Francofile

France: The Neo-cons' Nightmare

There are a lot of people in the US who want us to believe that France is an economic backwater and generally a bad place to live.  Why is it so important to them that we believe this?  Paul Krugman, who wrote an editorial about the quality of life in France in the New York Times on Friday, July 29th, helps to answer the question.  He compares the standard of living in France and the US, finding that the determination depends very much on one's definition of "quality of life." He writes:

"The point is that to the extent that the French have less income than we do, it's mainly a matter of choice. And to see the consequences of that choice, let's ask how the situation of a typical middle-class family in France compares with that of its American counterpart. The French family, without question, has lower disposable income. This translates into lower personal consumption: a smaller car, a smaller house, less eating out. But there are compensations for this lower level of consumption. Because French schools are good across the country, the French family doesn't have to worry as much about getting its children into a good school district. Nor does the French family, with guaranteed access to excellent health care, have to worry about losing health insurance or being driven into bankruptcy by medical bills. Perhaps even more important, however, the members of that French family are compensated for their lower income with much more time together. Fully employed French workers average about seven weeks of paid vacation a year. In America, that figure is less than four. So which society has made the better choice?"

(The rest of the article can be accessed at:  http://www.nytimes.com  )

The answer to his question, according to many of a certain political persuasion in the US, is that there can be no comparing the two. The US blew past the French several decades ago and left them in the dust. But the reason conservatives don't want anyone to even contemplate such a comparison is abject fear.  As Krugman points out, many of the things that the neo-cons in the US say could never work are working very well in France. France is the extreme right's worst nightmare.  France's success makes it a target of those idealogues who do not want US voters to know that higher taxes and greater protections for workers and citizens can contribute to a society that is modern, humane, and still prosperous. In case anyone should notice that things are not really so bad in France, spokespersons for the right wing often throw in an extra dose of French-bashing, usually related to French cowardice, French rudeness, lack of personal hygiene, or all of the above--just for good measure.

Krugman's knock-out punch, however, relates to the family values to which the right pays lip service.  Policies and customs in France conspire to set boundaries between one's work life and one's personal life. Work is considered important, but not all-consuming.  Krugman exposes the hypocrisy of the "family values" crowd that does not tend to support policies that would actually allow family life to flourish, especially among the working poor. Krugman concludes: "American conservatives despise European welfare states like France. Yet many of them stress the importance of "family values." And whatever else you may say about French economic policies, they seem extremely supportive of the family as an institution."  But don't expect conservatives to point to France as a model in terms of support for family life.  If American voters were aware in greater numbers that there were workable alternatives to the conservatives' version of so-called "family values" (i.e. no gay mariage, no right to privacy concerning abortion, little support for family planning, etc. ) their ideology would be exposed as the fraud that it is. 

Those Romantic French

One of the most persistent clichés about the French is that they are exquisitely refined and passionate in the areas of courtship, love and romance.  Antoine, who at age 24 came to the US for a year to teach French to undergraduate college students, told me that several young women were coyly probing his romantic life.  He felt like a disappointment because he didn't live up to their fantasy image of the smolderingly passionate French lover.  Students study abroad in France, expecting to be swept into a dizzying love affair--and sometimes it does happen. 

Conversely, Hélene, an attractive French woman, married, fiftyish, and living in the US, confided that one thing she missed most about France was harmless flirtation in the workplace.  Even though she was not interested in an actual romantic liaison, being flirted with made her feel more feminine and more alive.  The French have fewer complexes about flirting than their US counterparts.

Regarding mariage and romance, it seems that the serial monogamy model has not caught on in France as it has in the US.  I have no statistics, but if French movies are an accurate reflection, extramarital affairs are more often the French antidote to the monotony of mariage.  When someone married has a mistress or a lover in France, it is often referred to openly in matter-of-fact tones.  Mariage seems to represent a legal bond that is not dissolved easily, even in the case of infidelity.  There are many ways of being a couple.  Françoise, a young English teacher in a Parisian suburb explained to me that she and the man she lives with are not married, but "pacsé," which is an alternative form of vow.  Many couples opt to live together, either as a trial mariage, or a long-term arrangement. 

Although the French language itself seems made for seduction, the French are often ambivalent about love. Most major authors have written about it and a few themes emerge.  With the 19th-century post-Romantic novelist Flaubert, love is portrayed, like in the old blues song, as a game you just can't win.  He writes of Felicité in Un Coeur simple: Elle avait eu, comme une autre, son histoire d'amour.  (Like everyone else, she had had her love affair.)  Her fiancé ended the love story abruptly and brutishly and it became a mere footnote in her life.  Flaubert's best-known heroine, Emma Bovary, is destroyed by her search for romance. 

