The expression "kissing Fanny" is used during a game of boules (jeu provençal or pétanque) when the final score is 13 to 0. The loser or losing team must then kiss the bare posterior of a female representation nicknamed Fanny. The expressions "doing fanny", "fucking Fanny", "being fanny" or "getting a fanny" are equivalent and can be used in other activities such as table football or ping-pong.
Originally, losers had to kiss the buttocks of a woman named Fanny, depicted in paintings or other forms (pottery or sculpture). Today, these representations are more common in antique and second-hand shops than in the cafés where boulistes traditionally gather. But all bouliste clubs keep one at their headquarters, and this icon is part of their heritage.Originally, it was both a reward and an embarrassment for the losing team, but always a laugh for the spectators. "Kissing Fanny is the frightening image of defeat, the horrible proof that you've been beaten, and not just beaten, but defeated miserably, the total humiliation of losing by 13 to 0!"
A recent tradition would have it originate in the Dauphiné, where a Fanny was said to have been a waitress in a café in Grand-Lemps, shortly before the First World War. It was the mayor of the village who inaugurated this practice, but postcards from before this period already show Fanny with her posterior on offer. Some see her as being of Lyonnais origin, since the history of the Croix-Rousse district tells us that, as early as 1870, the Clos Jouve players had as a spectator a twenty-year-old girl with a big heart, Fanny Dubriand, a little simple, dirty and frumpy, often sleeping in the street. She was the despair of her parents, who ran a herbalist's shop in Lyon's Croix-Rousse district, near the 4th arrondissement town hall, unable to control her. For a coin, she would console the unhappy player by showing him her bottom, but would not accept the kiss. Today, a cheeky bronze statue of Fanny reminds Clos-Jouve boulistes of this past.However, the practice, if not the expression, existed long before. Le Roux, in his 1718 Dictionnaire comique, p. 175, states: "Kiss the old lady's ass. A manner of speaking common in Paris, usually used in billiards and other games, meaning not to make a single point, to lose without having been able to win or take a point."In fact, in some villages, people used to tell those going to "the city" for the first time that they would be stopped at the gates to "kiss the old lady's ass", and that they could only enter after completing this formality. The same joke was played out on the banks of the Saône and in every port where people disembarked for the first time.Carl Friesland traces the origin of the expression back to the Middle Ages, to the highly scatological Chanson d'Audigier, in which Count Turgibus, lord of a certain Grinberge, having lost two battles in a row to her, must agree to "kiss the old woman's ass" as a condition of peace.
To make up for the cruel lack of countertop Fannies willing to roll up their sleeves in public, a postiche Fanny with a bountiful buttocks was put into service in all the places where Provençal games and pétanque were played. Kept with fervor, a veritable pagan relic, hidden in a small cupboard, behind a panel or a curtain, it was only unveiled for a resounding 13 to 0. Then, the unfortunate vanquished, on his knees as if going to confession, in everyone's presence, would approach the altar to kiss the icon. Passing Fanny's posterior on to posterity was also a radical way of defying the Christian bourgeois morality that cast opprobrium on her bare buttocks.Strangely enough, in American English, "fanny" means "bum", and in British English "vulva".
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrasser_Fanny
