A double-headed hydra: Marine Le Pen’s charisma, between political masculinity and political femininity

ABSTRACT

Although charisma is more commonly associated with masculine leadership, Marine Le Pen (MLP) is a woman politician whom supporters view as charismatic. Combining theories of hegemonic masculinity, and hegemonic femininity, with Max Weber’s typology of legitimate domination, this paper elaborates a framework for identifying how political masculinity and femininity are relationally structured within types of legitimate domination, including charismatic domination. I apply this framework to empirical analysis of the French radical rightwing leader and her supporters. Charisma, I suggest, is a form of political masculinity a woman can enact, but which allows for expression of political femininity. Drawing from participant observation data gathered on the French National Front between 2013 and 2017, and from interviews with party members, I show how activists viewed MLP as an admirably virile figure. Simultaneously, she was venerated for her feminine corporality, and her expression of feminine care, or caritas. Like a double-headed hydra, MLP was viewed as extraordinary due to her combined political masculinity and political femininity. Contra theories of hegemonic masculinity, MLP shows that a charismatic woman can perform hegemonic masculinity without being punished by supporters for doing so. Rational-bureaucratic domination, by contrast, is predominantly masculine, and allows for little expression of political femininity.

KEYWORDS:

• Charisma
• hegemonic masculinity
• hegemonic femininity
• Marine Le Pen
• National Front
• political masculinity

With the personalization of politics through digital media technologies (Bennett & Segerberg, 2012), and the increased ‘celebrity’ nature of politics (Campus, 2017), charisma has become ever more accentuated in contemporary politics (Alvares & Dahlgren, 2016). Charismatic leadership style is closely aligned with the rise and spread of populism globally, entailing a strong identification between a leader and ‘the people,’ and intensified personalization of politics (Alvares & Dahlgren, 2016; Geva, 2018). Charisma is also strongly associated with a masculine leadership style (Meret, 2015).

Participant observations and interviews I conducted on the French National Front (FN) between 2013 and 2017 (now renamed the Rassemblement National), however, show that Marine Le Pen (MLP) was viewed as a charismatic figure who was celebrated by supporters for her exemplary masculine traits, such as her ‘authority,’ alongside her exceptionally caring and feminine traits. In this paper, I aim to identify how charisma is a form of political masculinity and political femininity, especially for a female charismatic leader.

I trace how MLP’s perceived charisma was configured by both hegemonic masculinity and femininity. Her perceived masculinity was equated with her charisma; and this masculinity triggered structures of feeling (Ahmed, 2004) supporting the belief that she is a woman who can perform exceptional feats. Contemporaneously to viewing her as performing masculinity, I also show how supporters viewed MLP as bearing the gift of natural beauty, and as a caring, feminine figure who represented caritas, a feminine capacity for care and love. This beauty and caritas, I argue, were also constituent of her putative charisma.

Scholarship on political masculinity has flourished in recent years (e.g. Starck & Luyt, 2018; Starck & Sauer, 2014). This growing body of multi-disciplinary work examines a wide range of political masculinities, ranging from specific national contexts, historical periods, moments of crisis, political leaders, and diverse ideals of citizenship. However, scholarship on political masculinity could be aided by considering how types of leadership are organized by hegemonic masculinity and femininity.

I do so by critically applying theories of hegemonic masculinity and femininity to Max Weber’s classification of types of legitimate domination. This typology shows how types of leadership express a distinct relationship between political masculinity and political femininity. With this framework in mind, I then draw from participant observation and interview data on the FN, to show how MLP was seen by followers as a charismatic figure who seamlessly combined the quality contents of hegemonic masculinity, and ‘hegemonic femininity.’

Legitimate domination, political masculinity, and political femininity

Max Weber’s classification of legitimate domination

For many political scientists, historians, and sociologists, analysis of charisma is rooted in the towering work of early twentieth-century sociologist Max Weber. In his dry encyclopedic style, Weber elaborated a typology of forms of legitimate authority, which remains a helpful toolkit for identifying categories of political domination perceived as legitimate in modern societies. Weber identified three broad types of legitimate domination: traditional, charismatic, and rational-bureaucratic authority (see Weber, 1946, 1978). Briefly, traditional political domination is rooted in the claim, accepted by followers, that a given person, organization, or group, has the authority to rule on the basis of claims to tradition (Adams, 2005). Modern rational-bureaucratic authority, by contrast, rests not on the claims of an individual or, for example, a dynastic family or patrimonial tribe, but on the belief that the law, rules, and bureaucracy, are rational and impersonal, and that an organization like the modern state has legitimate power to rule due to its claim to rationality and impartiality (Weber, 1946, 1978).

The third type of authority Weber identified is charismatic authority, which supposedly inheres in the authority of the person who carries it, flowing from personal strength (ibid.). The charismatic hero must work ‘miracles’ with some degree of regularity in order to maintain their authority. Charismatic authority is therefore an unstable form of legitimate domination. Twentieth-century charismatic authority has also typically rested on leaders connecting themselves to national myths and heroes. This is especially so at times when breakdown of the traditional and/or rational-bureaucratic order enables a figure to be associated with ‘sacred’ symbols, myths, and rituals central to national culture (Willner & Willner, 1965).

