They Eat Horses, Don't They?

by Piu Marie Eatwell

  COLETTE, FRENCH NOVELIST (1873–1954), CLAUDINE EN MÉNAGE, 1902

  On the other hand, discreet, tailored elegance is not necessarily a good look for the young and free-spirited, or for sartorial rebels. In fact, judging by the number of tattoos, nose rings, eyebrow piercings, fluorescent colours and exposed bra straps sported by younger French women nowadays, classic French bourgeois style is associated very much with an older generation. French teenage girls’ discussion forums seem a lot more concerned these days with figuring out where to get boots in the Gothic punk style of Effy from the British teen series Skins, than whether it is a social faux pas to combine a décolleté with a mini skirt. (The advice from fellow French teenage internautes on where to get clothes in le style Effy is inevitably to try those oh-so-French outlets Zara or Top Shop online, or – best of all – head to Camden Market, the new sartorial Mecca for the French teenager.) French teenage girls today are taller, bigger and heavier than their mothers;* and in the regional town near which I live, many is the time I have spied a delicate, bird-like forty-year-old in a Chanel suit hopping daintily beside her much taller, heftier and generously proportioned eighteen-year-old daughter, with punk hairdo, tattoos and a liberal sprinkling of piercings. They make an odd couple.

  * The Campagne de mensuration of 2006, a nationwide survey of the vital statistics of French men and women, found that a new group of ‘very tall women’ had emerged in France since the 1970s, reaching a maximum of 190 cm (6 feet 2 inches) in height.

  ‘A woman who lacks beauty,’ observed Louis XIV’s mistress Madame de Maintenon, ‘has only half a life.’ Under the traditional rules of French etiquette, women have a social duty to brighten the grey world of men with a decorative, discreetly coquettish, harmonious, seductive and elegant presence... but not to affront, challenge or set the world alight. Perhaps the new generation of young French women – loud and proud with their added height, bold and confident fluorescent T-shirts, nose rings and tattoos – have picked up the torch.

  Myth Evaluation: The truth of this myth is hard to evaluate because of the innately subjective nature of what constitutes ‘style’. But it remains a fact that certain, mainly middle-class and older, French women, achieve what many would consider to be exalted levels of sartorial elegance and stylishness of appearance.

  FRENCH WOMEN DON’T GET FAT

  I never wanted to weigh more heavily on a man than a bird.

  COCO CHANEL, CELEBRATED HAUTE-COUTURIÈRE (1883–1971)

  This myth is the only one in this book that is a registered trademark (the phrase French Women Don’t Get Fat ® was registered as a patented commercial product with the US patent office by the Franco-American author Mireille Guiliano, after the appearance of her eponymous 2006 guide to the secrets of the French woman’s allegedly enviable silhouette). Since the appearance of Guiliano’s book, many others have leaped on the gravy train, and there is now a veritable deluge of guides laying bare the mysteries of the so-called ‘French Paradox’: that is, how French women – while still indulging in red wine, cheese and croissants – somehow manage to retain a figure to die for. Here, for example, is a typical entry in an American blog after a visit to Paris: ‘French women are known for being beautiful, sexy and slim. Women in France walk around in mini-skirts* looking graceful and lean, all while enjoying the greatest pleasures in life. They eat full-fat dairy, butter, real cheese, desserts, red meats, pastas, gourmet breads and top it off with a glass of wine or champagne, yet they continue to have a very low obesity rate.’

  * This is patently incorrect. Most French women above the age of adolescence would consider mini-skirts vulgar. The description is closer to a gym-toned, Manhattanite ideal of beauty than anything French, which in fact is the case for many foreign eulogies of Gallic women. As usual, we insist on reading into the French distorted images of ourselves.

  The use of the phrase ‘Women in France’ in this extract is intriguing. Of the top tourist destinations in France, Paris and its surrounding region of the Île de France are by far the most popular destinations, followed by the French Riviera. The French women that the vast majority of Anglo-American tourists encounter, therefore, are those to be found in the historic centre of Paris, and on the glamorous beaches of the Côte d’Azur. And yet, as many writers and commentators on France would have us believe, these well-heeled, stylishly svelte specimens represent the Women of France.

