Images: Marta Español photographed by Santiago Esteban for Elle Russia, February 2011

Note | Nudity Emmanuelle Alt, new editor-in-chief of Vogue Paris talked to Vogue US about her plans for the publication.

“More French girls, more French lifestyle… . I always want a relationship with reality: nothing too sexy or provocative or fashion victim. Even I love to dream, I want the magazine to feature a girl who looks like she belongs in real life. We are French — we can show smoking, nudity. We have no boundaries, and it can be good to have them.”

I agree with Alt about the importance of boundaries, especially in today’s global world. BUT, I hope that she doesn’t shy away from the nudity too often, because the French are leaders in teaching women to love our physicality in an individualistic way.

The religious battle over women’s bodies is gearing up as never before and western women are being damned. While the Vatican investigates American nuns for being too permissive, Congress debates a new abortion-health care provision that will allow American women entitled to a legal abortion to die in an emergency ward, if the hospital or physician doesn’t want to perform an abortion.

Once she does die, you can rest assured that s(he) will do everything possible medically to save the life of the fetus of the now dead mother. If this isn’t a supreme example of the body politics now surrounding an American woman, I don’t know what to say.

We just posted the NYTimes Baghdad story featuring four fully-clothed Western women in a window:

“Whoever fills his eyes with the forbidden, on judgment day God will fill them with fire.”

Having spent endless time in France in my career, I know that French women are among the most well-balanced creatures on the planet. With significant freedoms and only a spiritual attachment to religion, French women are leaders in international women’s rights activism.

Because she’s less defined in her own head by patriarchal forces as American women are, French women are freer to follow their own paths.

In writing these words, I don’t dismiss the challenges that French women still have. But I feel strongly that they must push the body politics issues forward against the growing religious forces that are determined to control women’s bodies permanently.

In all my years in France, I had only one interesting espisode that was a bit shocking in a country with so much sexual freedom. The vast majority of French women are discreet and already exhibit significant restraint in their relationships with sex, food and everyday life.

I love Carine Roitfeld, because I know we are fighting the same battle for a positive sexuality.

Vogue Paris has been a beacon of hope for thinking women, and I pray that it becomes even stronger in communicating the lifestyle of Smart Sensuality women who are sexy, intelligent, spiritual and at peace with our bodies, embracing a positive sensuality from food to flowers and yes, sexuality, too.

New Anne@Benjamin Kanarek Blog, a review of Ammenuelle Alt’s April 2011 issue