I have more pictures in my system of Laetitia Casta than any other mainstream model. The Corsican/Norman babe was so definitively French that the national association of mayors in France chose her to be a model for the bust of Marianne; that quintessentially Gallic embodiment of France displayed in town halls up and down Frogland. Laetitia won 36% of the 35,000 votes cast, against four other candiates. What were the other 64% thinking? We have to say that the Mayors were spot on about her bustability.
The nature of the Marianne personification is that it changes fairly regularly but mayors can choose from any of the back catalogue to represent their town. Celebrities started to be eligible as Marianne from 1969 when the first was, inevitably, Brigitte Bardot. Agent Triple P likes Brigitte Bardot as a concept but his view of her is always somewhat tempered by the fact that he lost a pair of Ray-Bans overboard in the bay outside her villa in St Tropez and, as a result, tends to blame her (however unfairly) for the loss off these very expensive sunglasses.
Bardot was Marianne for 9 years before being replaced by Mireille Mathieu in 1978. The next Mariannes were Catherine Deneuve (1985), Inès de la Fressange (1989), Laetitia Casta (2000) and Évelyne Thomas (2003. Deneuve, Bardot and Casta are the most popular choices for Marianne busts in French Town Halls.
France: great women, lousy sculptors
Since 2005 the politically correct morons in the French Government have decided not to model Marianne on a real woman but instead have chosen a figure with North African features to represent France's diversity. Ugh! If they wanted a gorgeous ethnically diverse woman they should have just chosen Isabelle Adjani.
We think that Mrs Sarkozy should have been the obvious next choice except, of course, that she doesn't really have a bust, unlike Laetitia who indubitably does.
As Agent Triple P well knows, having had several meetings with French ministries in the last month or so, Marianne features on all the Government business cards in a way unthinkable over in Joyless Gordon Land.