The joyfully bizarre – and saucy – phryges have got even me excited about a month of sport
The Paris 2024 Olympics and Paralympics mascots have been unveiled and boy, they do not disappoint. Les phryges are modelled on the revolutionary red Phyrgian bonnet, the one Liberty wears in the famous Delacroix painting. There’s a “We might cut your head off” edginess to the phryges that is wonderfully at odds with their “immaculate smiles” and “big blue eyes that end in [revolutionary] rosettes”, as Radio France has described them. I have never seen more cheerful hats.
France is united in seeing them differently: with their “curved protuberance at the front” (Radio France again), social media is convinced they look like giant clitorises. Admittedly, a composite image of French judo champion Teddy Riner with a phryge compounds this impression. The pair of them look distinctly … post-coital? The cartoon phryge, flaunting its curved protuberance, has its tongue poking out and is sweating; Riner appears to be tenderly cupping one of its little feet. They both look very happy: the heart has its reasons, as Pascal said.
Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
