French weekly magazines review

What if the run-off in the French presidential election was between the centrist leader François Bayrou and Marine Le Pen of the right wing National Front? Who is the French equivalent of J. Edgar Hoover? Is Israel at risk of becoming a fundamentalist religious society? And are we ready to live till we're 150 years old? The answers to these questions and much more are in the French weeklies.

"Bayrou V Le Pen…What if it was them ? " The centrist L’Express takes this week’s prize for the most provocative title.

The cover story is a series of articles analysing the presidential campaigns run by the centrist leader François Bayrou and Marine Le Pen of the National Front.

The articles examine the reasons behind the steady rise in ratings of the two candidates in the run-up to this year’s presidential election.

According to the weekly, Marine Le Pen  "eats through the conservative party’s heart" - the retired and the elderly - while François Bayrou is “seducing” the 35-49-year-old Socialist electorate.

Only three months before the elections and the outcome has never been less certain.

Marianne digs even deeper into the Marine Le Pen “phenomenon”.

The left-wing weekly makes a serious attempt to answer the question of why one in five French citizens intend to vote for the extreme right candidate. “It is out of the question to accept their point of view, but it is dangerous not to listen to them,”it says.

To find the answer. the weekly sent 10 of its journalists across France to meet the National Front’s recruits and find out why they joined the party.

The article breaks the stereotype of the typical right-wing voter, surprising us with the diversity of social, professional and ethnic backgrounds of party members.

The author concludes by saying: “a carnal, almost religious connection exists between a woman and a part of the nation. Which candidate can wrestle it from her?”

Back to Le Point, which publishes a series of articles on Bernard Squarcini, the man who “secretly imagines himself as the French equivalent of the FBI’s founder J.Edgar Hoover”.

The magazine’s cover page reads: “Inquiry into a man who knows everything about everybody”. One of the articles features excerpts from the book The President’s spy, an investigation into the French head of counter-espionage and counter-terrorism.

The author claims that under Mr Squarcini’s orders, the agency diverted some of its resources to purely political purposes.

“The Zealots offensive”, this is how Le Nouvel Obs’ qualifies a new and worrying trend in Israeli public life. The magazine looks at gender equality in Israel, one of the country's founding principles.

In a nation where women serve in the army and become fighter pilots, the ultra-orthodox Jewish communities are trying to impose their interpretation of the Jewish religion.

Despite representing only nine per cent of the population, their increasingly vocal demands on society include the separation of the sexes on public transport, the closing of streets on Saturdays, and removing all female images from street advertising.

According to the article, the country’s fragile social stability is threatened by this offensive by an ultra-religious minority.

In its international column, L'Express draws a parallel between the political destinies of Nicolas Sarkozy and Barack Obama. Both presidents face elections this year, and both have to win back an electorate disappointed by the economic crisis.

According to the author, the only solid arguments the presidents possess are their successes outside of their respective countries - the killing of Bin Laden and the Iraq pullout for Obama and the fall of Kadhafi for Sarkozy.

As the columnist bluntly puts it, “Both for Sarkozy and for Obama, the slogans from the last elections - Sarkozy’s “radical change” and Obama’s “yes, we can” – seem to have existed a century ago.

This time around, both candidates have another point in common. What they did well is not visible, and then there's everything they didn't get around to doing.

Now, are you ready to live until you're 150 ? Marianne claims that it's now possible. It features the world’s leading scientists in the field of age research. Among them is Jean-Marc Lemaitre, the head of studies on ageing at the Montpellier research institute.

His team took cells from very old people - almost 100 years old - and managed to reverse the ageing process so that they are like embryo cells. Another scientist mentioned in the article urges us to get ready for 100-years-old being young.

And finally, Marianne publishes an exquisitely illustrated look at French, female, lingerie habits … An ideal French woman is a symbol of chic, glamour and the art of seduction? Well, not exactly if you peek into her drawer.

According to the article, most of men would be terribly disappointed to find out that despite spending an average of 100 euros a year on lingerie, over 50 per cent of a French woman’s underwear are black and white classics.

The magazine presents some of the most beautiful specimens of female lingerie promising its female readers a “change of personality” should they choose to try on a slightly sexier item.