The latest bit we've come across is "BBR". It's short for "bleu, blanc, rouge", the colours of the French flag.
Apparently BBR is also widely used in the French recruitment world, as another kind of shorthand: it stands for white French people, born to white French parents. BBR, through and through.
Last week L'Oréal failed to reverse a 2007 court decision that it was guilty of racial discrimination when recruiting women to sell its shampoos in supermarkets outside Paris.
Thin, young, white
France's highest court heard that the group wanted thin, young, white women to promote its Fructis Style haircare stuff (from Garnier, L'Oréal's "beauty division").
The court also heard about a fax to HQ looking for an all-white sales team, women aged 18 to 22, with a 38 to 42 clothes size (UK sizes 8 to 12) - oh yeah, and they had to be BBR.
The prosecutors argued that BBR, a shorthand used by the far right, was also a well-known code among employers to mean "white" French people, as opposed to those of north African, African and Asian backgrounds.
BBR. As far as we know, there's no Irish equivalent - no "GWO" for the green, white and orange of our own tricolor.
Christine Cassan told the court that her clients demanded white sales reps. She said that when she had gone ahead and presented candidates "of colour", one of her bosses said she'd "had enough of Christine and her Arabs".
One woman working in the temporary recruitment firm involved said that foreign-sounding names or photos showing a candidate possibly with North African origin would guarantee the candidate's elimination.
L'Oréal and the recruitment agency were both fined €30,000 and ordered to pay a further €30,000 each to SOS Racisme, the anti-racist campaign group, which brought the case.
The cosmetics giant keeps landing itself in it. Remember how last year they tried to deny claims that they'd lightened Beyoncé's skin in ads to make her look almost as white as, well, Michael Jackson after his "Bad" album?
Comment: In light of the above, one wonders what the real intention of L'Oreal is, with growing human skin in the lab.
Don't mention the war
Now, before you all to rushing off and boycotting L'Oréal and its Garnier products, let's be calm. Let's be a bit open-minded out there.
Remember that l'Oréal, this racist multinational of "beauty fascists" with a very ugly past, is the largest cosmetic company in the world.
That means it also makes stuff with loads of other names. Stuff from Giorgio Armani, Lancôme, Maybelline, Ralph Lauren, Helena Rubinstein, Shu Uemura, Redken, Kérastase and the Body Shop. So let's boycott without prejudice - dump the lot. Because they're not worth it.
Nearly forgot to mention what the company's founder, Nazi sympathiser Eugène Schueller, did in the 1930s with fascist group La Cagoule and during the Holocaust, then after the war how he used the firm as a "jobs laundry" for collaborators. All the creams and concealers in the world couldn't cover up all those crimes.
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