Brigitte Bardot, legendary French actress and sex symbol, died Sunday at 91 years old.
On Monday, Vogue’s culture writer, Emma Specter, wrote a bitter tribute to Bardot. Specter covers “film, TV, books, politics, news, and (almost) anything queer,” according to her bio, and “bakes a lot of bagels” in her spare time. Her book, “More, Please: On Food, Fat, Bingeing, Longing, and the Lust for ‘Enough,’” is out now, according to her website.
Specter writes of “Bardot’s late-in-life shift to supporting right-wing political candidates, her way of coldly dismissing actresses who came forward about their experiences of sexual harassment during the #MeToo movement, and how she was fined multiple times by the French government for ‘inciting racial hatred’ with her blatantly bigoted comments about Muslims.” (RELATED: Brigitte Bardot, Iconic French Femme Fatale Turned Outspoken Activist, Dead At 91)
This person wrote the Brigette Bardot piece for Vogue (“It’s our collective responsibility not to let Bardot’s beauty and talent obscure the UGLINESS of her Islamophobia…”)
Does this obvious contrast Mean Something? pic.twitter.com/qK5HolpTyI
— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) December 31, 2025
On the one hand, Bardot sounds really cool. On the other hand, her claim to fame is getting undressed on camera. But I’m inclined to like Bardot, because she refused to stop saying true and unpopular things. Bardot became a militant animal rights activist, urging the French government to ban kosher and halal slaughter, which she reportedly referred to as “ritual sacrifices” in an open letter published in 2014.
“We no longer have the right to be outraged when illegal immigrants or thugs profane and conquer our churches, in order to transform them into human pigsties, defecating behind the altar, pissing against the columns, spreading their nauseating smells beneath the sacred vaults of our choirs,” Bardot wrote in her 2003 book, according to The New York Times (NYT).
Specter rails against Bardot’s “history of hate speech,” rather than, say, the French government’s history of forceful censorship.
“I’m a bit tired of trying Madame Bardot,” prosecutor Anne de Fonette reportedly said in 2008, urging the French court to impose “the most striking and remarkable” punishment on the former actress.
It’s poor form to make fun of somebody for their looks but I do think it says something about the current state of affairs that one can look like this and write for Vogue. https://t.co/BXcxHe1rfg pic.twitter.com/H5zTIpceIz
— Jo (@junker_jo) December 31, 2025
Bardot was charged with “inciting racial hatred” that year for a letter she wrote to French officials in 2004. In it, she reportedly alludes to Muslims as “this population that leads us around by the nose, [and] which destroys our country.”
In 1996, she wrote in French newspaper Le Figaro, according to the NYT: “And so it is that my country, France, my homeland, has once again been invaded, with the blessings of successive governments, by an overpopulation of foreigners, especially Muslims, to whom we are supposed to swear allegiance. To this Islamic flood we are supposed to submit, against our will, all of our traditions.” (RELATED: Chappell Roan Walks Back Tribute To Brigitte Bardot Days After Her Death)
Bardot wasn’t a half-bad writer, I’m discovering.
Specter asks us to ask “the hard questions about how Bardot’s embodiment of prototypically ‘perfect’ white womanhood relied upon systemic marginalization and outright racism (problems that persist in France to this day).”
This reads as nothing more than female jealousy cloaked in a (plus-sized) intellectual disguise. Anyhow, if the “outright racism” in France is so bad, those affected should really consider returning home. But when Specter refers to racism, I imagine what she’s really identifying is the curiously named “Islamophobia,” which consists of reasonable and even impassioned objections to one’s country being invaded by violent jihadis. Or even nonviolent people who seek to fundamentally alter the fabric of your nation in the image of theirs.
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