Hamilton, like many educational consultants, spends several months a year visiting schools, interviewing students and administrators, and separating wheat from chaff. In fact it’s part of the job. In order to become — and remain — a member of the Independent Educational Consultants Association (IECA), educational consultants must maintain certain professional standards, including visiting an initial 100 school programs, and 20 to 30 new ones every year thereafter.

According to Mark Sklarow, executive director of the IECA, in the past educational consultants were hired by wealthy parents to find the right prep school for their child. Today, however, most wealthy kids are already attending private schools where they enjoy a counselor-student ratio of 1 to 10. (In such environments, counselors often have networks of educational consultants and/or are apprised of what’s on the market.)

Middle-class kids in public schools, on the other hand, are dealing with overwhelmed, overburdened and overworked school counselors who can barely put out daily fires, let alone screen the rapidly proliferating number of specialty schools. As a result, educational consultants have evolved from being a predominantly white, upper-middle-class privilege to a middle-class phenomenon.

Fees for this new breed of consultant vary. Some charge $50 to $150 per hour, rates similar to those of a family therapist, depending on whether you live in Little Rock or L.A. Many, however, prefer to work on a retainer (fees range from $1,000 to $2,500) and track the course of a teen’s progress throughout his or her enrollment.

To ensure that consultants aren’t getting kickbacks from schools, the IECA requires that all members sign a binding “ethics pledge.” “There are people out there,” warns Sklarow, “who position themselves as educational consultants but are, in fact, recruiters or marketers for a particular school or group of schools.” Sklarow also warns against overly enthusiastic parents who become ad hoc educational consultants after their children have successfully graduated from specialty schools. In order to maintain a certain level of objectivity and professionalism, Sklarow says, these parents “need to get past the crusade stage.”

While Sklarow admits that placing a child in the wrong specialty school can have dire results, he says that so far educational consultants have been relatively successful in finding the appropriate schools for teens and their parents. That said, no formal studies on the success rate of educational consultants exist to back up that claim.

Of the hundreds of educational consultants around the country only one-third specialize in high-risk teens. Intrepid parents willing to trek through the market clutter will find more about educational consultants at www.strugglingteens.com.

It is hard not to be charmed by Toscani, though it is easy to see why many people are not. Labeled by many the “bad boy of advertising,” he is opinionated, irreverent, sometimes bombastic and often contradictory. I, for one, was never particularly moved by Toscani’s work for Benetton — the multicolored condoms, the horses mating, the newborn babies — until the early ’90s, when a campaign featured dying AIDS patient David Kirby.

Kirby’s completely ravaged, emaciated body surrounded by hefty, fleshy, grieving relatives was almost medieval in its pathos, and yet it had the slightly stiff, theatrical quality of figures in a wax museum. (Which is why, at first glance, I wasn’t sure if the image was even real.) Once I noticed Benetton’s little green rectangular logo floating discreetly on the bottom of the billboard, I thought, Oh, this is advertising. Or is it? What exactly is Benetton doing here? Selling knitwear? Is Toscani waging a social crusade or has he simply found the perfect shock-value advertising strategy to bolster Benetton’s corporate brand identity? Is he exploiting the sick and the dying or is he legitimately increasing public awareness of critical social issues?

These questions have underscored all of Toscani’s subsequent campaigns, inciting fresh outrage along the way. And there is no one simple answer. For every person who detests Toscani there is another who admires his work.

“Toscani is on another planet. I think his work is sick and unhealthy,” says Dominique Anginot, a photographer and president of Lux Modernis, a French advertising company. “I understand the combat he’s leading here with these types of images, and I appreciate his iconoclasm, but what’s sick here is marrying these high-impact social images with futile consumer products, like sweaters. It’s disrespectful of the public. Joel Peter Witkin (another famous photographer) does extremely disturbing photos of images made with cadavers and body parts, but he’s not defending any moral or mercantile code. Toscani is doing both, and that’s dishonest.”

