As Simone de Beauvoir once wrote of her, “A saint would sell his soul to Lucifer to see her dance.” If God created woman, the devil made Brigitte Bardot!
Brigitte Bardot was the daughter of a titan of industry, and came from a family of noble stock. She was also the daughter of a failed ballerina, bitter at never having had the chance to tread the boards of the Paris Opera, to flex her legs through pirouettes, or to unfurl her arms like the white necks of swans under those bright lights. Brigitte’s mother had big dreams for her daughter, wishing to live vicariously through her. She wanted Brigitte to have the happiness she herself had never known. Her tutelage was strict, for Brigitte’s performances were not of the standard she had hoped for. “Stand straight,” “Chin up!”, “Curve that calf!” she cried across the salon, which had been transformed into a ballet studio. The father delighted in seeing his little blonde daughter twirling around; to him, all this practice was merely a game. He would take out his brand new camera to capture the doll-like features of his dear Brigitte. She was effortlessly photogenic.
In time, little Brigitte developed a taste for being pictured. Soon she would capture the attention of Hélène Lazareff, editor of Elle magazine, who asked her if she’d be interested in modelling for teen fashions. “BB” did not hesitate for an instant. She adored being beneath the projector lights, and dreamed of admiring herself on the glossy pages. She had everything the photographers could want: a slender figure, a sultry pout and a wild intensity in her eyes. When director Marc Allégret picked up a copy of the magazine, he was dumbstruck. This was woman as God intended, and just the star he needed. Fate would not be denied; Marc Allégret wanted to audition her. His assistant was none other than a certain Roger Vadim, who had directorial ambitions of his own. For the “sex kitten,” as they were now calling her in the magazines, things were just getting started.
The seedling her father had planted with his camera was now in bloom; the sex kitten married Roger Vadim at the tender age of eighteen, almost a child still. She took her first steps into the world of cinema, and soon the roles were coming thick and fast. She was swept up in the storm of fame, captured in a net of glory and bombarded by male gazes. Her mother had wanted her to become just another Opera rat, but now she was a full-blown sex symbol. She acted in front of the camera as she acted in life, leaving no-one quite certain who she truly was. She became only BB, an unapologetic blend of youth and conventional beauty. All that she lacked was respite; for she was always dashing between movie sets, glitzy parties and interviews, simpering, smiling, powdering her face or fixing her hair, without ever a second to stop and think.
Spending every hour of every day being looked at, Brigitte Bardot was badly in need of respite, and sought a place in France where she could hide far away from men. All they ever did was tell her how beautiful she was, and that she should stay that way. Brigitte needed her life to have deeper meaning. In the end, she would choose a small fishing town named Saint Tropez as her hideaway; a place she could go to find herself again. It would become her safe haven. Later she would write: “I’ve created my own world within the world of others, and I try not to come out of it too often. One of the goals of my existence is to preserve a world of my own, one that’s as beautiful and as honest as possible.”
Alan Alfredo Geday
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