Anxiety in the Dordogne 
Jeremy Harding
Every afternoon on RMC INFO, a French commercial radio network where phone-ins are the order of the day, the concerned but knowing voice of the sex counsellor Brigitte Lahaie can be heard fielding calls from listeners/participants. Her motto last week was ‘sexuality at the heart of a harmonious life’. One caller wanted to know if it was OK, as a woman, to be watching X-rated movies – isn’t that a man’s thing? – oh, and by the way, how do you go about removing the hair around your anus? It was all right, Brigitte thought, for girls to enjoy a bit of pornography (she’s an ex-porn star herself). And on the revealing supplementary, she felt that a bog-standard depilatory would probably be fine; maybe the caller’s partner would like to help her with the application.
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Jeremy Harding is a contributing editor at the LRB. His versions of Rimbaud’s poetry are published by Penguin along with John Sturrock’s translation of the letters.
Other articles by this contributor:
What to Wear to School · Marianne gets rid of the veil
A Man or a Girl’s Blouse? · Serbia after Karadzic
Kosovo’s Big Men · Jeremy Harding talks to KLA officers and an ‘official government source’ in Kosovo
At the Royal Academy · Botticelli
At Quai Branly · Jacques Chirac’s museum
At the Barbican · Pilger pictures
The Habit of War · Eritrea
Diary from Paris · Among the Arsonists
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