Others are not so dismissive. Many have applauded (and awarded) Toscani’s work and do not see a contradiction in mixing social activism or commentary with advertising. In an industry where selling your soul to peddle product is par for the course, Toscani has had the good fortune of being able to communicate in ways unthinkable to a traditional multinational corporation. (Could we imagine, for example, Procter & Gamble using starving African babies in its Pampers advertising?)

Thanks to Benetton’s owner, Luciano Benetton, Toscani (who is a photographer, not an advertising executive) was given carte blanche to use the company’s advertising platform as his canvas. And since Toscani is concerned that we are moving farther and perilously away from reality, it is no surprise that reality features prominently, if not exclusively, in his work. Human heart, war, the bloodstained shirt of a dead Slavic soldier — Toscani presents life with no holds barred.

His magazine, Colors, which is published in seven editions and eight languages, is essentially a compendium of hardcore, in-your-face reality with no advertising and little if any commentary — just the stark reality of a world many of us do not want to acknowledge, let alone live in.

Curiously, the more Toscani’s work has strayed from the product being sold and assaulted us with reality, the more controversy it has stirred up. Toscani is seemingly indifferent to all this, particularly when it comes to his detractors. “I don’t care about rejection,” he says. “Actually, it’s a big honor.”

If this is true, then Toscani is basking in the glory of his latest controversy, which has elicited widespread and aggressive rejection: Twenty-six-year-old death-row inmate Jeremy Sheets stares out from billboards with a look both placid and disturbing. His impending execution might have gone unnoticed were it not for Toscani, who has immortalized Sheets and several other death-row inmates in his latest Benetton campaign. Among other things, the campaign has resulted in complex legal battles and the loss of Sears as a Benetton client. “Pft,” says Toscani about the latter, waving his hand dismissively. At one moment he seems fashionably apathetic; at other times he passionately defends the issues at stake in his campaigns.

After spending time with Toscani, my impression is that he is very comfortable with the seeming contradictions in his nature; as far as provocation is concerned, it has always been part of his palette. In the late ’60s and ’70s he was hanging out with Andy Warhol. He has worked for and/or remains friends with people who have married commercial fortune with social activism, including Doug Tompkins, the co-founder of Esprit, who sold his fashion empire to create a vast self-sustaining “eco-retreat” in Chile to save the rain forests. Nearly 20 years ago his work for Jesus Jeans (notably an ad of his then girlfriend sticking her butt in the camera) prompted important Italian social critics to write prolifically about Toscani and his position on sex, advertising and the Roman Catholic Church. Given Toscani’s personal orientation and nature, one can only imagine that if he hadn’t met Mr. Benetton, he would have invented him.

But all this doesn’t explain why so many people are so concerned about Toscani’s work. His mixing of problematic social issues with advertising may be in deeply questionable taste, but does that mean that we should prefer the warm-and-fuzzy advertising of seriously scary multinationals like, say, Monsanto?

In the end, Toscani’s work may be a form of cynicism, or it may be a vehicle for stirring up debate around social issues. Or it may be both. Lillian Hellman once said: “Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.” Toscani would most likely agree.

What prompted you to develop the death-row campaign?

I always asked myself, “How can a civilized country still have such a procedure?” I find it ridiculous. It’s not a question of being American or Italian or German. It’s just a question of being civilized.

What do you say to people who feel you’ve emphasized the humanity of death-row inmates at the expense of their victims and the victims’ families?

I say, is it bad to do that? Is that a solution — to take away humanity, to kill people? Is that human? I don’t see how people can support coldblooded execution. I don’t think that’s human.

You’ve also been criticized for using advertising as a platform for communicating a certain morality while increasing Benetton’s bottom line.

Anything you do, even if you write a song — you can write an engaged and concerned song and sell a lot of records. That happens, right? A lot of American folk singers did that. They made some incredible songs and they became millionaires. And I don’t care if they became millionaires. I like their songs. I don’t want to make the world better. I’m just trying to make good songs.

And yet Benetton is one of the few companies that take these kinds of advertising risks.

