Have you ever typed “beurette” into a search engine? Today in #MotsPourMaux, we are talking about a word with an often pejorative connotation, used to describe young women of North African origin.
The beurette is the shameless, vulgar girl who likes to seduce men, even to extract money from them. She is I quote “libertine, limousine orgy” as the rapper el matador sings. But the word has not always had this meaning, as explained by Sarah Diffalah and Salima Tenfiche in their book “Beurettes – Un fantasme français” (Seuil), published in May.
The “beurette” is the counterpart of the “veiled woman”
“Beurette” appeared in the 1980s, at the same time as “Radio Beur” and the so-called “Marche des Beurs”. At the time, the connotation was nice. The word designates a young woman integrated, well in her sneakers, in short, a French success. Except that it gradually took on a sexual connotation, so that, when you type beurette in Google, here is what you find:
The beurette is the prostitute, as opposed to the veiled woman. It is a fantasy that hides a whiff of colonialism: it is a question of snatching the beurette from the Arab man by submitting her through sex, by revealing her. It reminds the unveiling ceremonies in Algeria in the 1950s, carried out by OAS officials. With the aim, according to the writer Frantz Fanon, to “destroy Algerian culture”.
Beurettocracy
Women of North African origin are now subjected to this cliché of the beurette, and find themselves caught between two injunctions: to be too prudish, or too shameless. It is to make fun of this stereotype that the instagrammer Lise Bouteldja has decided to force the line, by returning the stigma:
Lise Bouteldja even invented a word, the “beurettocracy”. History of transforming the outcasts of society into aristocrats. But there are other ways to combat the cliché, for example in the cinema by offering models of women of North African origin who are not always victims of their religion or authoritarian big brothers.
The authors Sarah Diffalah and Salima Tenfiche meanwhile rather want to bury the word beurette. And instead propose the word “rebeue”. Chick, do we stop using the word beurette?