Charisma depends on followers’ perception that a leader carries certain qualities and can enact exceptional deeds (McDonnell, 2016). Some argue, however, that charisma was Weber’s least sociological account of legitimate domination, and the most individualistic, as he did not develop an analysis of its sociological characteristics (e.g. Willner & Willner, 1965).

If women have been less likely to be viewed as charismatic (Meret, 2015), then one already suspects that there has historically been an equation between masculinity and charisma – that is, that charisma is sociologically structured too. Turning now to theories of hegemonic masculinity and femininity, I argue that these theories, in combination with Weber’s classification of types of political domination, pinpoint how masculinity and femininity shape all three types of domination, and specifically pinpoint how hegemonic masculinity and femininity shape charisma.

Hegemonic masculinity and femininity

R.W. Connell and James W. Messerschmidt’s (2005) account of hegemonic masculinity outlined how hegemonic masculinity legitimates male dominance, not only over and above femininity, but also over and above subordinate masculinities. Sociologist Mimi Schippers enriches Connell and Messerschdmit’s work by arguing that gender hegemony must not only consider hierarchies between masculinities, and of masculinity over femininity, but also between femininities. Whereas Connell and Messerschmidt argued that there is no such thing as ‘hegemonic femininity,’ Schippers rather incorporates Judith Butler’s concept of the ‘heterosexual matrix’ with theories of intersectionality, to argue that hegemonic femininity does exist. Although hegemonic masculinity persists as the ur category of domination, Schippers argues that intersectional categories, especially sexuality, race, and class, position some forms of femininity to be hegemonic, and over and above other femininities (2007). Nonetheless, hegemonic masculinity and hegemonic femininity continue to perpetuate the overall dominance of masculinity over femininity.

According to Schippers, gender qualities are constructed around the idealized relationship between masculinity and femininity, where the two are structured as complementary, two ‘opposites,’ which attract through the heteronormative assumption of desire between a person marked male, and a person marked female. Furthermore, these ‘opposites’ are also hierarchically structured, with masculinity placed above femininity, and intersectionally overlapping with other categories such as race, ethnicity, and religion. Hegemonic masculinity cannot exist outside its relational reference to femininity, and also, without a hierarchy of dominant masculinity above other, lesser valued, masculinities and femininities.

Ann-Dorte Christensen and Sune Qvotrup Jensen also draw from scholarship on intersectionality to argue that hegemonic masculinity should be analyzed through its ‘internal’ and ‘external’ dimensions (2014). Its internal dimension entails examining men’s relationship to one another, whereas its external dimension entails examining men’s relationship to women. They emphasize that external hegemonic masculinity can be structured to place a relatively equal relationship between femininity and masculinity among white citizens, while its internal dimensions sustain hierarchies of inequality layered through ethnicity, race, and religion among men, and among women in turn.

Hegemonic masculinity, according to Schippers, is expressed in quality contents such as authority, physical strength, and desire for the feminine object. Hegemonic femininity is expressed in quality contents that support hegemonic masculinity as complementary to, and hierarchical over, hegemonic femininity. These include qualities such as demure physicality, passive desire for the masculine object, and emotional vulnerability. Schippers also identifies ‘pariah femininity’ as expressed by a person marked as female, but with quality contents identified as ‘masculine.’ This person is socially undesirable, since she contaminates the hierarchical and complementary relation between hegemonic masculinity and femininity. Such a woman can be called a ‘butch,’ ‘bitch,’ ‘slut,’ or a ‘pushy woman.’ Hegemonic gender, Schipper argues, extensively shapes social and political life, from the global to the local, from the most personal and intimate, to the macro-institutional.

Hegemonic masculinity/femininity and types of political masculinity/femininity

When applying theories of hegemonic masculinity and femininity to Weber’s categories of legitimate domination, and in combination with some feminist critiques of Weber’s categories, the relationship between hegemonic gender, and types of legitimate domination, becomes clear. Together they create a typology of political masculinities and femininities in political leadership, where for each type of domination, political masculinity is structured relationally to political femininity.

Patrimonial rule continues to exist as a form of traditional authority in the contemporary world. This is a type of domination based on an extension of the ruler of the household outwards towards rulership of a people and territory. As argued by Charrad (2001) and Adams (2005), patrimonial authority cannot be disentangled from the patriarchal rule of the father. It is a form of political masculinity wherein the patrimonial head of family embodies rule in his corporeal being, extending domination through relations of blood and kinship, through strong leadership, violent protection, and paternal care. The patrimonial ruler of a kingdom rules through his claim to tradition and to patriarchal authority over other subordinate masculinities and femininities organized through kinship, literally and symbolically. Exceptionally, a woman can successfully occupy this position, drawing on both hegemonic masculinity and femininity. Julia Adams notes how England’s Queen Elizabeth I emphasized her extreme bodily fragility, her symbolic marriage to the crown and people, but also the king’s access to violence and the obligation to protect in her battle to sustain power (2005).