For me it’s just normal. That’s the way I think, that’s the way I live, that’s the way I function. I’m very privileged and very lucky to be able to live the way I live, and work the way I work. I’m one of the few, I know. So somehow I feel compelled to do what I do because that’s my way of being.

But aren’t you exploiting social issues to increase Benetton’s brand recognition? Isn’t there a contradiction here or at least a problematic relationship?

Listen, a doctor who works with cancer, an oncologist — does he exploit cancer? He’s a rich man because he’s a doctor. But do you think when he sees a patient he rejoices and says, “Ah, finally here’s somebody with cancer?” Or Frank Gehry the architect, when he’s doing a building for Coca-Cola — do people ask him if he’s doing this beautiful building so that Coca-Cola will sell more? Is he exploiting Coca-Cola to do architecture? I think this is a very old way of thinking. I’m exploiting, yes, and I want to exploit in the right way.

When Life magazine makes a cover about war, it makes the cover to inform, but also to sell the magazine and to sell the advertising pages inside the magazine — Chivas Regal and all the others. So Time magazine and all the others make a cover to inform and to sell. To do what I do, I do that to sell but also to inform. And as soon as you inform, people point a finger at you and say, “You are exploiting!” No. It’s the people who don’t even inform [who are exploiting]. It’s Prada bullshit, or Gap bullshit, or Chanel. They don’t even inform. They make people stupid. I don’t care about the rejection; I’m not afraid to be rejected. Actually, it’s a big honor in this world.

You once said that death is the last pornographic issue. Can you explain?

Death is not something we deal with in a relaxed way. Like sex — why is sex pornographic? Sex is not pornographic at all. We just don’t deal with sex in a relaxed way. Anything we don’t deal with in a relaxed way is pornographic. War is pornographic. War is one of the most pornographic human activities that exist.

Americans don’t give a fuck about death. Nobody talks about death. Everybody’s immortal there, especially in advertising. Everyone is beautiful, young, sexy. Everyone wants to have a one-hour orgasm. There is a way now to have a one-hour orgasm. Can you imagine? What a bore! What’s the point?

But you’ve spent a great deal of time in America.

Oh, yes, this is my country. And this is the place, because you can say anything you want in America. There is the worst, but there is also the best, in America. When Europeans talk about America it makes me laugh. They don’t know. America is anything you can say, do, be … There are the dumbest but also the most intelligent people in America. Americans are great because they get so mad, they get so passionate.

Do you like working for Tina Brown? [Toscani is creative director for Brown's Talk magazine.]

I love it. You know, they say that I’m a male chauvinist. I’m working with one of the most difficult women in the world and we get along fantastically. Great woman. Great woman.

So, what about these claims that you’re a male chauvinist?

I think that most women are dumb — not because they are dumb but because they play dumb. They should be home taking care of their children, educating society. Society is missing the mother, the education of the mother. They’d rather check their office instead of checking their children’s school bag.

It’s very important. We are missing a whole foundation of mothers in society. Women are giving up an incredible responsibility to become what? Managers? Now women become generals, they go to the army, they are policemen. Fuck! It’s too much! I mean, women in uniform? I had incredible respect for women because they didn’t go to work. Now they even go to war, they bomb, they kill. Women didn’t do that in the past. Now they do. Well, great, fantastic, my compliments. You’ve joined the group of idiots called men.

So feminism is a disappointment?

It’s totally wrong. Now women want the same bullshit as men. It’s wrong, all wrong.

I’ve worked for women’s magazines. They make me laugh. If I was a woman, I’d be embarrassed to be treated like that. Look at Vogue, and [Harper's] Bazaar, and those kinds of fashion magazines. Basically women are stupid because they think they can become more beautiful by copying those kinds of idiotic images.

But as a photographer you worked for these magazines and produced these same images.

Of course. That’s the reason why I say that. Everybody is afraid to be rejected. Because if they are what they are, they’re probably going to be rejected. If they have a nose that doesn’t conform to fashion magazines, if they’re a little fatter than the models in magazines, they’re afraid that they’re going to be rejected. It goes on like that. So stupid people see beauty only in beautiful things. It’s an old dada expression.

