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EMILIA MILLICENT

LOVE

Are Swedish women sexual predators?

Boy meets girl, boy likes girl, boy kisses girl. Well, that ain't the fairy tale in feminist Sweden, argues love columnist Emilia Millicent who has found out that equality also has benefits in the romance department.

Are Swedish women sexual predators?

Let me spell it out – back home in the UK, I have many, many married friends. All, ALL!, were proposed to by their boyfriends. On beaches, under the Eiffel Tower, one by the sink as she was doing the dishes…the list continues.

Imagine my mixture of delight, curiosity, and awe then when I sit down for lunch with a male colleague here in Sweden and he, brimming with joy, tells me how his girlfriend hid an engagement ring in their picnic basket when they went swimming at the lake by their summer cabin. She proposed to him. He is ecstatic.

Things aren’t totally bereft of tradition in Sweden, though. When my friend Anna caught the bride’s bouquet at a friend’s wedding last weekend she didn’t turn around, call her boyfriend and demand that he get to it, but she did shriek a bit, and send him an SMS informing him of the near-wilted flowers landing in her outstretched hands.

But it was all jovial. It was fun. It’s was light-hearted. In Britain, by contrast, weddings are deadly serious.

I once, at a lavish do in Leicestershire, intercepted the flying bouquet just inches from a bridesmaid’s face, and my oh my, did that girl give me the look of death that could have killed a thousand men on the battle field.

In general, Brits take the whole marriage and tradition thing more seriously than Swedes. I don’t mean that my Swedish friends who do get married don’t take it seriously. Rather the opposite, when they do it, they mean it. But in Britain marriage, etc., is expected, and with that comes more attention to tradition. Including gender traditions.

Boy meets, likes, kisses…. proposes to!… girl. Never the other way around.

Even I, I must admit, never kissed boys before moving to Sweden. Didn’t matter how much I liked them, they had to kiss me first. It wasn’t something I thought about in any great detail. It was just the lay of the land. I took it so much for granted I wasn’t aware I was taking it for granted.

Until one day, when an on-off lover (we never seemed to live in the same city at the same time) told me he hadn’t been sure I was even that in to him. It shocked me. How could he not think so? Not only because I *let* him kiss me, but because I’d thought my words and other less eloquent noises would have been enough to convince him of my undying lust, if not love.

But alas… that lover is now on permanent OFF, with no ON in sight, thank heavens, but his comments resonated with me for years… why did I not feel comfortable kissing boys? It was ridiculous, I mean, I can wage negotiate like any bloke; travel the world like Marco Polo; I’m even pretty sure I could pack a good punch if I ever had to.

Of course, being a feminist doesn’t necessarily mean you have to turn into a man just to be their equal, BUT… what was wrong with a woman showing what she wants?

Nothing, I realized.

A few years later I moved to Sweden. The holy land of equal opportunity. There’s also less moralizing around women being horny here. Two good friends of mine married men they slept with on the same night they met. I had no such luck with an enormously talented (and enormous) architect that I made out with in the bushes at a party last summer, but I still carried home with me a sort of new found pride that I had gone after him. I hunted him.

Not in a ridiculous Jessica Rabbit way (I mean, I was wearing Doc Martins), nor by giggling like a bottle-blonde fool a la Marilyn Monroe. It was simple things. I talked to him, I asked him to dance, and then we stumbled out in to the garden and I kissed him. We made out, danced some more, then walked home, passing a bridge that was lit up by moon-light in a way that was so Monet that we both stopped, to admire the view, and then each other, and kissed again.

I never heard from him again, which was a shame, but not the end of the world. I went on to kiss an Australian banker in a Stockholm pub, and lately made sure to ensnare a friend of mine because frankly… it was about time. I’ve fancied him for ages, but been a bit too scared and intimidated by him (he’s very, very smart) to try anything.

Enough was enough, I thought, don’t let this one get away, I thought. So I kissed him. Do I feel like a sexual predator? Not really. I just felt like I shed a layer of worn-out sexist skin from another world (also known as the UK) where women aren’t allowed to be proactively up for it.

And no matter what they say about Swedish men, I don’t find them shy or retiring at all. I find them careful and considerate. And no areas of conversations are off limits, because nothing threatens their masculinity. In Sweden, I think I finally found a type of man who realizes that a woman’s choice to be with him is the only affirmation of love, lust, and appreciation they need. They are manly and secure in themselves. There is no jealousy, no secrets, no editing, no BS.