  The skinny cat and the fat woman are a household disgrace.

  CORSICAN PROVERB

  Do French women get fat? Considering the number of times I have found myself behind a large female bottom at a supermarket queue in a regional Carrefour, I would be tempted to say that at least some of them do. It is certainly true that France historically has had a very low obesity rate. But that position is changing. A three-yearly survey of obesity in the French population by the French pharmaceutical group Roche – the ObÉpi survey – found that in 2012, 47 per cent of the total French adult population was overweight or obese, including 42 per cent of French women. Obesity in France increased by 76 per cent over the period 1997–2012, with the largest recent recorded increase in women aged 18–25 years.3

  PLUMPNESS – QUELLE HORREUR! (skip)

  ‘A woman who is too fat cannot take a step without panting like a seal, or sweating like a river; she is as heavy as an elephant, her shape thick; the swaying of her massive hips gives her a vulgar look, however distinguished she may be by birth. Her overflowing cheeks and eyelids heavy with fat make a repulsive mask of her face. She loses beauty, form, and grace.’

  From: Baronne Staffe, Le Cabinet de Toilette, 1897.

  But how does the ‘average’ French woman compare physically to her cousin across the Channel? Two nationwide sizing surveys conducted in Britain and France, coincidentally at similar times, provide an intriguing (and surprising) answer. They are the UK National Sizing Survey, carried out in 2001–2 by the Department of Trade and Industry in collaboration with leading UK retailers, and the Campagne nationale de mensuration, or National Measuring Campaign, conducted in France in 2003–5 by the French textile industry. Both surveys used high-tech scanning techniques to measure thousands of men and women on either side of the Channel, collating the data to produce the vital statistics of the ‘average’ British and French woman respectively. And here they are (with the French metric stats imperialized):4

  The most striking thing about these statistics is their broad similarity. French women come out on average as half an inch shorter than English women (both being at the shapely end of the size spectrum), and there are a few inches between the other measurements (notably the waist). There is about half a stone difference between them. Are the differences between French and English women in terms of size large enough to justify the big fat fuss being made about it?

  None of this alters the fact that, in Paris and the regions most exposed to tourists and expats at least, there do appear to be an awful lot of skinny and elegant bourgeois French women tottering about in high heels and coordinated bolero jackets. Several of the reports on obesity in France note the fact that the global averages conceal large discrepancies based on the geographic location, class and education of the French women concerned.5 The highest rates of female obesity are in the North and East of the country – notably in the depressed region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais – versus the tourist-heavy Provence, Côte d’Azur and Loire valley, with the lowest obesity rates; while women without the Baccalauréat or other diploma are likely to weigh over half a stone more than their Bac-qualified compatriots.6 An OECD report in 2011 observed that women with a poor education in France were almost three times more likely to be overweight than more educated women. This contrasted with a much lower ‘inequality index’ in the UK, where the likelihood of a poorly educated woman being overweight was about one and a half times that of her middle-class equivalent.7

  The source of the deep evils suffered by humanity is the muffled war between thin and fat women.

  RÉMY DE GOURMONT, F
RENCH SYMBOLIST POET, NOVELIST AND CRITIC (1858–1915)

  Why are the Parisian female bourgeoisie the least likely to be fat out of everybody in France? Well, partly it’s a matter of education, but it’s also a matter of social pressure. The rules of savoir-vivre – the traditional, post-Revolutionary French code of etiquette – place enormous importance for women on la bonne tenue: that is, an elegant and self-disciplined presentation of oneself that includes sober attire and a moderate attitude to consumption.* As the celebrated author of manners Baronne Staffe noted in her hugely popular nineteenth-century manual of etiquette Usages du monde,† it is of particular importance for the young ladies of the bourgeoisie to ‘avoid greediness, which ruins one’s looks and denotes a poor education’.8 Slimness for French women is, traditionally, one of the key means by which they demonstrate to the world that they belong to the affluent bourgeoisie or middle class.

  * For a detailed discussion of the rules of savoir-vivre, see the chapter on French women and style (see here).