In Voltaire's 18th-century portrayal of love, Candide searches the globe for his lovely Cunégonde, sacrificing and even killing in order to be reunited with his lost love.  When at last they are reunited, she has become horrid and shrewish.  They nonetheless cultivate their garden together.  Candide's happiness is ultimately found in lowered expectations about romantic love combined with Cunégonde's skills as a baker. 

Going back to the 17th century, François de la Rochefoucauld, a Parisian moralist and salon habitué, commented on a range of human experience, including love and passion.  His maxims also seem to portray love as a game you just can't win, but one that is worth playing nonetheless.  Here are a few examples:

• "Dans l'amitié comme dans l'amour on est souvent plus heureux par les choses qu'on ignore que par celles que l'on sait."

In friendship as in love, one is often happier because of what one is ignorant of rather than because of what one knows.

• "Dans les premières passions les femmes aiment l'amant, et dans les autres elles aiment l'amour."

In the first throes of passion women love the lover; afterwards, they love love.

• "En amour, celui qui est guéri le premier est toujours le mieux guéri."

In love, the first healed is the best healed.

• "Il en est du véritable amour comme de l'apparition des esprits; tout le monde en parle, mais peu de gens en ont vu."

        True love is like ghosts: everyone talks of it but few have seen one.

The French seem to have a tradition of giving the yellow light to romantic love.  It is part of the human experience, but one that should be approached with respect, and without illusions.

Under the Spell of Quebec

Spending a few days in the friendly province of Quebec makes me want to go back for more.  Having lived in the upper Midwest of the US and in France, Quebec feels to me like a synthesis of these two familiar places.  Downtown Trois-Rivieres looked like the main street of any North American town in its architecture, but that's where the similarity ends.  Most store fronts were sidewalk cafes and restaurants.  Their terraces were filled with people of all ages.   Instead of watching TV in their houses or apartments, the whole local population seemed to be dining, strolling, or sipping on this warm evening.   A visit to an ordinary chain supermarket revealed appealing displays of local products.   Intense cheeses like Le Grand Chouffe and Duo du Paradis come from the Quebecois countryside.  Although I have often seen a delectable Quebecois monastery cheese called Oka in cheese shops in the US, many of the local cheeses did not seem to be widely distributed abroad.  The cheeses were marketed paired with regional beers like Trois-Pistoles and La Fin du Monde (The End of the World).  The local strawberries were tastier than any I have had since childhood.   The store was modern, yet maintained a pleasant, local feel.  A visit to Archambault, a store specializing in books and music of Quebec provided an opportunity to stock up on old standards of the "chanson quebecois" and to see what is new on the lively French-Canadian music scene. Music is a cherished part of the cultural heritage of Quebec.  For every Celine Dion, there are dozens of talented singer-songwriters and groups who are revered by the French-speaking community in Canada.  Some of the songs deal with the theme of preserving the French language in North America.  They remind one of the sacrifices that French-speakers have made over the decades due to their love of the French language.  It was explained to me that in Trois-Rivieres, the factories had once been run by anglophones while francophones provided the labor.  That system has finally given way to a culture of largely bilingual people in which French speakers are as economically empowered as English speakers.  The Quebecois are a resourceful and creative people who have adapted their French heritage to the North American environment to create a vibrant and welcoming culture all their own.

Smoker-Friendly France

In my college days at a state university in the Midwest, few among my cohort group smoked cigarettes. Not that we didn’t put our health at risk in a multitude of ways, but we had gotten the message about the health risks of smoking and did not want to blacken our pink lungs and shorten our life expectancies for the sake of tobacco.

When I began to frequent France as a young adult in the 70's, it seemed that almost everyone smoked Marlboros or Camels. The French had not gotten the message–or decided to ignore it. They were still caught up in the romance of smoking that seduced 1940's movie viewers. It was associated with personal flair, panache, élan, allure, "cool," or whatever you prefer to call it. French celebrities like Serge Gainsbourg kept the romance with smoke alive. When you smoked, you were thumbing your nose at your mortality and showing that you "got" the irony of life. A cigarette was a desired accessory, like a stylish watch. The gestures associated with smoking became comforting rituals. Smoke itself allowed for creativity, as you could use it to form patterns in the air. Smoking filled the pauses between courses in a leisurely French meal. It was also the welcomed occasion for breaks from work or classes. 

As an English teaching assistant in a French lycée, I shared an apartment with Guillemette, a law student who would place an ashtray on the edge of the tub and chain-smoke while taking a bath. She explained in her raspy voice that she profoundly enjoyed this small pleasure. Although I knew better, I took up smoking during this period, figuring I was immersed in second-hand smoke all day anyway, so why not? I would quit when I moved back to the US. The nicotine seemed to help with alertness and focus during long spells of reading and writing. After returning to the US, I persisted in smoking. By then, smokers were beginning to be segregated, but I continued to spend time with French friends who smoked. Losing this habit was not going to be easy.