I like it here.

Scotswoman Emilia Millicent moved to Stockholm nearly three years ago and works in finance.

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HEALTH

IN PICTURES: 7 of the French government’s sexiest public health adverts

An advertising campaign aimed at convincing young people to get the Covid vaccine has attracted international attention, but it’s not the first time that French authorities have sexed up their public health messaging.

IN PICTURES: 7 of the French government's sexiest public health adverts
Image: AIDES.

It’s an international cliché that France is the land of l’amour – or at least the land of le sexe – and that reputation does seem to be justified, given how often French public health bodies have turned to sex in an attempt to get their message across.

From the suggestive to the downright scandalous, here are seven examples of health campaigns which relied on that oh so French fondness for romance.

Get vaccinated, get laid

The Covid campaign in question was created by regional health authorities in the southern Provence-Alpes-Côtes d’Azur region.

The poster which has got people hot under the collar features two very attractive and very French-looking people kissing, seemingly in the back of a cab after a night on the town. “Yes, the vaccine can have desirable effects,” it says.

The campaign has proved so popular that it will soon be expanded.

Promoting road safety

Earlier this year, the French Road Safety Delegation released a video ahead of Valentine’s Day, which showed a couple sharing an intimate moment in the bedroom.

The full 30-second video featured the slogan, “Life is better than one last drink for the road”.

Another image of two people kissing, seemingly without clothes, included the line, “Life, love. On the road, don’t forget what truly matters.”

Fight against HIV/AIDS

While the link between road safety and sex isn’t immediately obvious, less surprising are the references to intimacy in the health ministry’s HIV awareness campaign from 2016.

Each of the different posters shows two men embracing. Straplines include, “With a lover, with a friend, with a stranger. Situations vary, and so do the protective measures.”

The posters shocked conservative sensibilities, and several right-wing mayors asked for them to be taken down in their towns. 

HIV awareness campaign

Just a few days after the controversy over the ministry’s posters ignited, the non-profit AIDES launched its own campaign, and it didn’t hold back.

The posters showed scuba instructors, piano teachers and parachutists, all of them naked alongside their students. The slogan: “People undergoing treatment for HIV have a lot of things to pass onto us. But the AIDS virus isn’t one.”

“Even if we’ve been spreading this information since 2008, we realise that a lot of people don’t know that antiviral treatments prevent spreading,” head of AIDES Aurélien Beaucamp told France Info.

“People are still afraid of those who are HIV-positive.” 

Government-mandated pornography

It’s common for sexualised advertising campaigns to be labelled pornographic by critics, but in 1998, the French government went a step further and created actual pornography.

READ ALSO Language of love – 15 of the best romantic French phrases

The health ministry commissioned TV station Canal Plus to create five short erotic films to encourage the use of condoms and prevent the spread of HIV. The campaign featured up-and-coming directors such as Cedric Klapisch and Gaspar Noé.

“The only possible way to look at, to get people to protect themselves, is to show, show everything, show simply and without creating an obsession of the sexual act and the act of wearing a condom,” Klapisch said, according to an Associated Press story published at the time. 

You didn’t really think we’d include images of this one, did you? (OK, here’s a link for those who are curious).

A controversial anti-smoking campaign

https://twitter.com/MarketainmentSE/status/212863393143586817

It’s time to forget what we said about romance, because there is nothing romantic about this 2010 campaign from the Droits des Non-Fumeurs (Non-smokers’ rights) association and the BDDP & Fils communications agency.

The campaign featured several images of young people with a cigarette in their mouths, looking up at an adult man who rested his hand on their heads. The cigarette appeared to be coming out of the man’s trousers.

The slogan said, “Smoking means being a slave to tobacco”. The association said the sexual imagery was meant to get the attention of young people who were desensitised to traditional anti-smoking messages, but the posters caused outrage, with members of the government publicly criticising the choice of imagery.

Celebrating LGBTQ+ love

On the other end of the spectrum is this very romantic video from the national health agency Santé Publique France. It was released on May 17th 2021, the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia, and was part of a campaign against anti-LGBT discrimination and violence. It is set to Jean-Claude Pascal’s Nous les amoureux

Showing a diverse range of couples kissing, holding hands, and healing each other’s wounds, the video ends on the word play: “In the face of intolerance, it’s up to us to make the difference.”

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