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:
The Great Unleashing · The End of Jihad
Europe’s War · Kosovo
At the British Museum · The African Galleries
Through the Trapdoor · Walter Benjamin’s Last Day
At Quai Branly · Jacques Chirac’s museum
Saved and Depoliticised at One Stroke · the Dangers of Intervention
It Migrates to Them · The Coming Megaslums
At the Barbican · Pilger pictures
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