“No, No, No! That was unacceptable!” A friend entered my apartment in a hurry and loudly arguing against the Varoufakis Photo shooting for French live style magazine Paris Match. A series of nicely set pictures At Home with Varoufakis, showing Greece’s impressive and imposing Finance Minister strumming on the home piano [no sound available, though :(], reading a book, eating fish on the home terrace, drinking wine form home glasses. Yanis Varoufakis alone or next to his wife, opposite to his wife, in the arms of his wife or holding his wife.
“What did he want to demonstrate? No, no, no…” my friend keeps on lashing out as she sits at the kitchen table and I pour water into the coffee machine. “And the pictures with Danai? Holding her up with his arms?!!!”…
Parenthesis ON: My friend is a loyal Syriza-supporter and that she has been voting for the left all her voting life. In good old manner of the progressive forces, my middle-class friend calls all women of the progressive forces of the left by their first names – even if she never met her in her life. In this mindset of progressive, cultivated women of the left, Varoufakis partner in life Danai Stratou is “Danai“, as the Minister for Migration Tasia Christodoulopouou is just “Tasia” and so on. Parenthesis OFF
“At her age in a mini dress?” my friend keeps hitting out and obviously scandalized she adds: “I couldn’t believe what I saw this morning on the internet,” “What was the purpose of such photo shooting? Is he the minister of a life-style country?”
I have to stress here that all my between interventions in defense of the photo shooting were in vain. I told her that also Christine Lagarde had a life style photo shooting, I told her that I personally saw no problem even though it didn’t fit exactly with my aesthetic, I even asked her whether the Finance Minister had to live in a carton box outside the ministry… Nothing helped. Until I said the crucial words:
“The green floral dress does not match with the black pumps! For me, that’s what is unacceptable!”
This sat! My friend lost her voice, closed her mouth and looked at me with eyes wide open. “No, eh? But, of course!” she added sharply and started murmuring “…black pumps with floral dress…”
“Of course, not!” I said. “She [Danai] had to match the dress with nude pumps or even better with sandals or something light, with one color of the brighter colors of her dress. But not with black, winter pumps when the atmosphere is spring-like.”
As consequence to my remarks, we started to chat about Danai’s looks: her face, her hair -length, volume and cut-style-, her body shape, her legs… till my friend’s glance felt at a newspaper left on a chair from I don’t know which Sunday. She said in a disapproving tone: “What? She [Danai] drives a motorbike?”
My friend is not alone with her personal or political frustration and her negative stance towards the stylish happy couple in Paris Match. Hundreds if no thousands of people shared her plight on this rainy Friday.
Greek fin min @yanisvaroufakis & wife in glam photoshoot for Paris Match. Not seen my Facebook timeline so angry pic.twitter.com/YGaWk4nsno
— Matina Stevis (@MatinaStevis) March 13, 2015
I think people are angry bc it's seen as inappropriate given the circumstances. U can be a Syriza supporter & still see that @Inflammatory_
— Matina Stevis (@MatinaStevis) March 13, 2015
The social media are full of disapproving and even mocking comments posted not only posted by Greeks, no matter if pro- or anti-Syriza.
After #ParisMatch photos, #Greece FinMin @yanisvaroufakis should provide Hello! mag with exclusive #Eurogroup & @ECB material
— Menelaos Tzafalias (@tzaf) March 13, 2015
2 χρόνια περαιτέρω δυστυχίας ενός λαού για 2 μήνες παγκόσμιας δημοσιότητας ωραιοπαθών λαϊκιστών #parismatch #Greece pic.twitter.com/Ae7lVr7eKK
— Michalis Sophocleous (@MichalisTweets) March 13, 2015
Also foreigners were creative with ironic comments.
Schaeuble, Osborne, Sapin eat yr hearts out RT @lecho: photos de @yanisvaroufakis #parismatch
http://t.co/ZUxBLn7LbE pic.twitter.com/W4QxMf4HiM
— Andrew Marshall (@Andrew_Marshall) March 13, 2015
At the end of the glam & glossy drama, we all agree: we did not like the Varoufakis-Danai photo shooting. No matter what our motives are.
more Paris Match pictures here
Did anyone of the angry people actually READ the interview?
