L' envie

The novelist and fashion writer with French Elle magazine has penned an autobiographical tale of her renunciation of sex and the death of the desire that typically precedes the physical act. In a country that prides itself on the status of the French lover - or "hot rabbits", as sexually "adventurous" politicians are often described - Fontanel's declaration is akin to heresy. Complaining that she has had enough of being "taken and shaken" the well-known writer, stylish, sexy and 49, is no longer ashamed to say she wants to get off the sexual merry-go-round. Repulsed by the "banality" of sex and having forgotten how to say no, Fontanel found freedom, if not pleasure, in forsaking love-making altogether.