la tour eiffel is not a dildo

Picture this: in the heart of Paris, a city that oozes romance from every cobblestone, stands the magnificent Eiffel Tower. 

Now, nip across to Pigalle and you can find thousands of silicone versions of this towering beauty as rendered as dildos (godes) and vibrators (vibromasseurs). You can be excused for assuming that this Iron pillar is a sort of phallic symbol.

However, in French, that’s simply not possible. Objects have genders and Towers are feminine. So the Tower Eiffel is very much a woman.

And what a woman! It's like she was made for love!

I mean, just look at her - she's drop-dead gorgeous, standing tall at 300 metres, weighing 10 tons, and put together with a lattice of 18,000 pieces.

In fact, the legs of the tower are supposed to represent the spread legs of a woman and the lattice work, her skirt. So when you stand under this grande beauty you are looking right up, not at a shaft, but at a tunnel.

Now, this babe's got a couple of saucy nicknames that you may not know. 

Madame de Fer, or the (original) Iron Lady, is one. 

The other is La femme rouge, or The Red Woman. 

Why? Because this lady's got some serious curves, and when she rusts, she turns red-hot! Back in the day, before they painted her a boring old "Eiffel Tower Brown", the anti-corrosion paint used to keep her looking fine was red. And boy, did it suit her passionate personality. 

Mademoiselle Eiffel was supposed to come down at age 20 and then later in 1944, Hitler ordered Dietrich van Choltitz, the military governor of the city, to demolish the Eiffel Tower, thankfully van Choltitz refused.

At 136 years old this Parisian Madame is still very much alive and very much in her prime.