Rational-legal authority rests on domination through recourse to laws, rules, and bureaucracy. Political leaders who have risen through the ranks of rational-legal party politics need to show, however, that they have not simply climbed bureaucratic layers, but have ascended through the ranks by being ‘strong’ and ‘cunning.’ This authority, too, is deeply structured by masculinity and femininity. In France, men who are rational-bureaucratic leaders ascending to the top are expected to be mavericks who can radically harness the power of the state, while expressing a voracious appetite for the feminine sexual object (Matonti, 2017). Inasmuch as current President Emmanuel Macron has claimed to be a new force in French party politics, he is almost a cliché of French hegemonic masculinity (Achin & Lévêque, 2017). And like in much of the Global North, hegemonic masculinity in France is deeply reflective of global colonial history (Connell, 2016), and France’s related migration histories from colonies to metropole (Beaman, 2017; Mack, 2017). Arab Muslim men are especially constructed as dangerous and over-sexualized, in contrast to white ‘native’ women and men. Macron’s political masculinity shows that he followed the rational-legal rules to make it to the top. At the same time, he is also ‘strong,’ is a ‘maverick,’ does not ‘succumb’ to, for example, the yellow vests movement, is comfortable with using the state’s extensive police powers, flaunts his heterosexuality, and symbolizes an intersectional masculinity that is above the working class, and above racialized post-colonial masculinity.

Rational-bureaucratic power especially presents women with the double bind of political power. The double bind entails the sometimes subtle, sometimes blatant, equation between hegemonic masculinity and power, and thus expectations that women perform hegemonic masculinity in order to appear powerful (Campus, 2013; Matonti, 2017). The supposedly disembodied nature of rational-bureaucratic rule is a fiction, since it emphasizes the masculine body and masculine attire. Women’s physical appearance cannot appear too feminine, and women rational-legal leaders are expected to hide their feminine corporality under layers of masculine dress. Yet, at the same time, women in power are punished if they are seen as too masculine, and are expected to represent character traits and/or physical attributes representing hegemonic femininity (Paxton & Hughes, 2014). Rational-bureaucratic domination thus fashions an especially fraught relationship between hegemonic masculinity and femininity.

Feminist scholars have likewise noted that charisma is a gendered form of political domination. Susi Meret argues that studies of charisma have largely focused on male figures, and have furthermore failed to notice the presumed correlation between masculine traits and perceptions of charisma (2015). She shows, however, how three female radical-right populist leaders are themselves viewed as charismatic. Focusing especially on Denmark’s Pia Kjærsgaard, Meret shows that Kjærsgaard was seen by followers as expressing masculine traits such as being ‘controlling’ and ‘disciplined,’ while she was also characterized as distinctly feminine, such as being fondly nicknamed ‘Mama Pia.’

Meret’s analysis points to two features worth underscoring. Firstly, charismatic repertoires, for women too, include representing hegemonic masculinity, such as being a disciplinarian or showing ‘strong’ leadership (see also Geva, 2018). Secondly, charismatic women are also seen as displaying stereotypically feminine traits such as maternal care (see also Norocel, 2018). Another notable example is American politician Sarah Palin, famously portraying herself as a ‘mama grizzly’ who simultaneously defended, and cared for, her people (Deckman, 2016).

This analysis clarifies an under-theorized aspect of charisma. Charisma, as expressed by figures such as Pia Kjærsgaard and Sarah Palin – or a male figure such as Donald Trump – is not merely a quality which inheres in a person who possesses the gift of magic. Charisma rests on invoking emotional effects – and affects – among followers. This is the crucial ingredient missing in Weber’s account of charisma. Charisma is not a coincidental set of personality traits in a given person. Rather, charisma invokes admiration, desire, and when it fails, repugnance. As Sarah Ahmed argues, we cannot suppose that, ‘emotions are a private matter, that they simply belong to individuals’ (Ahmed, 2004, p. 117). Since hegemonic masculinity and femininity deeply structure power and desire, and since charisma rests on invoking affects and desire, charisma – more than rational-bureaucratic domination – is a performance which draws on hegemonic masculinity and femininity to incite emotional attachments from followers.

Such affects are also invoked through hegemonic femininity, especially through the ‘gift’ of beauty, and the leader’s expression of care. Caritas, defined as one of the three virtues in the New Testament, is the virtue of love and charity (Freyhan, 1948). As a theological concept it represents love of God and love of others. However, like Weber on modern charisma, I ascribe a secularized meaning to caritas. In modernity the nation is transcendent (Smith, 1998). Women especially represent the nation through caring and reproduction (Yuval-Davis, 1997), and a figure who is viewed as ‘naturally’ graced in leading her people through care and maternity exemplifies modern caritas. Other examples are Argentina’s Evita Peron, and Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto.

Women with rational-bureaucratic careers and without charisma, such as the United States’ Hillary Clinton, struggle with minimizing expressions of hegemonic femininity, and modulating their affect so that they appear ‘rational’ and ‘competent’ (Kupfer Schneider, Tinsley, Cheldelin, & Amanatullah, 2010). By contrast, charismatic figures eschew representing rational-bureaucratic political masculinity, and it is here that we see how charisma contains the kernel of populism, which rests on claims to being ‘against elites’ (Geva, 2018).

In the following, I draw from participant observations of the FN, and from interviews conducted with FN activists and politicians, to analyze how MLP was viewed as charismatic. This perceived charisma was structured by hegemonic masculinity through her virility, and by hegemonic femininity through her beauty and care. She expressed both political masculinity and femininity. It was through hegemonic gender’s structuring of affect and desire that MLP’s performances elicited the feeling among supporters that she was an extraordinary woman. MLP’s supporters did not see her as a distastefully masculine figure, but rather as a woman who splendidly combined masculine and feminine virtues. Like a double-headed hydra, the multi-headed snake of Greek and Roman mythology, her gendered co-existence was further proof of her extraordinariness.

