December 30, 2025 07:30 AM IST First published on: Dec 30, 2025 at 06:33 AM ISTWith her tousled hair and smoky eyes, Brigitte Bardot arrived like a rupture in the moral conservatism of the French film industry of the 1950s. Her debut film And God Created Woman (1956) tanked at the box office but it changed post-war entertainment by its assertion of an unapologetic womanhood that was more assertive of its sexuality than ever before. Bardot, who died on Sunday at 91, became the face of this change, embodying a modernity that critics and audiences strained to interpret even as they consumed it. Her films, though never critically acclaimed, challenged what French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir called the “tyranny of the patriarchal gaze”, turning Bardot into both archetype and anomaly.The arc of Bardot’s life was defined by the choices she made. In 1973, at the height of her fame, she walked away from films, choosing animal-rights activism in its place. The Brigitte Bardot Foundation fought against bullfighting and wolf hunting, industrial farming and seal hunting with a devotion that was uncompromising. Bardot brought this abrasiveness to many of her socio-political stances. Her disdain for the #MeToo movement and support for actor Gerard Depardieu, found guilty of sexual assault during a film shoot in 2021, her active support of Marine Le Pen and her far-right politics, her controversial views on immigration and multiple convictions for inciting racial hatred reveal a figure for whom there can be no easy classification.AdvertisementIt is this refusal to be resolved into neat boxes that secures Bardot’s place in cultural memory. Bardot did not lead a model life but in its contradictions and unresolved tensions, she held up a reminder that originality is rarely tidy.