You’ve spoken out against what you call the “monoculture.” Isn’t Benetton part of that monoculture as well?

Yeah, sure. But I try my best to expose that monoculture by doing the opposite. My magazine called Colors shows the differences in the world, the rest of the world. Because there is always the rest of the world that people don’t want to look at. I try to speak a language that people say is against the interest of the company. There was an article in the French daily Le Monde [as well as an article by Jerry Della Femina in the Wall Street Journal] that said that if I continue doing that, Benetton is going to disappear. I don’t think so. On the contrary, people are much smarter than advertising people and consumption pushers think they are. People are not just consumers.

You’ve compared your relationship with Benetton founder Luciano Benetton to the pope and Michelangelo. Tell me about your relationship with Mr. Benetton.

He’s the pope. It’s true. There’s a relationship there — we’re friends. We’ve been working together for 18 years. We don’t have to check each other out. I know he’s a good man, a good owner. I know what he does, that he does quality. He doesn’t pollute as much as an entrepreneur in car manufacturing.

What he does is simple. It’s first-degree industrialism. Pure cotton, pure wool. He doesn’t speculate by producing in the Far East like certain American companies, because it’s cheaper than in the United States. At Benetton, everything is produced in Italy for Italy and for rich foreign countries. What is produced in Turkey or China or Brazil is produced on location for the local market. You also give local people the opportunity to work, produce and consume the goods that they produce. So I think on that level the company is the best company in the world. I’ve checked these things out. I’m very concerned about these kinds of things, and that’s the primary reason why I work. And of course the company has the kind of politics that gives me the possibility to do what I want.

Has Mr. Benetton ever responded to one of your campaign ideas by saying, “No, now you’re going too far”?

No, never. Going too far compared to what? I don’t understand that. There’s no such thing as going too far. If you are intelligent, you can go as far you can want. There is no such thing as going too far. I hope we’re going very far, even further. Going too far …

Do you think companies like Benetton are companies of the future?

Oh, yeah. They have to be, financially, economically. I think it is the only way we can have a reasonable society. Otherwise it will be the Wild West. You can’t, for example, exploit child labor because you want to buy your shoes for $10 all your life and you don’t know or care where they’re made, and at the same time give to charity — to Amnesty International or to some starving children’s foundation in the Far East. I think this way of being should be over. We should buy our shoes for $25, and instead of buying three pairs we buy one pair — better made, more consciously made. The problem is not to produce more and to consume more, but to produce better and consume better. For example, I have too many shirts! I have enough shirts for three lives!

You must have a lot of nice sweaters, too.

Yeah, enough for three lives. But why?!

Most people aren’t aware of the scope of social programs Benetton has sponsored in conjunction with your campaigns. The AIDS work with ACT UP, the clothing redistribution project, the work with anti-apartheid groups in South Africa …

Yeah, but saying that makes everybody feel so comfortable. I hate to make advertising by saying that it goes to charity. Those companies that say “we gave a million dollars to such-and-such a charity …” Bullshit! You shouldn’t even pronounce that. I’m so angry at those people who make advertising about themselves by saying that they do charity. They are some of the biggest speculators in the world. They even speculate on charity.

That obviously bothers you.

Achk! I can’t stand it. [Mocking] “Oh, we’re doing an eight-course charity dinner.” Fuck you! I hope your eight-course dinner is poisoned! You just have to do your work, and while you’re doing your work you should be concerned about the quality of your work — whether you’re a plumber or whatever.

What other things are on your mind for future work?

Religion is something. Media is something. Media is just a bunch of bullshit. Media is the real advertising. And they belong to big companies. There are some newspapers and TV companies that can’t talk about certain things because they belong to General Electric or some big gas company.

Speaking of religion, you’re apparently inspired by medieval religious paintings, paintings where blood and death are much more present and graphic.