Methods and data

I conducted participant observations of FN events, and interviews with party activists and politicians – not merely voters – between 2013 and 2017. By making contacts with local FN politicians and activists in the southeast of France, especially outside the city of Avignon and within and around the city of Nice, local informants advised me of FN events, and informal gatherings, which I attended between March and July 2013. I then conducted participant observations of the FN milieu in and around the city of Lyon from September 2016–June 2017. At these political events and social gatherings, I observed the carefully staged political communication strategy of the party developed by the party’s national bureau, but also local and less carefully staged FN gatherings. I also attended three major national party events: its summer school in Marseilles in 2013, its May 1 march in Paris in 2013, and MLP’s presidential campaign launch weekend in Lyon in February 2017.

Participant observation enabled me to identify the production of gendered imagery, ideologies, and performances, and their reception and reproduction by local FN actors. My method entailed hanging back and observing to the extent possible, but also engaging in conversation with informants. I especially focused on discussing with FN activists their opinions regarding MLP, how she differed, if at all, from her father, the place of women in the party, what they believed was the core ideology of the party, and their critique of other political parties and politicians. I wrote detailed notes at the end of each event, but did not take notes during events and discussions, and limited use of taking photographic imagery to mass party events. I also recorded speeches at major national events. I never hid my identity and, when asked, was clear that I was a sociologist conducting research on the party.

Participant observation was complemented by fifty semi-structured interviews, solicited through snowball sampling. In order to capture ruptures, but also continuity, within the FN since MLP’s leadership, the interviews divide almost precisely in half across generation, with twenty-six interviews with petty-bourgeois FN supporters, most of whom were in their early seventies and older, and who were FN supporters from the time of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s (MLP’s father’s) party leadership. These supporters remained loyal to the party after MLP became party president, and only one left the party after her father was forced out of the party in 2015. The other twenty-four interviews were with young supporters who were active in the Front National de la Jeunesse (FNJ), the FN youth wing. They were mostly in their early twenties, and more sociologically diverse in terms of class and education than the ‘traditional’ petty-bourgeois supporters from the FN’s heartland in France’s southeast (see Table 1 for a summary). Interviews were recorded and later transcribed.

Table 1. Summary of interviewees

FNJ	Sex	Age	Location	Occupation
1	M	20	Nantes (Loire-Atlantique)	Student
2	M	24	Paris	Student
3	M	24	Boulogne-Billancourt (Île-de France)	Banker
4	M	20	Paris	Student
5	M	24	Chambéry (Savoie)	Student
6	M	19	Paris	Baker
7	F	21	Paris	Media (radio PR)
8	M	22	Val-de-Marne (Île-de-France)	Student
9	M	22	Boulogne-Billancourt (Île-de France)	Caregiver
10	M	24	Val-de-Marne (Île-de-France)	Student
11	M	26	Bourges (Loire Valley)	Baker
12	F	25	Bourges (Loire valley)	Shop-seller
13	F	23	Paris	Student
14	F	17	Paris	Student
15	M	20	Paris	Student
16	M	26	Lyon (Rhône)	Student
17	F	23	Vaires-sur-Marne (Île-de-France)	Nurse; and Student
18	M	24	Grenoble (Isère)	Student
19	M	25	Calais (Pas-de-Calais)	Insurance broker
20	F	23	Houilles (Île-de-France)	Unemployed
FN and FNJ	Sex	Age	Location	Occupation
1	M	23	Normandy	Member of Municipal Council
2	F	21	Strasbourg (Bas-Rhin)	Member of Municipal Council
3	F	24	Arceuil (Île-de-France)	Legal aide; Member of Municipal Council
4	M	27	Toulouse (Haute-Garonne)	Member of Regional Council
FN	Sex	Age	Location	Occupation
1	M	67	Paris	Lawyer, Politician
2	M	24	Val-de-Marne (Île-de-France)	Electrician
3	M	30	Burgundy	Aide to Marine Le Pen
4	M	29	L’Oise (Northern France)	Student
5	M	23	Cannes (Alpes-Maritimes)	Realtor
6	M	30	Arceuil (Île-de-France)	IT; Politician
7	M	29	Nice (Alpes-Maritimes)	Politician
8	M	39	Carpentras (Vaucluse)	Parliamentary Assistant; Former Soldier
9	F	23	Carpentras (Vaucluse)	Politician
10	F	60	Nice (Alpes-Maritimes)	Politician
11	M	85	Lyon (Rhône)	Retiree
12	F	44	Bouches-du-Rhône	Educator, Politician
13	F	70	Antibes (Alpes-Maritimes)	Retiree
14	M	55	La Colle-sur-Loup (Alpes-Maritimes)	Politician
15	M	73	Nice (Alpes-Maritimes)	Retiree
16	F	72	Antibes (Alpes-Maritimes)	Retiree
17	F	85	Antibes (Alpes-Maritimes)	Retiree
18	M	49	Villeurbanne (Rhône)	Politician
19	F	48	Lyon (Rhône)	Politician
20	F	45	Lyon (Rhône)	Hairdresser
21	M	73	Saint-Marcellin (Isère)	Retiree
22	M	52	Val d’Oise (Île-de France)	Culture Industry, Politician
23	M	75	Antibes (Alpes-Maritimes)	Retiree
24	F	73	Pyrénées-Atlantiques	Retiree
25	M	53	Paris	Unemployed
26	M	57	Seine-Maritime (Normandy)	Professor, Politician