Fortunately, I was helped in my quest to quit smoking when I met my then-future husband. He said he would never want to be involved romantically with a smoker. I hid the nasty habit at first, but soon knew that I would have to make a choice. I started smoking in order to conform, and quit smoking for love.

After quitting, most people revile smoking and I was no exception. I had crawled out of ashtray culture, so why couldn’t everybody else? I sympathized with those who had a long-standing addiction to tobacco, but had no patience for young people who picked up the habit knowing its dangers for the same stupid reason I had–to conform to the behavior of their more "adult" friends.

Today few of my French friends smoke, but I have dared to go against the grain of French society by asking strangers to observe no-smoking areas in restaurants and public places in France. As David Applefield puts it, "visibly bothered non-smokers are perceived as downright wrong, and your Anglo-Saxon attempts to protect yourselves from passive exposure to proven carcinogens is seen as typical of a hypocritical America that drops carpet bombs with ease and approves the execution of prisoners by lethal injection, but gets hysterical if some guy lights up a Lucky Strike in a public place" (http://www.paris-anglo.com).  One is still at a disadvantage in France if avoiding smoke is a high priority.

But the message is beginning to penetrate and smoking is starting to appear déclassé . There are now no-smoking restaurants in France. Smoking has finally come to be seen as a vice by a people that is pretty self-disciplined when it comes to other common vices, such as over-indulgence in food and alcohol. If France ceases to be a smoker-friendly culture, one can only wonder which vice might come along to fill the void.

Fat and the French

Many Americans who spend a lengthy period of time in France are surprised to find that they have lost weight effortlessly while enjoying plentiful and tasty food.  Contrariwise, many French friends have complained of creeping weight gain over a longish stay in the US.  A recent book deals with the often-asked question of why the French are not fat.  I will probably not bother to read the book, since that question was answered during my years of living (and eating) in France. 

I first suspected that cigarette smoking had a lot to do with the French being so light on their feet.  This theory has been challenged as fewer French people now smoke.  (There are even non-smoking restaurants in France now, at long last!)  The French people I meet who do not smoke seem to be as lean as those whose appetites are surpressed by constant puffing. 

Another factor in gallic sveltness is the level of physical activity associated with day-to-day life.  Even though the French are not necessarily more athletic than Americans, everyday routines in France tend to involve more time spent walking and moving about and less time spent sitting.   

One additional reason for the relative lack of overweight French people is that self-control in all aspects of behavior is learned from an early age.  French children are required to be quiet, sit still, and eat only at prescribed times.  A snack is authorized at about 4:00 PM, not just whenever a child is hungry. 

When invited to dine in a French household, one quickly learns to "save room."  There will be more courses than one anticipates, and it would be easy to become full before the main dish arrives at the table.  The self-control one learns from childhood comes in handy when one must pace oneself to get through a two-hour meal with some appetite intact. 

In France they wish you "bon appetit" before a meal begins.  Whereas Americans are afraid that our appetites will lead us to the demise of our figures and our health, the French celebrate the appetite both for the pleasure it brings, and for its evolutionary function--to compel us to nourish ourselves.  Calories are not demonized in France, as they provide the energy we need to live life.

Another cultural difference related to the tendency toward leanness is the collective memory of hunger.  In France the food shortages of wartime are remembered by all, either through direct experience or from memories shared by parents and grandparents.  French people seem to have a deeper consciousness of food as nourishment.  To trim the fat is a waste of its nutritive value.  Fat is seen as a necessary part of the human diet, rather than a destroyer of one's silhouette.   While hunger sometimes accompanies poverty in the US, our collective memory of widespread food shortages is a vague and distant one.  Whereas a French person may focus on what food can do for us (i.e. giving us gustatory pleasure, a social outlet, and energy), Americans tend to obsess about what food can do to us (i.e. giving us unsightly bulges, guilt, and chronic diseases).

Different individuals have different eating habits, but there are recurring themes.  French reverence for the appetite does not lead to condoning gluttony.  One young woman, who was far from anorexic, explained that she never eats until her hunger is totally satiated. "Il faut rester sur sa faim."  Another slender, fiftyish woman served her family and guests a typical continental breakfast and limited her own consumption to black coffee.  She said that breakfast had once been her favorite meal, and that she really missed it, but that at her age, she could no longer indulge herself.  The self-control of childhood seemed to be carried too far in her case, and her self-denial was inscribed in her pinched-looking face.  Far preferable is the example of the actress Catherine Deneuve, who wisely chose to preserve the serene beauty of her face over the preservation of her girlhood waist measurement.

Most French people I have observed do not deprive themselves of the pleasures of the table.  Fat is not seen as the enemy of health and beauty, but as an ally.  The French in general do not  blame food itself for making people fat.   Overindulgence and inactivity make people fat--not savoring a full-fat cheese or salad greens drenched in oil.