Phrygian around: Paris is awash with Olympic paraphernalia | Pamela Druckerman

The official mascot of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games is a triangular red hat with eyes and sneakers, called the Phryge (pronounced a bit like “fridge”). It’s based on the “Phrygian cap” worn by Marianne, France’s bare-breasted version of Uncle Sam, and a symbol of freedom and the French Revolution. (The Paralympics Phryge has a prosthetic leg).

But it also looks a lot like a 3D model of the clitoris.

Was the Phryge – which gives “ concrete form to the Olympic spirit ” – meant to be a doppelganger for the female pleasure centre? Joachim Roncin, the head of design for Paris 2024, said the resemblance wasn’t deliberate but it’s welcome. “If people see a clitoris, if they know how to recognise a clitoris, all the better for them.” (I like to imagine a roomful of designers saying: “I’m just drawn to this shape, I don’t know why.”)

Commentators, many of them men, weighed in positively when the Phryges were unveiled in 2022. “It is not unpleasant for Paris to break from its eternally phallic Eiffel Tower,” one wrote in Libération newspaper. (The baguette and le coq had been ruled out .) Radio host Guillaume Erner hailed the mascots as a boon for women’s sports and “excellent news for female pleasure”. (“I’m not just saying this to be able to say the word ‘clitoris’ on the radio,” he insisted.)

The Phryge’s motto is too good to be true: “Alone we go faster, but together we go further”, representing how “the mascots, and people of the world, can make each other better by working side-by-side”.

Now that the Games have launched, Phryges are ubiquitous: on hats and posters, as plush toys, and playing basketball in an official animation . Lauralee Lightwood-Mater, a birth doula visiting Paris from Pennsylvania, couldn’t believe her luck. “A clitoris water bottle? Yes please. Stay hydrated!” she said on Instagram .

Vive la France. Et vive la Phryge.

Macron’s sales pitch

I must have had merch on my mind last week, since when I entered the Elysée Palace I was drawn to the tables selling Elysée branded soap, cookies, key chains and passport covers.

Initially, I was dubious about the first couple hawking Présidence de la République tote bags in their foyer. Then a cute salesman in a tight bleu-blanc-rouge T-shirt explained that proceeds go toward the building’s upkeep, taking pressure off taxpayers.

I was there for President Emmanuel Macron’s pre-Olympics press conference. He emerged blazing with the confidence of someone with more than a 30% approval rating . Speaking in English, he said that holding the opening ceremonies on the Seine once seemed to be “a crazy and not very serious idea”. He enthused about the Olympic Village in Seine-Saint-Denis – France’s poorest department – which will convert into 3,000 homes.

Then the doors to the garden opened, and platters of French cheeses, meats and macarons emerged. On my way out, I considered buying the €12 Elysée snow globe, but took a commemorative selfie instead.

What a carry on

You can tell a lot about a city by who carries its Olympic torch. When la Flamme reached Paris on 14 July – after having attended the Cannes film festival, surfed off Finistère and climbed the Alps – it spent two days touring the capital.

The French-Moroccan comedian Jamel Debbouze took it through Barbès, the working-class neighborhood where he was born; and Holocaust survivor Léon Placek teamed up with kickboxing champion Kajali Susso to lead it through the Mémorial de la Shoah.

Other torch-bearers included Ludovic Franceschet , a refuse collector whose Instagram videos teach Parisians about trash; and the drag queen Minima Gesté , who champions LGBTQIA+ rights.

My favorite moment was when the choreographer Marie-Claude Pietragalla danced with the flame inside the Louvre, opposite Eugène Delacroix’s 1830 painting Liberty Leading the People . In it, a bare-breasted woman sports the red cap.

• Pamela Druckerman is an author and journalist living in Paris

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