions (and even turned on many of its founders) and quickly led to Napoleon?
Ah, but we got the metric system, the Napoleonic Code, La Marseillaise (where would Casablanca be without it?), the Arc de Triomph and general restructuring of Paris, and any number of smashing books, films, and musicals. Plus Madame Guillotine, which may come in handy once again.
Eggs, omelettes, y’know.
Clitoris? That’s the detachable part in the left armpit that squirts resin and explodes when predators approach, isn’t it? As a gay man I’m not really an expert on these things.
The English are just mad because the French know where it’s located.
The fact that the Frenchie who’s running things is just a little man in a boat (canoe) is a further provocation.
From the linked article:
“In the UK, for example, a YouGov poll in 2019 found that 30% of Britons did not know what the clitoris was (29% of women, 31% of men), and in 2021, the Guardian noted that this percentage rose to 37%.”
I believe that was the Second Empire but I guess that wouldn’t have come about without the revolution. Neither would the colonies of French Indo-China (eventually leading to the Vietnam War), France’s defeat at the hands of the Prussians, and whatever the hell Napoleon III was trying to do in Mexico.
Clitoris? That’s the detachable part in the left armpit that squirts resin and explodes when predators approach, isn’t it? As a fine upstanding totally heterosexual conservative Christian man who hates women and desperately needs to tell them what their needs and opinions are, I’m not really as much of an expert on these things as my church’s interpretation of the Bible lets me to pretend to be. /s
It reminds me of a gallbladder.
According to Wikipedia, the Phyrgian cap was a symbol of liberty in the American Revolution before it was one in the French Revolution. The head of a woman wearing such a cap (Lady Liberty) is common on early US coins. The US didn’t always put dead presidents on them. Lady Liberty’s cap didn’t look like a randomly-shaped plush toy, though.
Those bloody perverts. Anyone can see the mascot is wearing a burqa.
“30% of Britons did not know what the clitoris was”
Clitoris? Clitoris??… it rings a bell.
To 11
Given the culture perhaps that of a Troll.
There’s also a penis museum in Iceland.
Normally, the exhibit is much larger.
@9. Raging Bee
Given things like the Electoral College & gerrymandering, voter suppression laws, ad nauseam it seems arguable whether the USA has ever actually had a “real democratic” republic or has one now.