Simone de Beauvoir's Bio
All the deets on your favorite critic's personal life.
Basic Information
| Name | Simone de Beauvoir |
| Tagline | "Being the second sex is a challenge. Bring it on, baby." |
| Nickname | "Castor" (that's French for beaver because I work as hard as that determined little semi-aquatic rodent), Mother of French Feminism, Midwife of Existentialism |
| Sex | Second (a.k.a. female) |
| Home town | I was born in Paris, where all great intellectuals are born. |
Work & Education
| Occupation | I was a high school teacher in Marseilles—until I got an underage student in the sack and was unceremoniously fired (my bad). What a mess. The hours weren't great anyway, so I've committed myself to writing novels, conjuring up revolutionary feminist ideas, and smoking an insane number of cigarettes. Oh, and cooking for JP. |
| Education | Only the best will do. I studied math at the Institut Catholique and literature and languages at the Institut Sainte-Marie. Then I took on philosophy at the Sorbonne, writing my thesis on Leibniz (big time German mathematician and philosopher). I then attended courses at the École Normale Supérieure getting prepared for the agrégation in philosophy. That's fiercely competitive postgraduate examination that makes the SAT look like connect the dots. At 21, I became the youngest person ever to get a pass on that exam. Snap. |
Beliefs
| Political views | Anti-colonialist (France out of Algiers now!); pro-abortionist; socialist with Marxist sympathies |
| Religious views | My mother, Françoise, was wildly god-fearing, so she sent me and my sister to a fancy Catholic convent school. For a long time, I was really in a groove with God, and even thought I'd be a nun. Then I had a predicament of sorts at age 14—I'll spare you the details—and from then on it was atheism for me. |
Activities & Interests
| Likes | Legal birth control and legal abortion Men, women, and a good ménages-à-trois now and again (all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, as they say!) Radical freedom Transcendence Women's Liberation Absolute Freedom Fashion magazines Riding my bike |
| Dislikes | Children Domination—racism, colonialism, haters of all kind Bourgeois constructs of all sorts—esp. the institution of marriage Reductive thinking and stereotyping, i.e., "the eternal feminine," "the black soul," "the Jewish character" Myths Patriarchy Broken teeth |
| Interests | Travel Reading women writers (love George Eliot) Working Shopping Loving Politics |
| Groups | Marxists Existentialists Feminists who also Happen to be Hot Teachers who have Dated Their Students Women Intellectuals Who Haven't Gotten Enough Credit |