Both methods entailed an interpretive approach (see Chabal & Daloz, 2006; Schatz, 2009). Participant observation provided a window into the political staging and collective ideological expressions of the party, whereas interviews provided a deeper window into how individuals became party activists or politicians, their unique political and personal trajectories, how they diverged from, or agreed with, FN ideology, and importantly, the highly personal ways in which politics, MLP’s leadership, and FN membership, were meaningful to them.

Drawing from this data, in the following I first demonstrate how MLP was seen as an admirably masculine figure, and how this masculinity was constitutive of her perceived charisma. I then show how she was also seen as a beautiful and caring maternal figure. Her masculinity and femininity, I argue, thus combined to render her an extraordinary figure whom supporters believed was born with the grace to lead and care for her people, and who, like General de Gaulle, could achieve exceptional feats.

Marine Le Pen’s hegemonic masculinity

FN supporters admired MLP’s masculine nature and her invocation of the great men of French history. As argued by Geva (2018), at the height of her political success between the 2012 and 2017 French presidential elections, MLP was viewed as performing repertoires of hegemonic masculinity, such as by always wearing a formal dark suit at major political events. These qualities, however, did not transform into viewing MLP as performing ‘pariah femininity.’

Prior to the split between MLP and her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in 2015, some older FN followers expressed the view that she was almost the mirror image of her father.

FN adherents, especially young men, compared her to her father, and to great male French leaders (see also Geva, 2018). A thirty-year old assistant to MLP saw both Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles de Gaulle in MLP:

One can find a bit of General de Gaulle in her. She has a Gaullian political style, which matters a lot in France. And there is also Napoleon in her. She has that political will, that idea of grandeur, and no one else today resembles that.¹

Another young male FN activist who was born outside Paris to a family of Sunni Muslim immigrants from Morocco who had never themselves taken French citizenship, and who seemed adrift after trying, and failing, to join the French army, saw in MLP virtues he recognized in multiple historic figures. When asked which political figures she most resembled, he expansively responded:

She’s a bit like General de Gaulle because he opposed powerful Frenchmen who were proponents of neoliberal capitalism. He opposed large business managers, the leaders of multinational corporations, and he also had a lot of courage. He especially resisted American influence. He resisted the main global superpower of the time. Yes, also Joan of Arc. And leaders from the third world, like [Egyptian President Gamal Abdel] Nasser. She also resembles somewhat her father.²

All these warrior figures had the military will to fight imperial powers, a characteristic which he saw MLP as embodying. Like Joan of Arc, these historic figures engineered nearly miraculous military and political feats, against all odds.

A highly educated male FN Member of the European Parliament who is close in age to MLP, reflected on how her political charisma is related to her representation of masculine authority at a time when that is sorely lacking:

It’s always a mystery why a specific male or female politician attracts crowds. There’s that aspect of charisma, which is a bit irrational. People feel that she is a courageous woman, who fights out of conviction, who will not change her ways. The French have always liked authoritative men and women. Many now miss General de Gaulle, who was a great man of conviction. I feel that with Marine Le Pen we can finally find someone who has General de Gaulle’s authority, with a vision for France’s future […] Marine Le Pen, she embodies this image of authority.³

Male supporters especially expressed admiration of MLP’s masculinity and representation of national heroes, and believed she was destined to greatness.

Two weeks after the U.S. election of Donald Trump in November 2016, a male FN politician in his fifties, and who lives in a working–class neighbourhood in the city of Lyon, expressed to me his belief that MLP was about to realize a political revolution. I had asked him what he thought of Donald Trump’s recent electoral victory. With a twinkle in his eye, he explained, ‘Historically, the American Revolution came before the French Revolution.’⁴ Whereas theories of hegemonic masculinity emphasize that women with quality contents identified with virile and aggressive masculinity are viewed as gender ‘pariahs,’ MLP’s own supporters considered their leader to be a remarkable woman who could achieve exceptional feats thanks to her authority and fearless leadership.

Masculine protection of the people’s weaker sex

Young women, and a few young men too, admired MLP’s defense of Frenchwomen as a sign of her toughness, but also her feminine style in comparison to ‘left-wing feminism.’ MLP’s perceived capacity to protect Frenchwomen was framed as defensive in ways that invoke hegemonic masculinity, and its intersectional layers, in constructing white ‘native’ Frenchwomen as vulnerable to male immigrant violence and dependent on men’s ‘prerogative power’ (see Brown, 1992). This discourse bordered on femonationalism (Farris, 2017), in that defense of women’s rights was presumed to be a fundamentally French value which Muslim immigrants debase, and which must be defended by MLP and her party. However, the content of what ‘feminism’ connoted to them reflected the quality contents and the power relations of hegemonic masculinity, rather than the eradication of hegemonic masculinity. It is the (white) masculine obligation to protect the (white) ‘weaker sex.’

