Good afternoon or evening everyone,

How are you doing, you good? I hope you are well. I hope you have fun plans for the weekend. Ahead of that, I have a Fem Fri that hits truly the bullseye of the FF Venn - it's feminism! it's modernism! It's anti-fascism! Women of the French Reistance let's goooooo

Of course I'm going to start with Josephine Baker. One of the best sentences I read last year was about Josephine Baker, and it went along the lines of; when she moved from New York to Paris she went from being the funny goofy girl in the chorus line to being the horniest sex symbol of all time without changing her act one bit*. I think about this often, about how it would feel to have people respond to you in such a fundamentally different way when you still feel like exactly the same person. And of course, as well as being funny and sexy she was also brave:

“France made me what I am. I will be grateful forever. The people of Paris have given me everything… I am ready, captain, to give them my life. You can use me as you wish.” Josephine housed resistance fighters at her chateau and supplied them with visas. She attended parties and diplomatic functions, including parties at the Italian embassy that brought her in the orbit of high-ranking Axis bureaucrats. She collected information on German troop movements, and what harbors or airfields were in action. Josephine was confident that her celebrity and connections would protect her, and that no one would suspect her of espionage. She wrote down intelligence on her hands and arms, pinning notes inside her underwear.

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/siren-resistance-artistry-and-espionage-josephine-baker

As well as dance, the visual arts are represented in the work of curator Rose Valland, who kept meticulous records of what belonged to whom. She played a substantial part in returning what could be returned as well:

“In this disturbing chaos the beauty of the ‘safeguarded’ masterpieces’ beauty was nevertheless revealed. I belonged to them, like a hostage.” As the Allies were getting close, suspicions increased. When things were missing, she was accused of theft. Four times she was sacked, four times she returned. Every day, she had to muster the courage to face a “constantly renewed anxiety.” She even was accused of sabotage and signaling to the enemy.

https://www.thecollector.com/rose-valland-art-historian-spy-nazi/

Simone Segouin AKA Nicole Minet was also a woman of action, and as you can see in this photo, not averse to a photo opp or two:

Simone Segouin was involved in armed actions against enemy convoys and trains, attacks against enemy detachments, acts of sabotages, etc. The French newspaper Independent Eure-et-Loir on its August 26, 1944 issue described her as “one of the purest fighters of heroic French Resistance who prepared the way for the Liberation”. She was present at the fall of Chartres, on August 23, 1944, and at the Liberation of Paris. She was promoted to lieutenant and awarded the Croix de Guerre.

https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/simone-segouin-18-year-old-french-resistance-fighter-1944/

HAPPY FRIDAY 💖

Alex.

*In Jade Broughton Adams' F. Scott Fitzgerald's Short Fiction: From Ragtime to Swing Time - I would also like to make clear that Dr Adams did not use the exact phrase "horniest sex symbol of all time"