Brigitte Bardot has a neckline named after her, an off-the-shoulder cut that exposes your shoulders and collarbones and that signals a kind of sun-warmed carefreeness, a look that screams sex without strain. The silhouette is still sold every summer by designers who use Bardot\u2019s name and image as cultural shorthand for relaxed, unapologetic sensuality, whether or not they care to acknowledge the woman herself. When she died this week, it was a reminder that certain people with certain beliefs must be disposed of carefully.<\/p>\n
True, it\u2019s hard to sum up Bardot\u2019s legacy. There\u2019s so much of it. In the early 1960s, Bardot ranked among the highest paid actresses in France, an international box-office draw whose films reshaped Europe\u2019s understanding of female sexuality. As a singer, her collaborations, most famously \u201cBonnie and Clyde\u201d with Serge Gainsbourg, defined a particular strain of French pop. Then, in the second half of her life, she turned away from the arts and devoted herself almost exclusively to animal-rights activism<\/a>, founding the Brigitte Bardot Foundation in 1986 and insisting repeatedly<\/a> that this\u2014not her films, her lovers, or her looks\u2014was how she wished to be remembered.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, in the wake of her death, she was mostly remembered for something else\u2014as a quick scroll through the headlines can attest. From The<\/a> <\/a>Guardian<\/a>: \u201cBrigitte Bardot\u2019s image complicated by her controversial politics.\u201d And The<\/a> <\/a>New York Times<\/a>: \u201cBrigitte Bardot\u2019s Legacy of Racist Rhetoric.\u201d Here\u2019s France\u2019s most popular newspaper, Le Monde<\/a>: \u201cBrigitte Bardot\u2019s 30 years of sympathy for the far right.\u201d And finally Euronews<\/a>: \u201cShould France honour Brigitte Bardot? And if so, how? A nation divided.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brigitte Bardot has a neckline named after her, an off-the-shoulder cut that exposes your shoulders and collarbones and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-351926","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}