Liberté, égalité, nudité: France’s new sexual politics

France is going through a sexual civil war. After the great carnal outburst of the free-loving soixante-huitards, some have reverted to abstinence and prudishness, while others are pushing sexuality to new extremes.

The crisis in French sexuality has exposed itself this summer as the clothes have come off. It’s not always a pretty sight, and not just because it isn’t true that French people don’t get fat. Major confusion on the shifting boundaries of corporal and sexual expression has grown into a peculiar conflict, exposing a national sexual neurosis.

On one side of this conflict is France’s army of traditional naturists: a largely aging clan who revel in the freedom, classlessness and wholesome pleasures of a nudity that they claim has nothing to do with sex at all. They are at war with libertines, voyeurs, exhibitionists, habituées of clubs échangistes and people from the dodgier ends of the internet, who have emerged from the shadows to disport themselves in the blazing sun and taken advantage of the season to turn many French beaches into what the appalled here call une baie des cochons.