Carla Bruni: no need for feminism?

Carla Bruni never quite managed the transformation from diva to Première Dame. Maybe it's because she lives in a very different life to the voters she once encountered. In the interview with French Vogue magazine, she said women of her generation don't need feminism any more. "There are pioneers who opened the breach," she says, "but I'm not at all an active feminist. On the contrary, I'm bourgeoise. I love family life, I love doing the same thing every day."

The French group "Dare to be Feminist" has vented spleen, inviting people to respond on Twitter with the hashtag 'Dear Carla Bruni'. And there have been hundreds of messages. "Dear Carla, my generation needs feminism because there's no equality in salaries," said one. "My generation needs feminism," said another, "because 75,000 women were raped last year".

The MEP Corinne Lepage weighed in: "Dear Carla, there are no women on the board of the ECB". And, in a press conference today, government spokeswoman Najat Belkacem Vallaud said: "We need everyone to be feminist, so long as one sex dominates the other," which all goes to show that, outside Carla's bourgeois bubble, feminism is alive and fighting fit.