Once upon a time Frenchmen regarded themselves as the world’s greatest lovers. These days they think of themselves more as fighters. Sexual partners have been replaced by sparring partners. President Felix Faure famously died while being pleasured by his mistress in 1899, but the blows favoured by today’s male politicians are administered to punchbags.Emmanuel Macron loves to box. His wife, Brigitte, told Paris Match in 2023 that her husband puts on his gloves twice a week for ‘45 minutes of training, warm-up and core-strengthening boxing’.
Macron regularly poses for photos wearing his boxing gloves. In March 2024 he was snapped hitting a punchbag. The more cynical wondered if there hadn’t been some ‘enhancement’ to the president’s bulging biceps. Size matters, after all, particularly among world leaders. Many interpreted the photographs as a message from Macron to Vladimir Putin that he is just as well endowed as the Russian leader.
Néron à l’Elysée published at the start of this year by journalists Nicolas Domenach and Maurice Szafran described the Elysée as ‘Macholand’ where ‘women are as rare as oases in the desert’ and Macron and his male minions unwind with boxing, banter and whisky. The president’s showboating hasn’t gone down well among some of his domestic adversaries. A ‘misery of politics!’ is how the Green MP Sandrine Rousseau has described Macron’s pugilistic posing. Jean-Philippe Tanguy, a senior lieutenant in Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, mocked Macron in a recent interview, saying: ‘Taking photos of himself boxing to make people think he’s very manly, very athletic…it’s ridiculous!’
But it’s not just Macron who virility signals. Tanguy’s own Jordan Bardella also likes to flaunt his machismo. Last year the 30-year-old president of the National Rally listed the sports he practices: swimming, football, handball, aikido and boxing, leaving some wondering how he finds the time to attend to the day job of politics. Last week Bardella elaborated on his passion for sport (adding cycling to the list) and he was asked if his ambition was to have biceps as big as Macron’s. He laughed but came to the defence of the president, saying: ‘When you’re the head of state, with that level of responsibility, if you don’t do any sport, if you don’t unwind, strengthen and recharge your batteries, it’s a problem.’
Bardella may contest next year’s presidential election; it depends on whether Le Pen wins her appeal in July against her political disqualification for malfeasance. Two men who have declared their candidacy are David Lisnard, the centre-right mayor of Cannes, and Édouard Philippe, the centrist who served as Macron’s Prime Minister from 2017 to 2020. Guess what? They also box to keep in shape.
Size matters, after all, particularly among world leaders
Profiled as a ‘Grand sportif’, the 57-year-old Lisnard was photographed playfully sparring with former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson in 2023. Philippe has even broadcast footage of himself trading punches in a ring with the professional boxer Georges Ory. In an interview in 2023, the 55-year-old Philippe explained: ‘I was 44 when I started, and it was love at first sight. I’m an amateur who regrets having started boxing at 44.’ Describing boxing as ‘very tough’, Philippe boasted that he is ‘capable of doing two or three rounds in a row, and two or three training sessions a week’.
French politics has always been an alpha male environment. There has never been a female president and of the 29 Prime Ministers of the Fifth Republic only two were women – and they were in power for a total of two and a half years. The first was Edith Cresson in 1991, who wasn’t short of feminine virility. Not long after Cresson was named PM, the Observer published remarks she had made in the 1980s. She declared that a quarter of Anglo-Saxon men – Brits, Americans and German – were gay. ‘Anglo-Saxons are not interested in women as women,’ proclaimed Cresson. ‘I remember from strolling about in London that men in the streets don’t look at you. When you do this in Paris, men look at you.’
As the New York Times commented, Cresson’s jibe caused ‘a tiff over the relative virility of English and French men’. The Sun hit back, saying Britain needed no lessons in masculinity from a country ‘where men carry handbags and kiss each other on the cheek in public’. Yet Gallic virility is often deployed to mask an insecurity. Macron is a physically small man at 5ft 8in; Edouard Philippe [16] suffers from alopecia and has lost his hair in recent years, and Bardella is self-conscious about his youth. Clearly, boxing makes them feel manly.
British politicians don’t really do macho. Ed Miliband has never fully recovered from being defeated by a bacon sandwich and Ed Davey’s idea of manliness involves an inflatable doughnut. Boris Johnson was sometimes seen out jogging during his time in politics, but it’s hard to look virile in black socks, Bermuda shorts and man breasts.
No self-respecting French politician has man breasts. Macron certainly hasn’t. It is all those hours spent hitting a punchbag. But the president needs to work more on his defence. As Brigitte Macron demonstrated last year with that right hook to her husband’s face, the first rule in boxing is the same as in politics: never drop your guard.
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