Is this photo of French Secretary of State Marlene Schiappa on the cover of Playboy true?

In April 2023, a Playboy magazine cover circulated across social networks and the media, showing the French Secretary of State for Social Affairs in a white swimsuit with a plunging neckline. We decided to check if this photo is true.

A photo of the Playboy cover with Marlene Schiappa in a white swimsuit was published by many media outlets - for example, New York Post. In Russia they wrote about this, in particular, “News" And "RIA Novosti" However, these two publications did not publish the photo, but limited themselves to a detailed description: “She is posing in a white dress with a deep neckline and bare shoulders, with the numbers 49.3 on her chest. In the background is the French flag. The Playboy name is also made in the national colors: blue, white and red.” RIA FAN, in turn, published a cover photo. The photo also went viral on social networks: many popular channels and bloggers posted it on Telegram, including Dmitry Nicotin (319,000 views), Irena Ponaroshku (127,000) and "Pool N3"(103,000). The picture also appeared in Twitter And "Zene"

The first photos of the French version of the April issue of Playboy appeared March 31, and April 6, the magazine went on sale. According to the CEO French Playboy Jean-Christophe Florentin, 100,000 copies were sold in the first three hours, the publishing house had to print another 60,000. The photographs and a 12-page interview with the Secretary of State for Solidarity and Social Economy and Public Life in France evoked many responses, including critical ones. Minister for Gender Equality Isabel Rom stated, that Schiappa made a mistake by choosing a publication that fits all the sexist stereotypes. And the leader of the left opposition, Jean-Luc Mélenchon made it clear, which considers this choice of a magazine for an interview frivolous.

Among the photographs published by the media and bloggers, there was also a very candid one - the one that later became viral. At the same time, in the official accounts of the magazine on the cover of Playboy featured completely different photo.

The top third of the two photographs coincide, while on the official cover Marlene Schiappa is in a white dress, in the viral photo she is in a swimsuit of the same color with a deep neckline. In addition, in the second case, on the minister’s left chest is the number 49.3. This is the number articles the French Constitution, which allows important laws to be passed without a vote in parliament. Exactly to this norm contacted President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, when in mid-March passed the bill on raising the retirement age without the consent of the National Assembly. This decision caused violent protests both in parliament and on the streets of French cities.

First photo with cleavage posted on Twitter on the morning of April 1, blogger Jack Blag. However, in response to questions from other users who expressed doubt about the authenticity of the photo, he honestly answeredthat this is fake. April 4 Jack Blag published another tweet with the text “Now I’ll show you a trick.” And he showed side by side the real cover, the fake one, and the source photo of the cleavage.

Reuters fact-checking service determinedthat the original photo with the neckline was taken from the photo database Pexels. There this photo is called “Sexy woman in a white swimsuit posing while sitting in a chair”, it was published back in 2020. The author of the fake changed the size of the swimsuit straps and added the numbers 49.3 to the left breast.

Thus, the candid photo of Marlene Schiappa, supposedly from the cover of Playboy, is a fake. One of the recent issues of the magazine actually published a photograph of the minister, but Schiappa is dressed much more restrainedly in it. Moreover, the author of the viral image did not hide the fact that it appeared as a result of working in a photo editor, and a few days after its publication he described in detail exactly how he did it. However, some media outlets (New York Post, RIA Novosti, RIA FAN) had not deleted their publications at the time of writing this analysis.

Cover photo: social networks

Fake

What do our verdicts mean?

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