Paris Olympic games mascot compared to ‘clitoris’ in sneakers by critics

These characters have really hit the sweet spot.

Snarky French critics have declared that each of the newly unveiled Paris Olympic mascots looks like a giant “clitoris” in sneakers — with one French publication even declaring that that’s good news.

The red triangle-shaped mascots for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic games in Paris are supposed to resemble a traditional Phrygian hat worn in the French Revolution. But online wags have started using the term “clitoris in trainers” to describe the delta-shaped characters, according to the Guardian.

The “Phryges” have even been compared to a giant inflatable clitoris that was displayed near the Eiffel Tower on International Women’s Day by a group advocating for education and research on the female erogenous organ, according to the paper.

A columnist with the French-language newspaper Liberation jokingly praised the resemblance, saying it was “good news” and a welcome departure from the country’s normal phallic symbolism of the Eiffel Tower.

“By the dint of books, testimonials, documentaries, articles, videos on the taboo of the clitoris, it seems that collectively we have finally understood what it looks like beyond feminist circles,” Quentin Girard wrote in the paper, according to a rough translation.

“It was enough to read the many reactions of Internet users of all stripes, and in particular of dissatisfied conservative men, to observe that, even they know how to recognize it (almost).”

The Phryges were unveiled in a news conference Monday, with Paris 2024 president Tony Estanguet quoted as saying “we chose an ideal rather than an animal.”

“We chose the Phrygian cap because it’s a very strong symbol for the French Republic,” he said, according to a news release. “For French people, it’s a very well-known object that is a symbol of freedom, an object that will represent mascots across the world.”

The 2024 Olympic logo, meanwhile, has been roasted on social media for looking like a “Karen” meme — a white woman with short hair who “needs to speak to the manager.”