Change the lyrics by Tamara Bafi

Je l'aimais tant que pour la garder je l'ai tuée 

Pour qu'un grand amour vive toujours 

Il faut qu'il meure, qu'il meure d'amour 

I loved her so much so to keep her; I killed her. 

Because for a great love to last forever, 

It must die, it must to die of love 

Johnny Hallyday’s Requiem pour un Fou (Requiem for a Madman), blared on the car radio. I hummed along, vaguely recognizing this hit song from cafés and restaurants and sighed in bliss as the orchestra completed the tune with a romantic ending. Like so many of my compatriots, I embraced this song which topped the French singles chart. 

While the last ethereal strokes of the violin bows faded away, a light bulb popped in my head. As an avid singer who regularly performs at pensioners’ homes, I thought that at my next concert, I could interpret Requiem pour un fou. So I pulled up my phone and scrolled through the lyrics in an attempt to cement them into my brain. The words “je l’ai tuée” jumped out of the screen. My eyes bulged. Tuée? I discovered that my beloved song was essentially romanticizing a femicide. 

Crossing the Seine, we passed the “Pont des Arts” bridge, to which lovers attach padlocks. But France’s culture of love can’t be summed up with heart-shaped macaroons. I realized I had swallowed the popular romantic image of France as the ‘country of romance’. But if songs like Requiem pour un fou still play on the radio, what type of ‘love’ is ingrained into French minds? 

Because boys aren’t born predators. Some just struggle to winnow the seeds that society offers. In the minds of some, insidious seeds, such as that of toxic masculinity, sprout into plants, and when they do they bear poisonous fruits. Indeed, sexual and domestic abuse, which can culminate in Requiem pour un fou-type endings, plague our society, scarring bodies and minds. Trauma caused by aggression is an invisible hand which slowly chokes. Feelings of guilt plague the victim, yet not the aggressor. According to France’s government website Arretons Les Violences (Let’s Stop Violence), over 100 femicides are committed each year. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. It doesn’t include the 213,000 women who are victims of domestic and/or sexual abuse by their partner or ex-partner each year. Nor does it acknowledge that only 18 percent of victims report the abuse to the police. 

These figures indicate that there is still a significant amount of work to be done. But in order to reduce the abuse women suffer, we must begin by rejecting some aspects of French culture. We must move past obliviously playing songs which romanticize femicides on national radio, past telling girls that if boys bother them, ‘it’s because they like you’ and boys that if girls say ‘no’ it means ‘yes’. Because the bitter taste of coffee becomes imperceptible if we start with little sips. The same can be said for the misogyny which lurks in the shadows of our revered culture of ‘Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité’. When we blindly watch women receive lower salaries than their male counterparts, we sip. When we callously touch on sexism in jokes, we sip. When we deafly listen to derogatory songs about women, we sip. What we must do is spit it out. We must spit out attempts to normalize prejudice, hatred and violence towards women. Let us begin by rejecting any twisted notion of ‘love’. No one should “meurt d’amour”. However much sugar-coated it may be… spit it out. 

So what is the biggest challenge facing women and girls in my country today? It is changing society so that ‘Liberté’ from fear and aggression, ‘Egalité’ of opportunity, and ‘Fraternité’ of support is true for women. As the final verse came to an end, I didn't sing “qu'il meure d'amour”. Instead, I changed the lyrics to “on vit d’amour”. The following week, I performed it for the pensioners, feeling fortunate to be part of a country where I can sing my mind against injustices. I feel obligated to pick up a pencil to fight for women who cannot. Pencils are powerful weapons. Powerful enough to protest, to point out the insidious poison in our culture. Powerful enough to present an alternative. Powerful enough to change and write the lyrics today for the world to memorize tomorrow.