But Vogue’s article apparently left a bad taste in Hynde’s mouth, and she voiced her frustrations on X, writing: “Are you kidding me? Vogue magazine vilifying Brigitte Bardot the minute she died? Vogue magazine, and every fashion magazine in the world for that matter, owes more to Brigitte Bardot than any other human living or dead. She personified grace, elegance, beauty, glamour, style, and women’s rights. She was an animal rights activist and anyone who knows anything about animal rights knows that we will always side with the animal if it’s being tortured or abused in any way. Politics has nothing to do with it. And by the way, a ‘phobia’ is an irrational fear. I cannot imagine that Bardot had any irrational fears judging by the way she lived her life. Perhaps people working for Vogue magazine should buy themselves a dictionary. I’m not even sure why anyone buys Vogue magazine but then I’m in the rock ‘n’ roll business. We don’t use make up artists or stylists. If anything we just try to emulate our heroes, like Lemmy [Kilmister] and Brigitte Bardot. They expressed themselves by the way they looked… they didn’t hire people to do it for them.”
If now isn’t the time to take Brigitte Bardot’s racist past to task, then when is? I didn’t know there was a moratorium on talking shit when a bigot dies. My mistake. Also, I wouldn’t consider Lemmy Kilmister—famous Nazi memorabilia aficionado—and Brigitte Bardot—who called victims of sexual harassment “hypocritical, ridiculous, and uninteresting”—to be pillars of benevolence. But, then again, Hynde once said that rape victims were at fault, not their rapists, if they were “putting it about and being provocative.” I’d also like to mention that Bardot was a supporter of Jean-Marie Le Pen (she was married to his senior adviser, Bernard d’Ormale), a French politician who opposed Muslim immigration in France (and wrote that Bardot was “nostalgic for a clean France”). But remember, Hynde said this is not about politics!
Unfortunately, this online dust-up is the most interesting thing Chrissie Hynde has done in 30 years, maybe longer. Her comments have made her the talk of the town this week, but this is not the ass-kicking takedown she or her supporters (a few, but not many) think it is. Bardot was convicted and fined numerous times by the French government for “inciting racial hatred,” but, sure, again: “politics has nothing to do with it.” Who’s gonna tell Hynde that beauty and talent will never exonerate sexism, far-right sympathies, and racism? Image isn’t cosmetic, it’s all-encompassing. It’s about what you say, how you say it, and how many of your 91 years on Earth you spend repeating it. I believe it’s on us to speak ill of the dead who weaponizing bigotry against marginalized people while they were living. May we always fill the streets with songs of joy when a vicious, hate-sowing person finally kicks the bucket. Being an “animal rights activist” doesn’t shield you from criticism, not even in the afterlife. Live your life kinder and you’ll be rewarded with grace in the language of tributists.