Do they usually read Paris Match?
Was it so much better when Greek ministers were photographed wasting money by breaking plates and destroying flowers at bouzouki-night clubs?
P.S. btw the interview was interesting and had a bit of news:
“I accepted their offer (to work for free for the Greek Government) because the teams of Lazard were part of the previous, bad agreement so they know it better than anyone. They know where the skeletons are buried…” That would be nice to find out.
P.S.2 I actually like the black pumps with the floral dress, but lighting at the shooting was lousy.
nobody read the interview, it went under the lousy shooting light.
Well, the Varoufakises try to keep up with the Kammenoses.
Which is hard enough. I mean: a yacht and a hotel (EU funded) – difficult, n’est pas?
Some Europeans might call them hypocrits, some might call them populists or even extremists.
You guys call them your government. And stand up for them. Isn’t that ironic?
Btw: now I understand the term “Erratic Marxist”
I believe that the people who got angry at these photos would have enjoyed if the greek FM was starving and shivering in the freezing cold. That would certainly touch them and they would say “oh, poor Greeks, we’ve got to help them.”
Some people really appreciate when the others are starving, so they can use their fabulous heart to practice charity. Were there no poor people, how would they organize their charity tea parties??
funny you mention that… mainstream media companies here that have been supporting 150% the Memoranda + strict austerity (for the others) have been organizing charity rallies all of the time.
The more I follow Varoufakis, the more I get the impression that he has no idea how politics work and I don’t mean that as a stab at Greece or her government. Rather he strikes me like an intellectual who bumbles from one political fiasko into another(at least from my point of view), which is not supposed to say that he isn’t a good economist, he might be, but he certainly is no politican. Before anyone says:”that’s good”, please think about this statement for a moment. You would rather have a good economist who can’t get things done due to his lack of political training, than someone who has an economic advisor, or several and who actually knows how politics are played?
Think Ned Stark versus Littlefinger, sure we all like Ned more but if it comes to politics I would rather have Littlefinger working for me and some sort of ensurance to secure his coorparation, but I digress.
Let’s see how the V handles this.
Green eyes! Green eyes!
I hope Yanis made his wife’s day by appearing with her in a glossy magazine. I’ll bet 99.9% of the critics would have taken that opportunity in a heartbeat if they were given the chance.
“He that is jealous is not in love” — St Augustine
See – how dare that the other Fin Mins expecting Yannis to take time showing up with a proper “list” when they meet.
This man has bigger fish to fry folks 😉
I love that he is reading his own book in the photo shoot – wonder if he dedicated it to himself 🙂
Leave them alone. They don’t deserve this gossipy nonsense.
Yap, yap, yap. All day long. Enough with the verbal diarrhea. 🙂
Regardless of who’s paying for these luxuries it’s insensitive of him to do this. If he were a real servant of the people he would refrain from the good life until every Greek’s standard of living were restored to above poverty levels by a large margin.
Actually I wonder WHEN those photos were taken, since both have summer tans, bare arms! Since when has it been warm enough here for that? Also Danae’s hair is shorter now and browner. Strange! I wonder if these are OLD photos….
Greece is in crisis & the European Union is destitute & we care that Yannis Varoufakis & partner get their photo took ?
In fact it is a good thing –
The higher the profile one has in the global arena –
The better known they are –
The more influence they seem to have –
It is called networking – playing to the masses – thing like that.
So the man eats real food & not plastic substitutes – wow !
I would rather see him showing what he has than the other slimy snakes (ND & PASOK) hiding it from the public eye. Those that don’t like it can bitch all they like. It does not change what he is doing for the government and this country. Also the comment that he is not a politician but rather an economist doesn’t bother me as all I have seen from politicians in this world are a bunch of corrupt traitors that were prepared to sell out their countrymen like whores to the highest bidder. Traitors should be called out and dealt with accordingly and that in my book is either the hangman’s noose or the firing squad.
I like the Show, only the timing is wrong