For example, during an interview with Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, I asked her if she considered MLP to be a feminist. Maréchal-Le Pen is MLP’s niece, and was a rising star in the party until she took a leave from politics in spring 2017. At the time of my interview with her she was still a member of the National Assembly, and we met in her regional headquarters in the town of Carpentras outside the city of Avignon. I asked her whether she considered MLP to be a feminist. She first responded to my question by claiming that MLP appealed to women voters because she was the only politician to take seriously the ‘problem’ of ‘native’ Frenchwomen’s insecurity on the streets of France. According to her, ‘A woman without a [Muslim] headscarf is a target in certain neighbourhoods.’ After considering how MLP best protected women’s rights, she concluded – seemingly to her own surprise – ‘Yes, Marine is a feminist! But not like those masculine feminists on the left.’⁵

A young woman FN Youth activist believed that MLP was not a ‘vulgar’ feminist, and yet she was the one ready to fight violence against women:

Feminism is a label more associated with the left. I don’t think MLP would identify herself with vulgar militant feminism. But for me, at least, she is the only woman politician who really defends women’s interests. Even in the FNJ, a year ago we ran a campaign to stop violence against women. I think we are the only ones who are honest about the topic, who take it to heart, and who fight it.⁶

A seventeen-year-old woman FNJ activist stridently self-identified as feminist. She saw in MLP, and in the party ideology, a clear defense of feminist values. From the age of fifteen she was already active in feminist organizing, especially in defending abortion rights. She felt, however, that the feminist milieu was ‘very violent,’ and after making friends with a Jewish woman her age who had become an FN Youth member, she realized that her feminist values and FN values were compatible: ‘I find that defending women is present in the FN. For example, I have heard many get upset about women’s objectification, something feminists criticize.’⁷

At a small FN recruitment event in Lyon in November 2016, two women in their fifties, both about MLP’s age, discussed their admiration for MLP and how much she had personally inspired them.⁸ One of them, who had volunteered to cater the modest reception, commented on MLP’s ‘beautiful legs,’ and noted that, nonetheless, she tended to hide them under dark long trousers when she was in more formal events with a media presence. As I had seen at the FN Summer School in Marseilles in September 2013, MLP can appear at internal FN events wearing a short mini-skirt and soaring stiletto heels. However, she would wear dark masculine suits at higher-profile mediatized events. The other interlocutor was a leading FN politician in the region, who explained that she admired how MLP resisted sexualizing herself in her public image. She believed that this was a reflection of how MLP fought against the extreme sexualization and objectification of young girls in the French media, and in her view, how MLP also fought against Muslim men ‘forcing’ headscarves on young Muslim girls. MLP’s fight against women’s objectification and defense of women’s rights was what had inspired her to join the party and become an FN politician. MLP’s defense of the people, and of presumably white Frenchwomen specifically, was thus framed through the lens of protective hegemonic masculinity, while also emphasizing her hegemonic femininity supposedly in contrast to left-wing feminism.

Marine Le Pen’s feminine corporality and caritas

Admiration of MLP’s feminine physical attributes was not uncommon within FN circles. As one woman in her seventies exclaimed at the May 1 rally in Paris in 2013, chattering to her friends and ignoring the content of MLP’s speech, MLP had ‘extraordinary legs’ hidden under the black suit she was wearing on stage.⁹ An aspiring FN politician from outside the city of Nice, and who made a failed bid in the 2014 municipal elections and has since passed away, insisted in 2013 that Marine was precisely like her father, except that her goal was not just to be a protest voice, but to win elections. Yet, when I asked him whether she was different from other women politicians in France, he proceeded to compare her, one-by-one to other prominent French women politicians and concluded: ‘She is undoubtedly the most beautiful!’¹⁰ Her perceived beauty was invoked to emphasize her distinction from other female career politicians, as if beauty signalled an inborn gift.

While MLP’s masculinity signalled her authoritative charisma, her perceived femininity also signified how she was different from rational-legal authority. A female FN politician in a town outside the city of Avignon, and who is the same age as MLP, vividly captured this perceived duality to MLP:

Women are better listeners than men. In Marine’s profession, she is more sensitive to the suffering of children. Whereas men come and want to force things […] Marine, she was educated by a father who knew what war is - a very virile man. Marine is the incarnation of this, she has a firm and combative side, with a woman’s sensibility.¹¹

Also insisting on MLP’s feminine distinction from rational-legal technocrats, she claimed that, ‘In the FN, we are not caged in by technocratic politics. Women especially so.’

A twenty-four-year-old male student at Paris’s prestigious Sciences-Po university articulated the view that MLP expressed political masculinity, while maintaining her femininity as a woman who cares for her children and cats:

In politics, for women to succeed they need to show that they are men like other men. There isn’t the dimension there of male-female complementary, but more that a woman needs to prove that she has the qualities of a man. Politics in France remain a rather virile activity. When I think of Marine Le Pen’s image, I tell myself during debates, she doesn’t let anyone walk all over her. She’s a tall woman. She’s feminine, but she is imposing. She isn’t a woman who is 160 cm and weighs 50 kilos. When I met her, I was surprised by her femininity, which is not necessarily communicated through her media image. The topics she discussed from the first lunch were her children, her cats. I was really astonished because I wasn’t expecting that at all. I think her interpersonal style really seduced me.¹²

His apparent seduction shifted between seeing her through one register of hegemonic femininity, where he had emphasized her maternal relatability, to another register of hegemonic femininity (and his hegemonic masculinity), where she was described as a desirable feminine object.

