"And that's how the world, I think, imagines French women you know like very womanly and seducing men and that's how they like to imagine them". - Sophie Marceau (French actress, world famous since 1980. Bond girl in "The World is not Enough" and "LOL")
I never thought much of her, because i missed out her first hit movies completely " The Boum" . All that i got out of the 80's Boum phenomenon in my early teens was being subject to Bombardment of the theme song "dreams are my reality" in every shopping mall, restaurant, and radio ( if, like me, you happen to have "sejour" in Canberra between early 80's to mid 90's, you will find that they are still playing the same songs in FM stations), This song usually comes before a Bett Midler number and after a Kylie Monugue/Jason Donovan duet or an Air Supply's "all out of love" - haha, now we are talking age, not mileage!- those 80's songs or what they would call singapore, "golden oldies" , make KennyG numbers somewhat welcoming, especially after one hour of them at a supermarket. (Whatever happened to Richard Sanderson? Does anyone know? While we are there, does anyone know what happened to A-Ha? As many "golden oldies" are making come-backs in Singapore, e.g. Rick Astley, Bananarama, I wonder if A-Ha will appear at a community club near my house...
One thing that is becoming exceedingly scary is when you are pushing the trolley down a frozen food isle, and suddenly you find yourself humming or even singing along with one of those 80's songs, worse, when you
actually empathize or identify with the mood of those chansons....ah, the sweet sensation of feeling like a youth one more time...... before my teenage daughter pleads "mom, don't embarrass me......"
Anyways, enough nostalgia and I should spare you a lengthy footnote about Canberra. My point was simply that Sophie Marceau is truly remarkable in pointing out the obvious : the non-French imagine what French women are or should be like - seducing men, charming, feminine - all the while the world and the French women live with this imagination...happily.
I totally agree with Sophie. (I have been on first name basis with her since I realised that, like me, she is more than a pretty face). (My daughter is so not reading this post).
There are many French women, despite always dressed up in elegant fashion and superbly superficially tanned, possess the most tradtional virtues like serving the family, never do "girls' night outs", working full time and raising four children, attending to all the household chores while holding highly regarded diplomas from top institutions. They are able to entertain 20 on a Sunday diner at a country house or 10 at a Parisian weekday diner that finishes at 1am. They sleep 4 hours a day, drink 8 cups of coffee at work, manage their shopping all on a sunday morning- if it is not the sunday where they have to drive out of Paris at 6am to beat the traffic of parisiens going to Normandy). I have a friend who, like her husband, is an engineer from Central, and holds a cadre superieur job in the same company as her husband. ( curiously, at least for a Canberran like me, while perfectly acceptable to all good French families), she is the one doing all the housework with the help of a cleaning lady during weekdays. Thanks to her training as scientist, she works out exactly how many grams of meat, vegetables and grains each family member requires, and based on that, she works out a recipe for each day and then carries out her grocery shopping accordingly. No waste, and...no taste. " I have three children, i have to follow a procedure meticulously. Of course, they eat more as they grower older. Reverse for my husband." She has been an idol for me ever since we befriended at a ClubMed. (Yes, once a year, she gets a break).
French women, especially married ones, have my total admiration.
Another friend is a law professor at the top university in Paris. We spent one week at their vacation house, an 18th century castle with 12 rooms, each happened to be filled with a child/guest/relative/freeloader/husband's friend/nanny who is useless/teenager (simply), with a swimming pool to be cleaned daily and her parents in-laws dropping by every two hours to "see if everything is OK and help if necessary". I had no idea how she managed and felt guilty the whole time I was there....not able to scrub the kitchen nor did I want to. The house was 30 km from the nearest village/town for provisions so everyone ate three meals in this house everyday while her husband took off with his brothers and friends to do a cross-country walk across the Mountains Pyrenees frontier between France/Spain. She was running the show with the help of a friend (a doctor and mother of two young kids herself who, in the previous year, had hosted a vacation at her own country home). There were no maids, no cleaning lady as it was the summer time and impossible to find labor especially out in the countryside of Dordogne. One evening, after a late dinner, I saw her retiring to her room with a stack of law books. She said, "got to prepare to give a lecture at a comparative law conference in Amsterdam in September..all in English".
In Singapore, I have the pleasure of befriending some women who make their own bread, cheese (using the goat milk from Malay market), curtains, tablecloth, dress and cushion. (Let me ask how many of you, yes, you, who are reading this right now, through FB on a weekend (instead of cooking up a feast for the family or making useful materials for interior decoration) can use a sewing machine....) The fact that they have the financial means does not change their way of life, "I always make them myself, it's fun to choose the fabric and we always keep a piece so afterwards if we want to buy more furniture, we can color-coordinate the cushion/pillow case..." .
Or, "my husband will not eat the bread made here, so I have to make them myself".
Or, "There are some fantastic fabric at Arab street, why not make it since I brought the sewing machine from France?"
Or, "on fait comme ca! ("that is how we do things")"
A very dear friend managed to cook up the family Christmas dinner for 40 in her house the day her flight arrived from Singapore. "My mother helped me a lot, she did the shopping, I just had to cook, you see".
Some years ago, an american woman wrote a best seller called "French Women don't Get Fat". Of course not, they are always on the move. All the calories taken in are burned within the same day. With their talent in color matching and sewing, they know how to take up the hem, pull in the waist and lengthen the sleeve to give the appearance of slim but not thin, voluptuous but not plump, with the right make-up that makes them look "naturally beautiful".
I make no judgment. Just always found it a bit paradoxical to see my neighbor huffing and puffing with her gym trainer in the front lawn while the pizza boxes from the diner the night before are still waiting to be collected just outside the gate.
Why not? When the labor cost is so high and unattainable, one (or two, if the husband is always capable and willing) takes on the tasks upon themselves. We are lucky in Asia. Pretty much everyone can afford a foreign domestic worker. Not the case in France, I used to have a helper who is paid as much as a first year university graduate in France, works only 35 hours a week, when the clock strikes 6pm - the time agreed for her to finish her day - she would leave my 1-yr-old in the middle of her dinner and say good bye and be out the door within one second. (Her boyfriend was a security guard at Adidas on Champs Elysees who also finishes work on time and together they need quality time).
Should I not then pick up sewing and other domestic skills in anticipation of the eventual return to France for a life without "helper/ama/maid"? Yes, I will put my mind to it as my husband intends to retire in a castle in the Loire Valley. One light year away from the nearest town/shopping mall/civilization, somewhere GPS will not show, Amazon cannot deliver......
Footnote 1: Canberra, the capital of Australia that is as little known as the Ottawa of Canada. Canberra, where i spent a significant part of my life as a young person, and where ever i went afterwards, Canberra has always stays with me. There are always people who come to me, say, in a remote part of Solomon Islands (true, i have stayed there for one month, since my hobby as youth was collecting memories of staying at obscurely inconnu places, and total number of much collection amounts to "2", as in 20 years in Canberra and one month in Solomon Islands), " wow, you live in Canberra, you actually choose to live there...as in it was blatantly transparent that i was neither a politician or federal public servant on an mission in the nation's capital). Just a few days ago, a diplomat was quite impressed - as one of the diplomatic skills of a diplomatic, to look impressed by presence or conversation of the female entourage of a somewhat important diner compagnion- " iIhave been to Canberra when I was young, we had to pass Goulburn and stopped to eat inside a concrete sheep"
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