Harper’s Baazar Australia :
Emmanuel Macron, the newly-elected President of France and the youngest in its history, has spoken out against media outlets that have focused more on his relationship with his wife, Brigitte Macron, over his politics. Throughout Macron’s presidential campaign there has been much written about his marriage, as Brigitte is 24 years his senior. (He is 39; she is 64.) The way they got together has also been a point of fascination because they met when Macron was a 15-year-old student, and Brigitte was his drama teacher. Speaking to Le Parisien newspaper, Macron said no one would be focusing on his marriage if the tables were turned; if he was decades older than his wife. “If I had been 20 years older than my wife, nobody would have thought for a single second that I couldn’t be [an intimate partner],” he said to the paper. “It’s because she is 20 years older than me that lots of people say, ‘This [relationship] can’t be tenable, it can’t be possible.” (As an example, U.S. President Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, have the same age gap.) Macron, who beat Front National candidate Marine Le Pen with 66.1 per cent of the vote earlier this week, also addressed rumours about his sexuality. In response to reports he is gay, Macron said “rampant homophobia” had become an issue, because the way people wrote about his sexuality implied it was a “stain” or a “hidden disease” to be gay.
In the lead-up to winning the election, Macron credited his wife, who has three children from a previous relationship, for helping him throughout his campaign, and said she would play a big role in shaping his politics. “If I am elected-no, sorry, when we are elected-she will be there, with a role and a place,” he told Vanity Fair in a pre-election interview. “She will have an existence, she will have a voice there, a view on things. She will be at my side, as she has always been, but she will also have a public role.”
He has reportedly offered her a staff, a budget and responsibilities, but no salary.
