FRENCH WOMEN DON'T GET FAT - STATES OF DESIRE

 Mireille Guiliano

The mind is the French woman’s ultimate firewall against getting fat, and the senses are, of course, the portals to the mind. Through them we take in the world—its flavors, its textures, its sounds, and its smells. We all practice a little form of “yoga” with our senses. We concentrate on them just as we concentrate on our breathing. In this way we get the most out of experience, including what we eat. Contentment of this kind is something you make for yourself. It’s the essence of l’art de vivre (the art of living), which is how we French pursue joie de vivre (the joy of living). While this pursuit sometimes causes us to be mocked as “too bourgeois,” in fact, our way of pursuing pleasure has little to do with social status. Our next vacation means much more to us than a new car, and we would never sacrifice the former for the latter except in a case of dire necessity. Give us being and feeling over having any day.

Anyone possessed of the five human senses can reap the benefits of sharpening them. Walking on the beach, touching a pet, eating an orange, picking up and sniffing a piece of wood—all are sensory experiences of which we can become more aware through practice. Concentrate on each, develop your own terms of description, and soon your every moment will be fuller. One must never forget that little experiences produce, through association and memory, a gamut of emotions. These are linked with our life experiences, culture, and environment. Proust’s madeleine takes countless forms. The more conscious you become of these effects, the more you can make of them. And the better you’ll be at evading the effects of more destructive emotions.

French women make sure they have lots of petits riens, those little nothings of daily pleasure that are actually quite something to us. We have so many words for pampering—gâter, dorloter, bichonner, se chouchouter—but we don’t equate it with decadence. It makes us enjoy life more, from moment to moment, and keeps us from seeking too much consolation from any one pleasure, such as food. If we deny ourselves something, it’s not to teach our greedy selves a lesson. (Self-punishment is never our path to well-being.) The only purpose of withholding some pleasure is so we can more fully enjoy everything else for having it in proper balance.

Of course, there’s nothing we enjoy as often or universally as food. So it’s quite foreign to us the way Americans associate eating with sin and guilt. A French woman might refer to her afternoon pastry at a café terrace as her petit péché mignon, but she is being ironic (only in the French mind could sin be “tiny” and “adorable”!). The American gastronomic morality, by contrast, is dead serious. As the charming Anglo-sometime-American Francophile Peter Mayle writes in French Lessons, “Scarcely a week goes by without some ominous pronouncement about the price we must pay for our brief moments of indulgence.” The trouble, as he wisely understands, is not having a little butter and wine and red meat; the trouble is having way too much. Eating in America has become controversial behavior, with all sorts of “non-nutritional” sexual, social, political, cultural, and even clinical overtones. Our troubles with weight have as much to do with our attitudes toward eating as they do with what we are ingesting. We are seeing a growing psychosis that I believe actually adds stress to our already stressful way of life. It is fast erasing the simple values of pleasure. Without a national change of heart, we have little hope of turning the tide of the obesity epidemic.

THE LOVE OF EATING

For the French, Colette put it best when she described the table as un rendez-vous d’amour et d’amitié (a date with love and friendship). And it’s not a purely figurative description, because we tend to see our pleasures as being interconnected. We can’t imagine anything more boring than to live with someone who doesn’t care about food or eating or sharing meals. One passion goes hand in hand with another. Of course, it’s a two-way street. The actor Omar Sharif captivated a generation of French females not only with his dark good looks in Dr. Zhivago, but also by declaring he could not desire a woman who didn’t love to eat. Certainly French women, suckers though we may be for the intellectual type, could hardly care for a man indifferent to sensuality.

Sensuality is vital to our ideas of seduction, and seduction figures prominently in the French woman’s sense of herself. We have always known one doesn’t have to be a great beauty to seduce, but one does have to be sensual. A model may catch a man’s eye, but if she happens to be a sensually abstinent woman, she won’t hold him for long. Style, a sense of taste, and elegance can go far, too, but pure arm candy is an unsatisfying supper. It’s not that French women are not assaulted with as many unnatural ideals of womanhood presented in glossy magazines; we just don’t take it personally. No matter how well turned out or fit, if one is not bien dans sa peau, one can never project that certain état de grâce. This is something every woman can learn to achieve, and French women channel more intuitively than most. For all her attention to what she wears and what she eats, a French woman is most defined by ease in being herself and the attractiveness of taking her pleasures. It has little to do with weighing a certain amount. And it doesn’t come upon you through avoiding food.