You walk into a church, it’s like walking into a slaughterhouse. There’s blood and thorns and hearts in hands. You go to [churches in] Rome and you see incredible blood all over. There is a famous painting of a woman holding her dead child in her arms. What a subject! You can’t take a picture of that! Today there’s a whole problem about artificial insemination. Well, the Virgin Mary was artificially inseminated. From the very beginning. I mean, think about it. What an incredible idea!

Do you still call yourself a radical libertarian?

More than that. I’m a total anarchist. I’ve never been into a bank in my life. I refuse.

So how do you manage your money?

My wife! The best way to get rid of money is to get married.

Anything else you want to say about your views or your recent campaign?

I don’t know why everybody is so concerned about the business of Benetton. They lost Sears, but they got some incredible letters from people who were angry at Sears for dropping Benetton. Everybody’s so concerned about the business, that we might lose clients. I mean what the heck, who cares? I think it’s very good that we lost Sears. People are talking about loyalty to our clients. Pft!

Read this [he refers to a quote on paper], I think it’s great:

“The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachments by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”

That’s it. That’s what we’re talking about when we talk about my work.

Casta is not alone in fleeing France, where the system is so complex, top-heavy and overburdened that it is almost impossible to manifest entrepreneurial spirit on any practical level without risking personal bankruptcy. From classic businessmen to film personalities like Alain Delon, the slow draining of French capital and talent into England has been going on for decades. Unfortunately for Casta, this leggy, busty, handsomely remunerated top model carries a heavy civic burden toward her compatriots as the new Marianne, and her departure to the shores of an ancient enemy is seen as the ultimate betrayal.

Casta has been backpedaling lately, suggesting that she is buying an apartment in London because she works — and has a boyfriend — in the city. But should Casta’s whereabouts be so high on the French national agenda? Shouldn’t this curvaceous well-heeled young woman have the right to spend her money as she sees fit? Many in her ranks believe so, including Brigitte Bardot. Another buxom blond ex-Marianne, Bardot made it very clear that if she could leave France for England she would do so without a moment’s hesitation.

In the end, the political hand-wringing over the Casta affair is overwhelmingly about taxes — a clear sign that despite all prevailing myths to the contrary, one of the most important things in France (perhaps, but only perhaps, after sex) is money.

Buot is among the roughly 40 percent of the French population who use homeopathic medicine to treat everything from colds, flu and measles to depression, anxiety and insomnia. The same percentage of clinical physicians regularly use homeopathy in their practices, and the French government reimburses the cost of homeopathic medicines. Indeed, collections of substances in thin tubes and vials with curious Latin names — belladonna, bryonia and pulsatilla — are as common in French homes as spice racks.

While the French remain the world’s largest consumers of homeopathy (and also the biggest consumers of pharmaceutical products in the industrialized world, an apparent contradiction that is particular to the French), the U.S. homeopathic market is growing quickly. According to the National Center for Homeopathy, sales of homeopathic products in the United States increased from $170 million in 1995 to $400 million in 1999. Still, despite the colossal boom in alternative health care in America (a market estimated at $18 billion), homeopathy remains a mystery to many in this country.

What exactly is homeopathy? In the late 1700s Samuel Hahnemann, a German physician disenchanted with contemporary health care, set off on a quest to study the effects of various natural substances on his body. To avoid problems of toxicity he used substances at smaller and smaller doses, thereby establishing a fundamental aspect of homeopathy — infinitesimal dilutions.

Hahnemann was convinced that “the same things which cause the disease cure it” — a principle espoused by Hippocrates in the fifth century B.C. Hahnemann’s first experiment with the plant cinchona to cure the symptoms brought on by ingesting the same plant was decisive. He went on to study an entire range of plant, mineral and animal substances on himself, and eventually created the foundation of what would later become the official Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia still used today.

Hahnemann influenced an entire generation of European and American health practitioners. By the mid-1800s there were several homeopathic medical colleges in Europe and the United States, and one in five doctors used homeopathy, especially to fight cholera epidemics. While the move toward a more mechanistic view of the body and the growing use of pharmaceuticals eventually pushed homeopathy into obscurity in the United States (by the late 1940s homeopathy courses were virtually nonexistent), successive generations of European clinical physicians and pharmacists inspired by Hahnemann’s work created the bedrock on which homeopathy thrives today on the Continent, particularly in France.