Another young male student who called himself a ‘Keynesian,’ and who was a member of the FN Youth national leadership, believed that MLP wished to re-institute the caring and reproductive functions of the state should she become president:

She would succeed in recreating the State […] I believe that many are waiting for a protective state, a welfare state. An interventionist state which truly helps the people.¹³

A twenty-five-year-old working-class woman also saw MLP as more empathetic than others, especially compared to her father: ‘She is normalizing [“dédiabolise”] the party because her discourse is, how can I say it, compared to her father it’s not at all the same discourse. She is more human.’¹⁴ Another male activist also saw her maternity as signalling her closeness to the people and her relatability as an ordinary woman:

She is a woman with children, with the same constraints as other women with children […] Marine has, how to say, the same obligations on the human level as do all French people. They see themselves in her.¹⁵

One young male activist explicitly saw her as relatable to the people, but rejected that she was merely ‘populist’:

Marine Le Pen is at her best when she is surrounded by her activists, when she is at the centre of the population. It’s true she is very relatable. […] People call it populism. I don’t see it as populism. Democracy is the people’s power by the people and for the people, and Marine Le Pen is undoubtedly the most democratic candidate.¹⁶

In his view, her relatability was precisely what made her a more democratic and representative political figure, a classic populist claim which he, nonetheless, denied was populist.

A university-educated twenty-five-year-old and middle-class male from the northwest insisted, on the one hand, that he did not care whether the party leader was a man or a woman, yet, on the other hand, saw in MLP’s femininity a capacity to better comprehend, in her grounded everyday maternal experience as a working woman, the larger troubles facing Frenchmen and women:

She is a sincere and patriotic woman. She’s a mother, so she knows what it is to be a mom. She knows what it is to work, because before she took on her responsibilities within the FN she was a lawyer. So she knows about the professional world, unlike a lot of political leaders who have never worked their entire lives.¹⁷

MLP’s professional credentials as a lawyer were not emphasized as evidence that she had the rational-legal credentials to lead France. Rather, her work experience, in the words of another young male interviewee, showed that she was a ‘working girl’ (original in English). Her professional history was shaped into the sign that she was a ‘real’ and ordinary woman who has had to work in ‘real’ jobs, and unlike professional politicians, was capable of empathy for common people’s struggles.

MLP’s 2017 presidential campaign made her tough femininity the centre of its campaign. The campaign’s symbol, which was launched at the three-day congress in February 2017, was a blue rose, a feminine symbol referencing the red rose of the Social Democrats, and crossing old political divides. I conducted participant observations at the convention, and observed how blue rose kitsch items such as pins and key chains were on sale at the congress hall (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Blue rose 2017 presidential campaign paraphernalia for sale in Lyon, February 2017.

The campaign also tried to portray MLP as both tough and a feminine calming presence. One campaign poster showed her serenely looking into the camera, with the slogan ‘La France Apaisée,’ or ‘A Pacified France’ suggesting that MLP would ‘calm’ a country in turmoil, a connotation that is simultaneously gentle and firm. The campaign posters were hanging on the walls of the FN’s Lyon headquarters throughout the 2017 campaign. At a party there on 23 April 2017, the night of the first round of presidential elections, FN activists quietly filed in and waited with anticipation for the exit poll results to be announced at 8 pm sharp. I observed a group of men and women, mostly in their seventies, walk around the rooms while examining the MLP campaign posters on display. They compared each poster to assess in which one Marine looked most beautiful.

I later found myself talking to a couple who had driven in from a town about two hours away. They explained that they were retired real-estate agents who had once supported the centre-right party, but ‘came out’ as FN supporters after they retired and when MLP became party leader. As we were speaking, our conversation was cut off by an announcement that the election results were about to come in, and a tense silence filled the room while everyone turned their heads to the television screen waiting to hear the outcome. The headquarters erupted into joyful cries as the news announced that MLP had passed into the second round of the presidential elections to take place on 7 May 2017, when she would face off against Emmanuel Macron. The local Rhône-Alpes Departmental Secretary took out bottles of champagne, and gave a celebratory speech facing the bright lights of the television news cameras. When her speech ended, the media crews swiftly left, and the atmosphere became more subdued. The retired real estate agents explained that they were delighted by the results, but everyone knew that MLP did not really stand a chance because the ‘whole system is against us.’

The local FN Departmental Secretary was nonetheless determined to maintain a festive spirit. She revealed a bucket of long-stemmed and died-blue roses that had been tucked away in a corner. Several men immediately headed towards the bucket and distributed roses to the women at the party. The male real-estate agent joined the ritual and grabbed a flower for his wife. Realizing that I had remained empty-handed, he dashed back to the bucket, took one of the last roses, and as he gallantly handed it to me he asked, ‘Do you know why it’s blue?’ I shook my head, and he continued, ‘So that you know that the impossible is possible!’ With this apparently mundane gesture, he expressed his hegemonic masculinity, signalling heterosexuality through masculine gallantry. Inasmuch as he had acted in a singular and personally meaningful way, his apparently spontaneous gesture expressed his belief that the feminine blue rose symbolized MLP’s capacity to perform extraordinary feats.