  † First published in 1889, this bible of French etiquette went through more than twenty-four editions in the nineteenth century and is still in print today.

  The equation that slim female = bourgeois and that love handles = lower-class is one that runs deep in French psychology and culture. The vast majority of French women in public life – from television presenters to politicians – are impossibly slim and glamorous. Where, one wonders, are the women who do not look like Ségolène Royal, Carla Bruni or Valérie Trierweiler? After all, wasn’t feminism invented so that all women could accede to positions of power, despite not looking like Marion Cotillard? The identification of the female sex with slimness and glamour in the French psyche means that the French have had particular difficulty in facing up to their nascent obesity crisis. The 2012 ObÉpi study was reported (with a certain smugness) in the British press, but the French media passed it over. Although much fuss has been made about child obesity in the French press recently, the issue of adult obesity has been much less prominently featured. Even French women’s clothes shops seem to have a problem admitting the new, shapelier proportions of their clientèle. Although French clothing sizes were revised upwards in the light of the 2006 industry sizing survey, looking at the clothes stocked by the average French clothing store, one could still be forgiven for getting the impression that all women in France are a maximum size 10. In the Campagne de mensuration, one in three female respondents to the survey claimed to have difficulty finding clothes that fitted them in the shops. The report blames them for being too fat or too thin – even though the majority of women who complained were within the normal range. The tone and content of the French sizing report, in fact, is at times nothing short of extraordinary. The average height of French women, for example, is compared to that of the average height of candidates for Miss World in 2006. French women were found to be 14 centimetres shorter. It seems somewhat odd, to say the least, for a quasi-official report to be using a beauty contest as a standard for the purposes of evaluating the physical attributes of a country’s females.

  With such a dearth of appropriately sized clothing in the shops, it is little wonder that the French clothes market for plus-sizes has gone viral. A French Google search of the terms ‘habillement femme grande taille’ will throw up dozens of names of French and foreign stores doing a roaring Internet trade selling outsize clothes to French women: La Redoute, Dorothy Perkins, Kiabi, Evans, C&A… the list goes on. One of the French outsize Internet shopping sites observes: ‘Sales of large size clothes for bigger women have become a fashion phenomenon, followed by a number of observers. Large-size clothes now have their own fashions. Fashion designers are offering complete collections, with oversize dresses, trousers and lingerie.’ There is also a fast-growing number of specialized Internet dating agencies for curvy folk or personnes rondes, offering dating opportunities for people falling outside ‘conventional beauty criteria’, who with an ordinary dating agency might feel ‘pressurized’ into falsifying their body measurements or feel coy about posting a personal photo. Organizations have been formed to fight for the rights of personnes rondes, including against discrimination in the workplace.*

  * Organizations fighting for the rights of personnes rondes have been formed throughout France and include: Allegro Fortissimo (Paris and regions), Amitiés rondissimes (Loire), Gros (Paris), Grossomodo (Gard), Pakyna (Oise), Ronde Attitude (Bouches-du-Rhône), Rondeurs en plus, and Tout en rondeur (Pas-de-Calais).

  In the meantime, the French government, while downplaying the adult obesity issue in public, has quietly swung into action to safeguard what amounts to one of France’s greatest marketing assets: its worldwide reputation as the land of luxury, style and of slim and glamorous women. Propositions have been made to ban fattening palm oil in food products (the so-called ‘Nutella amendment’), and even to provide gym sessions free on the national health service to pudgier French citizens.

  All in all, France seems to be in deep denial of the reality of its new, curvaceous reflection in the mirror. This denial is not helped by the acres of garbage spewed by foreign visitors who spend a year or so ‘assessing’ the proportions of women in the exclusive arrondissements of central Paris or the beaches of the Côte d’Azur, sending back breathless eulogies of admiration and wonder about the mystical thinness of French women. Will there ever be an end to this flow of merde? Maybe one day, when the growing number of French women who do not conform to the bourgeois ideal finally have a voice. Maybe one day, when the fat French lady sings...

  Myth Evaluation: False: an increasing number of French women are running to fat.

  FRENCH WOMEN ARE KITCHEN GODDESSES

  To cook is above all an act of love and a language which women have developed through the ages to express their feelings. In this field, they have absolute power.