Simply put, homeopathy involves treating a patient with infinitesimal doses of a substance similar to that which caused the illness in the first place. In this general way homeopathy shares the same premise as vaccination: that it is possible to cure a patient of a disease by administering the same substance that would induce that disease in him if he were well. The National Center for Homeopathy uses as an example a plant root called ipecacuanha, which means “the plant by the road that makes you throw up”; eating it causes vomiting. If a woman experiencing morning sickness is not relieved by natural vomiting, then ipecacuanha, administered in extremely small doses in accordance with Food and Drug Administration guidelines, can allay her “similar” suffering.

Dana Ullman is a leading spokesman for homeopathy, an author and an advisory board member of alternative-medicine institutes at Harvard’s and Columbia’s schools of medicine. He uses a musical metaphor to describe the homeopathic law of “similars”: “If one piano is at one end of a room and if one strikes the C key, the C notes in another piano in the same room will reverberate. This experiment works because each key is hypersensitive to vibrations in its own key. This is called ‘resonance.’”

Ullman adds that the body’s symptoms are, in fact, a defense — “the body [trying] to fight a particular stress,” he says. “With traditional medicine symptoms are wrong, must be managed, stopped. We look for homeopathic medicines that mimic the symptoms. Homeopathic medicines will only work when a person has a hypersensitivity to them. This individually chosen medicine represents the same frequency as the person, and the energetics of the medicine can augment a powerful immune and healing response.”

“Energetics” is a buzzword used by many in the alternative-health field these days. According to author and physician Andrew Weil, “energy medicine” like homeopathy is one of the major medical developments of the 21st century. The energetics of homeopathy involves factoring into the diagnosis equation various psychological and emotional aspects of a person’s disposition.

Says Ullman: “It seems that most conventional physicians have been schooled in the ‘Marie Antoinette’ college of medicine, where they understand the body and head as two separate entities. Disease is a complex process that affects the whole person. Homeopaths do indeed seek to uncover various psychological symptoms as well as various idiosyncratic physical symptoms. These symptoms are ‘signs’ and ‘signals’ of the disease, and very relevant information about a person’s ‘body-mind’ metabolism. Homeopathy is based on the totality of physical and psychological characteristics that define the person.”

Homeopathy has its detractors, even in France, and the body-mind aspect is largely dismissed by conventional doctors as New Age psychobabble. “Sounds good in theory,” says Michel Tramos, a Paris general practitioner. “But in practice, it’s all about placebos. The theory of homeopathy is not scientific.”

Ullman counters that “there are many things that we don’t fully understand in theory — anesthesia, for example. We don’t entirely understand how it works in theory, but I’ve never heard anyone going into surgery question the theory behind it. Most homeopaths don’t bother with theory. They use homeopathy because it works. They’re clinicians.”

Numerous research studies, including double-blind and placebo tests done in conjunction with large health institutes, tend to support Ullman. Many of these studies are used by manufacturers of homeopathic products to counter dissent from the traditional medical community. There are a few manufacturers in the States — Standard Homeopathic, Nature’s Way (for whom Ullman formulates remedies) and Boericke & Tafel — but none of them produces the sheer volume that the French laboratory Boiron does.

Founded in 1932 in Lyon by twin-brother pharmacists, Boiron is the world leader in homeopathic products. Every year it manufactures 100 million tubes of 1,500 different homeopathic medicines and delivers 8 million specially prepared homeopathic remedies for individual prescriptions filled by 23,000 pharmacies around France. Its biggest seller is a cold and flu remedy called Oscillococcinum, which is used regularly by 5 million French and recently became the most commonly used homeopathic flu remedy in the United States. (U.S. sales of Oscillococcinum jumped 40 percent between the 1997 and 1998 flu seasons.)

Oscillococcinum is made from the heart and liver of Barbary ducks, but you won’t find any traces of feathers here. Almost all homeopathic products look exactly alike: tiny, translucent white pellets the size of fish eggs that bear no trace whatsoever of their original source.

