However, it seems that the “slap” can be treated as a moment of a harmless marital joke. The only reason why, in my opinion, this event is being minimized is because we are dealing with a case of a wife’s anger towards her husband.
By Rowan PELLING
There are many things that belong to the past, and I believe we all agree that the song by The Crystals, from 1962, He Hit Me (and It Felt Like a Kiss), is one of them. Therefore, it seems somewhat surprising that the President of France is asking the world to accept his version of the incident everyone is talking about: she slapped me in the face and it felt like “mockery.” But, precisely this is what Emmanuel Macron would like us to believe about that moment — caught by cameras, as he and his wife Brigitte were disembarking the plane after arriving in Vietnam — when she directed her hands towards his face and pushed him away before the crew’s eyes.
This autumn they will celebrate 30 years of marriage. Sometimes I lose patience with my husband, but the worst thing I have ever done was to shout and storm out of the room in anger, drawing attention to myself dramatically. And this was when no one was watching us.
There is something deeply disturbing and instinctive about any gesture of anger directed at a person’s face; a part of the body that is always unprotected and sensitive. I was a child in the ’70s, at a time when we were not yet sensitive to political correctness, and parents sometimes hit children on the backside as punishment for bad behavior — including my very dear mother. However, I remember that she told me that when an adult hit a child near the face, it was “the worst form of harassment and humiliation that a person can do to another.”
However, it seems that the “slap” can be treated as a moment of a harmless marital joke. The only reason why, in my opinion, this event is being minimized is because we are dealing with a case of a wife’s anger towards her husband.
Recall that grim moment in 2013 when photos appeared of Charles Saatchi with his hand around Nigella Lawson’s throat, while she looked obviously distressed and on the verge of tears. No one was surprised when their marriage ended shortly after that incident. In fact, most of us would have been shocked if she had stayed with him after such a public display of anger and contempt.
And yet, it seems there is a greater willingness to believe that the French leader can tolerate some light quarrel from his wife. Maybe it is possible that a hand toward the face is their version of “enough.” But, I am not sure I can accept Macron’s explanation that “I was simply joking with my wife, as we often do.”
It seems much more likely to me that this moment of aggression is being minimized because Macron would seem less statesmanlike if it came out that his little wife has a habit of pushing him around. The laws of manhood are still ingrained in our minds, saying men are stronger than women, so they can endure a slap or a push like a butterfly strike — despite the wounds in the soul.
This would also bring attention once again to how the couple’s relationship began, and the power imbalance in a case where a teacher falls in love with her former student 25 years younger — someone she had known since he was 15 years old. I want to emphasize that generally, I am fine with large age-gap relationships. I have to be, since my father was 27 years older than my mother. But it would be naive to ignore the fact that women can be just as predatory as men when pursuing much younger partners (especially in a school context), though perhaps in smaller numbers. Or that, in some of these relationships, the woman may exercise a worrying level of control — and this may even be the purpose of the pursuit. I know two middle-aged men who have suffered from abusive relationships with older partners.
Of course, all this is speculation, and I admit I may be far from the truth. Perhaps some French couples really do push each other cheerfully in le visage [face], and it is part of a fiery foreplay game. But, if none of us believed that the light strangling was entertaining for Nigella, I don’t see why we should believe that a pushed face is a joke for the French president.