Badger-Men Assault: Can Women Secure a Role in Southern France’s Violent, Wine‑Soaked Carnivals?

In the early afternoon of Ash Wednesday, ominous figures dressed in white roam the lanes of the medieval southern‑French village of Cournonterral. They wear long masks made of black badger hair, top hats tipped with feathers and sprigs of boxwood, and armor fashioned from sacks filled with straw. Though the day has just begun, some stumble under the influence of drink, their hands gripping whips of hessian sackcloth.

These intimidating characters are all men – the only women taking part in the traditional celebrations today are their targets. Among the “blancs”, also clothed in white but bearing only red ribbons in their hair and around their waists, a handful of teenage girls appear in heavy makeup.

The Pailhasses festival is one of France’s oldest carnival customs. Born from a centuries‑old rivalry with a neighbouring hamlet, it has for more than seven hundred years allowed locals to vent frustrations before Lent. Its rites centre on strength, pursuit and a kind of assault, and the event is famously secretive. Cameras and smartphones are prohibited; the village’s official site notes that spectators are not invited.

Behind the façade, however, modern influences clash with tradition as women seek a larger presence in the visible part of the carnival – beyond preparing food, stitching costumes or handling logistics. Whether this shift can occur depends partly on how a community balances preservation with change.

In Cournonterral, the church bell tolls three, signalling the start of the festivities. The Pailhasses carnival originated from a dispute: villagers from Cournonterral habitually pilfered timber from the forests of Aumelas, sparking conflict until, in 1346, the seigneur appointed a local official named Pailhas to restore peace, and the Pailhasses became the climax of a pre‑Lenten carnival week.

The badger‑masked men dip their whips in vats of violet wine lees and animal hair, then, silent and sightless, chase the blancs through narrow streets, lashing them until the victims are stained purple. Screams mix with laughter. The whippers and the chased are chiefly young people, and the event is described as both a rite of passage and a twisted form of flirtation among village youth.

“Following broader social changes in the 1970s and 1980s, women were permitted to join the street as blancs rather than remain at home as they had for centuries,” explains Corinne Lamarche, an anthropologist who has studied the carnival. “Children were also given a more prominent role.”

That is the extent of the shift in women’s participation. Elsa, 26, grew up in the village but now lives in nearby Montpellier. She loved the celebration as a child but no longer takes part. “No one from the old village dares to propose alterations, but perhaps it could benefit from evolution. The prevailing belief is that any woman who tries to wield a whip would be stripped to her underwear in the square.”

A deeper conservatism and elitism underpins the resistance. It is not merely a question of gender, but of preserving a tightly guarded communal identity.