Boiron uses 1,250 different plants, 1,800 natural substances of chemical or mineral origin and 300 biological strains. Much if not all of the plant material is found by medicinal plant harvesters like Rigis Buffihre. Every year Buffihre journeys through the upper valleys of the Forez, Jura and Pyrenees mountains in search of wild plants; he returns with 10 to 12 tons of material. The transformation of homeopathic medicine from its raw organic forms — be they Barbary duck livers or exotic-plant roots — to the sterile pellets is a complex, high-tech process that involves things like laminar air hoods, vacuum chambers, hydraulic presses, demijohns, filtration cartridges, air purification systems and centralized guidance systems, along with the sciences of thin-layer chromatography, densitometric interpretation, micropulverization, triple impregnation and thermoluminescence, to name just a few.

Homeopathic medicines are, in fact, the end products of sequential deconcentrations of basic substances, in which each operation is followed by thorough shaking known as “succussion.” In some cases, the resulting substance is so diluted that no molecule of the original substance remains in the medicine. This extreme form of dilution is precisely why many conventional doctors associate homeopathic medicines with placebos: The doses are so exceptionally small that, logic would suggest, no curative properties exist.

Ullman, however, sees no contradiction here. “There are many phenomena in nature in which extremely small doses of something can create powerful, even very powerful, effects,” he says. “One certainly cannot say that the atomic bomb is a placebo just because some extremely small atoms bump into each other.”

Jim LaValle, a pharmacist, homeopath and author of several books on alternative medicine, puts it differently. “The activity of hormones in the body commonly can occur in parts per million or less. An animal can change behavior with the scent of a single pheromone from several miles away. There have been several well-designed studies that reported that these high dilutions somehow have a physiologic effect. Some scientists feel that the dilution in water somehow holds a memory of the agent.”

The manufacture and sale of homeopathic medicines are regulated by the FDA. (The Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia of the United States was written into federal law in 1938 under the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.) Most of the medicines are available without prescription and several insurance carriers cover them. They are often cheaper and usually safer than conventional drugs. “Homeopathy is curative, truly curative,” says Ullman, who predicts that major drug companies will soon seek to purchase or form joint ventures with homeopathic companies.

Homeopathy is not used only by homeopaths and physicians; there are 700 homeopathic veterinarians in France and 17 student chapters of the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association among the 27 U.S. veterinary schools.

With the future of homeopathy looking bright in America, the French continue to do what they’ve been doing for more than 200 years. “I can’t even begin to assess how much money I’ve saved and how many potential negative side effects I’ve avoided using homeopathy in my home,” says Buot. “I have three teenage sons. They’re rarely sick.” When asked what she thinks about doctors who claim that homeopathy is essentially a placebo, she shrugs. “If you don’t understand homeopathy or have never used it regularly, you can’t have any idea what it’s all about. Of course conventional doctors deny the efficacy of it. It counters the very basis of pharmaceuticals, which are effective for certain things but not for everything. When I think about my son’s serious ear infection, I have all the proof I need. Granted, the doctor who prescribed the antibiotics would have told you that homeopathy is only psychological in its effects. But I promise you, there’s nothing psychological about ear mucus. Homeopathy works.”

Casta’s selection as the Marianne of the 21st century was the result of the country’s first official nationwide vote, sponsored by the Association of Mayors of France. According to AMF spokeswoman Catherine Doumas, “We didn’t know what to expect when we initiated this campaign for a 21st century Marianne. The overwhelming response we got is a sign of how impassioned French citizens and officials are about the Republic and its representations.”

Indeed, under the auspices of the AMF, thousands of mayors came together from all over the country to vote. (France has 36,000 mayors for a country the size of Texas.) “The first vote brought us down to five runner-ups,” says Doumas. “The second vote was clearly in favor of Casta.”

Of the five distinguished runners-up, why did the (mostly male) group of mayors pick the least-educated, least-accomplished woman to represent the lofty values and politically charged symbolism of the French Republic? “Well,” suggests Doumas, “perhaps because she’s the prettiest. And Marianne is, of course, usually represented as a bust. Casta obviously has the nicest bust of them all.”