Conclusion

While MLP’s charismatic extra-ordinariness could be signified by masculine virility, authority, and her size, it was balanced by her political femininity which celebrated her as a beautiful and caring woman. Those who felt privileged to have met MLP at more intimate events could attest to her maternal relatability, and felt fortunate to have seen her unadorned legs, proof of her feminine corporality underneath a masculine black suit. Her remarkable charisma was the product of her dual nature; authority, virility, beauty, and caritas, embodied in a singular political figure.

Participant observation of the FN, along with interviews, interpreted through the combined frameworks of Max Weber’s ideal types of legitimate domination, and theories of hegemonic masculinity and femininity, yield several insights into the nature of charisma, hegemonic masculinity and femininity, and types of legitimate domination. Firstly, as argued throughout this paper, modern charisma for male and female leaders, expresses the quality contents of hegemonic masculinity. Hegemonic masculinity further explains the feelings of faith, admiration, even passions, elicited by charismatic figures. This is because, as argued by Connell and Messerschmidt (2005), desire and cathexis are themselves structured by hegemonic masculinity, and as argued by Schippers (2007), and Christensen and Qvotrup Jensen (2014), by heteronormative and intersectional categories which deeply shape passion, desire, and disgust.

Secondly, and at the same time, admiration for MLP also shows that charismatic women can be seen as embodying feminine virtues of physical beauty and caritas, in addition to their masculine virility. MLP was viewed as extraordinary in this very duality. The co-existence of caritas and virility in MLP runs counter to theories of hegemonic masculinity which highlight that, normally in the Global North, persons marked as female, but who embody masculine traits, are punished for being too masculine.

It was MLP’s critics who portrayed her as embodying pariah femininity, not her supporters. For example, two days before the second round of the presidential elections in 2017, the French left-wing daily newspaper La Libération depicted a photo of Jean-Marie Le Pen on its cover, with a blazing red moto proclaiming, ‘She has not changed.’ Like so many women politicians across the political spectrum who are discredited by representing them as unpleasantly masculine (see Ducat, 2004), offensive images of Le Pen circulated on social media depicting her as a grotesquely masculine figure wearing military dictator uniforms. Others aimed to shame her through nude or hyper-sexualized images.

Thirdly, returning to Weber’s tri-partite schema of types of legitimate domination, we can now identify how charisma, and patrimonial domination based on family rule, are forms of political domination where a woman can represent political masculinity. They provide room for female representation of masculine power, combined with representation of hegemonic femininity, and without being seen as embodying pariah femininity. Some male charismatic figures also express caritas, such as South Africa’s Nelson Mandela. The analysis here does not examine men who embody caritas. It does, however, raise the question of the conditions under which male charismatic leaders successfully express caritas as part of their charisma.

By contrast, despite the apparently disembodied and putatively meritocratic nature of rational-bureaucratic domination, this analysis reveals that rational-bureaucratic politics are an acutely masculine form of political domination, with little room for representation of political femininity. Both charisma and traditional patrimonial rule are more commodious in allowing for representations of political femininity, whereas there is a thin band of political femininity tolerated within rational-bureaucratic leadership.

At the same time, as argued by Starck and Luyt (2018), hegemonic masculinity (and femininity) change over time. A figure such as current New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, suggests that feminine caritas can now combine somewhat with a woman’s rational-bureaucratic political career.

Finally, MLP’s dual political masculinity and femininity were hardly a path towards gender and racial inequality. The double-headed hydra of her virility and caritas rather reinforced the putatively natural character of hegemonic masculinity and femininity, heterosexuality, and the racialized hierarchies of domination upon which they rest, and which continue to be the central ideological tenets espoused by Marine Le Pen and her radical rightwing party.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Dorit Geva is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, and Dean of Undergraduate Studies, at Central European University. She is a political sociologist currently studying the new radical right in Europe. Her research on the French National Front was supported by a Marie Curie Career Integration Grant (grant number PCIG11-GA-2012-322365), and a EURIAS fellowship at the Collegium de Lyon (2016–2017). In addition to being the author of several articles on the gender politics of French conservatives and the radical right, she has written on neoliberal welfare reform and its link to conservative family values, and has published extensively on the gender politics of military service, including her book Conscription, Family, and the Modern State: A Comparative Study of France and the United States (Cambridge University Press).

Additional information

Funding

Research for this project was funded by a European Commission FP7 Marie Curie Career Integration [grant number PCIG11-GA-2012-322365]; and a European Institutes for Advanced Studies fellowship held at the Collegium de Lyon (2016–2017).

Notes

1 Interviewed August 19, 2015.

2 Interviewed April 3, 2016.

3 Interviewed July 24, 2015.

4 Discussion from November 23, 2016.

5 She asked not to maintain anonymity. Interviewed July 5, 2013.

6 Interviewed June 30, 2014.

7 Interviewed March 4, 2016.

8 Observed November 23, 2016.

9 Observed May 1, 2013.

10 Interviewed May 13, 2013.

11 Interviewed July 18, 2013.

12 Interviewed April 27, 2016.

13 Interviewed February 5, 2016.

14 Interviewed February 10, 2016.

15 Interviewed June 6, 2014.

16 Interviewed May 2, 2016.

17 Interviewed April 27, 2016.