Au contraire, the meal itself, in all its splendor, has been a scene of seduction since the grand court dinners of Versailles. French women seduce with the way they order and savor food, with the sly complicity of stealing a taste from the other’s plate or feeding our lover a particularly choice morsel. And just as certain formalities at the table can heighten the psychic zing of the food, so too can setting, presentation, and ambiance intensify the mood of dining together. A surprise dish or unplanned dinner out can pique the curiosity more than the loveliest routine supper. I always recommend throwing in a bottle of Champagne as the clincher. For the French, the sex appeal of eating is second nature. Perhaps this is why so many erotic blandishments refer to food. I grew up hearing the entire repertoire of edible endearments: mon petit canard (my little duck), mon chou (cabbage), ma tourterelle (dove), ma caille (quail)...

UNE AMOUREUSE RIGOLOTE

Sex itself is a great antiaging formula with no side effects. It has cardiovascular benefits and increases the production of hormones that diminish stress and improve mood. A good mood is the right state in which to enjoy all pleasures properly, especially food. The right frame of mind is vital to contentment, diminishing the urge for excess. But even more than sex, being in love is good for you. Gauguin in Tahiti created a wood relief he entitled Soyez Amoureuse pour Être Heureuse (To Be Happy Be in Love). Not a bad recipe.

Perhaps this sounds to you like one of those “easier said than done” prescriptions, on a par with “Eat right and exercise.” Nevertheless, I observe many women failing to embrace love as pleasure. Relationships and marriage can be pursued with the same grim determination that some bring to their careers. (There has even been a recent book about applying MBA training to finding a husband.) Romance is not a science but an art, no less so than the art of eating well. And it takes cultivation and refinement if a relationship is to offer its fullest rewards.

In love we blend versatility with constancy, the stiff and the supple, the excitement of glamour with the pleasure of comfort—contrasts and surprises that keep love as well as food interesting. And we are not careless with our investments, as usual favoring quality over quantity. True love depends on truly knowing someone, and getting to know someone takes a very long while, often a lifetime. Perhaps this is why French women are better than any others I know at preserving spark and mystery even after ten, twenty, or more years of cohabitation! It’s worth the money and effort. I am always reminded of Louis Aragon, who said, in what is probably my favorite love poem, “Il n’y a pas d’amour heureux / Mais c’est notre amour à tous deux,” which translates loosely as “There is no happy love / But the love of us two.”

Nothing promotes the continued spontaneity of love like laughter. French women dream of finding un amoureux rigolo (a love who is funny, makes us laugh). The old wisdom that laughter keeps us young finds empirical support in the fact that a four-year-old laughs about five hundred times a day, while for the average adult it’s only fifteen. If that’s your idea of growing up, you can keep it. The French woman understands intuitively that one does not laugh because one is happy; one is happy because one laughs. It’s both a physical and psychic pleasure: it is relaxing, stimulating, liberating, and sensual. It’s a pleasant response to emotion that heightens the emotion itself. The physical act of laughing stimulates the production of hormones that elevate mood; it’s also a form of internal calisthenic that improves blood circulation and, yes, does burn more calories than sitting glumly. Laughs are like wild mushrooms: they don’t deliver themselves to you—you have to go in search of them, whether by pursuing the unexpected or by being totally crazy (dingue is the word we use), to keep the adventure of living adventurous. Whether in friendship or in romance, one shouldn’t sit around waiting to be entertained. Take the initiative and make a rendezvous with someone whose company you enjoy. Don’t let a busy life or electronic communication gadgets be your excuse for excess solitude—it’s a talent, but a rare one, to be able to make yourself laugh.

Years ago Edward’s mother, who lucky for me adores me, was much relieved when he finally proposed. But she knew for certain we’d remain together when later she’d ask him how it was going and Edward would say, “She makes me laugh.” In fact, at holiday meals, I enjoy making his entire family laugh. Over the years we’ve laughed a lot, and when I ask him, “Do you still love me?” he always answers, “As long as you make me laugh.” I make sure I do.

Dr. Miracle was first to tell me: “Tout est une question d’attitude” (“Everything’s a matter of attitude”). The great Provençal writer Marcel Pagnol believed that God gave laughter to human beings as consolation for being intelligent. I prefer to believe he made us intelligent so we could appreciate a good laugh.

By Mireille Guiliano in "French Women Don't Get Fat", Alfred A. Knopf (a division of Random House, Inc), New York, 2005, chapter 11. Digitalized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

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