The figure of Marianne is protean. Her image appears in the form of thousands of sculptures, paintings, tie clips, wall hangings, beer steins, tobacco boxes and greeting cards, not to mention on billions of official French documents, stamps, coins and currency. She is perhaps best known outside France as the buxom, bare-breasted and barefoot revolutionary storming the barricades in Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People” — frock unfurled, bayonet in one hand, French flag in the other, curious red bonnet flapping in a gunpowder wind. With her anonymous French face and her creamy, insurgent breasts, Marianne was of the people and for the people. Until Brigitte Bardot came along.

Explanation: In a country where getting your heater fixed involves legislative and bureaucratic red tape, it is a strange twist of fate that has kept Marianne in a state of official unofficialdom for over 200 years. Since she first appeared in 1792, Marianne, whose name is believed to have originally been a code word for “revolution,” was chosen and created in a somewhat ad-hoc fashion by artists, sculptors and city officials in villages all over France. She was the anonymous peasant tilling the land. She was the unassuming, unaristocratic girl next door. She was the cherished figure of political emancipation until a sculptor by the name of Asan decided, in 1969 and as a sort of joke, to make a bust of Brigitte Bardot as Marianne. Bardot-as-Marianne, with her thinly veiled bosom and her perky, oh-la-la nipples, was adopted by the City Hall of a small French village called Thiron-Gardais.

Despite the protestations of certain bureaucrats, Bardot eventually became the de facto symbol of the French Republic. From that point on, Marianne lost her proletarian roots and ironically became the embodiment of France’s well-endowed rich and famous. Sixteen years later, Catherine Deneuve was chosen by yet another sculptor and adopted as the country’s new Marianne.

In some ways, it makes sense. Everything about Marianne is iconic: Her red Phrygian bonnet symbolizes left-wing radical spirit. The beehive she often carries represents work and industry. The shackles and yoke at her feet evoke emancipation. Her hands are crossed in fraternity. But it is undoubtedly Marianne’s breasts — flush, freewheeling, insolently raised in protest or subdued in a state of heraldic order, that have the most symbolic weight. Daumier, who called his Marianne “a strong woman with a powerful bosom,” depicted the national goddess topless with two muscular male figures sucking vigorously at her mountainous breasts.

Officially commemorated in 1848, Dubray’s bust of Marianne features a bare breast with little drops of breast milk. “The Republic prefers an opulent, more maternal breast, with its promise of generosity and abundance,” explains writer/historian Maurice Agulhon. Even shape has its meaning. According to Agulhon, perfectly shaped breasts that are exactly the same size are “an additional symbol of the egalitarian spirit.”

In this bountiful and decidedly female context, nothing could delight French mayors more than Laetitia Casta, who once declared that her breasts were raised on butter and crhme franche. Granted, there have been detractors, those who, like Agulhon, see in the “Mariannization of the stars” a travesty of national values. Many of them hark back to the ideals of the 1792 convention, when it was decreed that Marianne would be made “so that our national emblems would circle the globe, presenting to all peoples the cherished images of liberty and republican pride.” But that was a long time ago, before television, air travel and Victoria’s Secret.

Today, it is Laetitia Casta’s luxurious bosom that, on the glossy pages of Victoria’s Secret lingerie catalogs or the cover of Vogue, has “circled the globe.” In fact, with the new Marianne freshly minted and busted all over France, these globes in their own right have become a symbol of national pride much in the same way as Joan of Arc. Leave it to the French to embody their national values in the form of mythic, rebellious women endowed with special virtues: Joan of Arc heard voices. Marianne had great breasts.

Which makes one wonder: Would Casta have been chosen to represent Marianne, who long ago replaced Napoleon as France’s national bust, if she filled a mere 34A cup? Or is that beside the point? Says Casta, “To represent France, liberty and a certain idea of what a woman is — that’s a hell of a responsibility.”

No kidding.