polyandry

Learn somethin’ new every day!

Definition of polyandry:
“A practice in which women have two or more husbands at the same time. A rare form of polygamy, polyandry is practiced by only a few cultures.” (answers.com).

Where I ran across it:
Maureen Dowd’s 6/22/08 NYT op-ed piece, “The Carla Effect,” about Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the new wife of French President Sarkozy.

“…If an American first lady, or would-be first lady, described herself as a “tamer of men” and had a “man-eating” past filled with naked pictures, Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, sultry prone CD covers, breaking up marriages, bragging that she believes in polygamy and polyandry rather than monogamy, and having a son with a married philosopher whose father she had had an affair with, it would take more than an appearance on “The View” to sweeten her image.…”

My two cents:
I’ll admit it. I lead a sheltered life. Never occurred to me that polygamy would have a specialized subset.

Pretty fun are Maureen Dowd’s clever observations of the free-wheeling French and how they not only accept, but champion their President's new wife and her off-beat, personal proclivities.

And despite the fact that proper Americans would call her bio outrageously politically incorrect, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is sharp, intelligent, and capable -- traits she skillfully demonstrated recently, “sitting next to the American president and keeping him entertained with a spirited conversation in English, one of her three languages and sort of his one language.”

Gotta love it. Vive la France.