ELECTIONS

RUDE SAISON POUR

MAGAZINE

Claire Bretscher

BENOITE GROULT

PRIEZ DIEU ELLE YOUS EXAUCERA

L'HUMOUR CHANGE

French magazine skirts 'Ms.' ardor

New York Times

PARIS A new feminist magazine'launched with a slick advertising. and promotion campaign designed to disassociate it from the French women's movement, is on the newsstands here: It is "F" magazine (“F”” for "femmes" or "feminin"), and it has met with unqualified approval from the French press, for its tone is moderate and inoffensive.

"We are not militant," insisted Claude Servan-Schreiber, the magazine's founder, one of the country's most visible feminists and a longtime contributing editor of the magazine "Ms." in the United States. "Ms.' is expressly for the women's movement and we are not," Mrs. ServanSchreiber said.

"F," slightly larger in size than "Time," is beamed at "women of a high socio-cultural level," according to Mrs. Servan-Schreiber, and has adopted a sort of news-magazine format, with subjects arranged under

DE SEX Such headings as "Public Life,"

The cover of the first issue of "F" magazine.

"Personal Life," "Professional Life," "Cultural Life," and the like.

The cover story illustrated by a closeup of the cartoon satirist Claire Bretecher wearing a mock, sexy look and with one of her characters drawn on her bare shoulder is "Humor Changes its Gender."

It is a rather leaden look at French comediennes.

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Other articles include "The Discreet Pleasures of Being 40," a question-and-answer interview with Marina Vlady, the actress; "Pray to God, She Will Hear You," an essay on discrimination in the church, and "Secretaries: the Most Discreet Secret Weapon."

To an American reader the publication seems passe and sadly lacking in irreverence. But it was artfully developed based on polls and surveys, and thus it reflects the general level of interests of many French women. "Women here have changed more slowly than in the United States, but they have changed," Mrs. ServanSchreiber observed. “And they've changed much faster than society has, in their mentality and way of life."

This belief led the magazine's editorial board of six women to exclude fashion, food and home furnishing from the first issue. A frontof-the book section, "Conformation,” offers service articles on the.price of IUD's, do-it-yourself home repairs and how to compose a will. Later issues will have fashion, but not with a capital F, Mrs. Servan-Schreiber said.

"F" magazine has indeed tackled some weighty subjects for exam-

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ple, the obstacles for women in French politics and the weight-losing racket in Paris with rather flabby results. The article on politics concludes that the situation is discouraging; the article on weight-losing

does not name individuals.

Nevertheless, the magazine's real influence may be in giving feminism a good name in France. Now it is popularly associated with

the

Mouvement de Liberation des Femmes, a militant leftist group. "The MLF has stayed small and marginal and very politicized and lesbian," Mrs.. Servan-Schreiber said.

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"This image of feminism is too narrow," she, went on. “Feminism" isn't like the Catholic church → wes don't all have the same ideas. "Besides," she concluded, "mili-r tancy isn't profitable."

The editor and some of her editorial staff. From left: Francoise Salmon, Claude Maugendre (seated), Nicole Chaillot, editor Claude Servan-Schreiber, Ginon Richard, Michele Faure and Michele Grange.

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