  FATÉMA HAL, MOROCCAN-FRENCH CHEF AND OWNER OF THE CELEBRATED PARISIAN RESTAURANT MANSOURIA, FILLE DES FRONTIÈRES, 2011

  The image of the French woman as a kitchen goddess is an old one. We find it in depictions of the homely, traditional cuisine of the bonne femme: women like the diminutive, white-haired Madame Robertot, who in the late 1920s inspired a sixteen-year-old Elizabeth David, fresh from boarding school in England, to devote her life to proselytizing for French cooking. Madame Robertot ruled her kitchen with a rod of iron. Every week, she would trot to the huge, open market then located in central Paris – Les Halles – and stock up on the weekly provisions, her bag bursting with fresh fruit and vegetables. At her table were served not the pretentious creations of haute cuisine, but food that was ‘lovely without being rich or grand’. In place of elaborate sauces and sensational puddings, there were simple salads of rice and fresh tomatoes; soups of coral, ivory or pale green, as ‘delicately coloured as summer dresses’; and the rich delight of an apricot and chocolate soufflé.9

  Men become passionately attached to women who know how to cosset them with delicate titbits.

  HONORÉ DE BALZAC, FRENCH NOVELIST (1799–1850)

  Inspired by the cooking of bonnes femmes like Madame Robertot, Elizabeth David breathed a waft of exotic life into a British cuisine that was old and war-weary. Decades later, her earthy depictions of the bonne femme were blended, by a new generation of Gallic heroine-worshippers, with the evolving image of the stereotypical French Überwoman as classy, skinny and seductive. Madame Robertot, as David describes her, was short, fat, and dumpy; the new breed of bonne femme was slim and deadly elegant. Thus the contemporary picture of the French woman in the kitchen – as painted by countless expat eulogies – is that of some impossible Gallic diva, who apparently picks up her brood of five children from the crèche in the twinkling of a pair of tottering high heels, whisking them home and treating them to a welcoming chicken julienne with three different sauces that she just happens to have prepared earlier (in between holding down a high-powered job and having her perfectly pampered toes re-pedicured). Surely the image of the bonne femme and her cooking merits a so
mewhat deeper inquiry.

  A good cook is not necessarily a good woman with an even temper. Some allowance should be made for the artistic temperament.

  MARCEL BOULESTIN, FRENCH CHEF (1878–1943)

  The first thing to note about the cooking of the bonne femme is that she was never rated in the French hierarchy as on a par with the chef. In France – to a much greater extent than in England – there has traditionally been a yawning divide between haute cuisine and cuisine bourgeoise, or cuisine familiale: that is, between chefs and cooks, the hallowed temples of refined gastronomy on the one hand, and plain, hearty family fare on the other. For most of French history, men have been the chefs and women the cooks. It is a law of most societies in the world that women lord it over the family kitchen, but that whenever a more socially prestigious or elaborate code of cuisine develops, it uncannily but invariably gets handed over to men.*10

  * This discrimination between male ‘chefs’ and female ‘cooks’ has also reared its ugly head in England in the twenty-first century, with a coterie of male television celebrity chefs dominating the culinary scene. Tellingly, Jools Oliver, wife of Jamie, published a book (Minus Nine to One: The Diary of an Honest Mum, Penguin 2006) in which she included family and children’s recipes; and the blurb to Tana Ramsay’s book of recipes, Family Kitchen (HarperCollins, 2006), states that, while husband Gordon may be the restaurant chef, Tana is ‘firmly in charge of the family’s cooking’. Plus ça change...

  So it was that when French haute cuisine evolved from the seventeenth century onwards, the leading chefs of the day, such as Taillevent and La Varenne, invariably were men, often hailing from a military background where they had served as army cooks. After the Revolution, when most of their former employers were decapitated, this army of chefs found work in the kitchens of the restaurants that were beginning to appear and in the homes of the expanding bourgeoisie. As before, the upper-crust sought male chefs for their kitchen brigades. Only the humblest resorted to the desperate measure of hiring that abomination of nature, the female cook.