IN just a few weeks comes the latest entry in the cottage fromage industry built upon the superiority of the French woman: This one, “French Women Don’t Sleep Alone,” is a how-to written by a 54-year-old suburban wife and mother who lives on Cape Cod. (The flap promises a guide to “The French Art of Flirtation” and other Gallic “pleasurable secrets to finding love.”)
Some five years after writer Mireille Guiliano exploited this curious American inferiority complex with her best-selling guidebook “French Women Don’t Get Fat,” a few questions have yet to be answered: Just who decided French women are better than we are? The French? When did American women buy into this? Who says French women are more stylish, more cultured, have more and better sex, and can smoke and drink and eat whatever they want without suffering bad skin or contracting lung cancer or – worst of all – getting fat?
French Women v American Women: Who Would You Rather Hang Out With?
And why is it that New York City women – who regard the rest of America the same way Parisian women regard the rest of France (i.e., beneath them) – are equally conned?
As it happens, French women are as vulnerable to the glamorous ideal of the mythical French woman as Americans are. They, too, have been influenced by the same impossibly chic role models – Coco Chanel, Catherine Deneuve, Carole Bouquet – and have the same fear of falling short.
“For me, the French woman is a nice and beautiful myth,” says 33-year-old Garance Dore, who lives in Paris and edits an eponymous, highly influential blog that covers street style. “It’s a generalization, but it’s very dangerous.”
In fact, Dore thinks that New York City women are far superior to their Parisian counterparts. “I remember, when I came to New York City in September, writing about how stylish and perfect the women are,” she says. “The girls are very organized about their beauty. Their skin is flawless. Everyone works out. They have perfect nails, perfect hair.”
“French women,” she admits, “would love to be like American women. We are very impressed by the perfection. It’s a dream for the French woman.”
But what of the vaunted joie de vivre? The je ne sais quoi?
“That je ne sais quoi that American women talk about – we’re just a little bit more lazy in dressing,” she says. “We’re lazier and messier.” She adds that they don’t like to wash their hair as much or get manicures.
But not every French woman agrees with Dore’s unvarnished assessment – especially if that French woman has made millions of dollars by keeping her American sisters down.
“A lot of women admire the style, the chic of the French woman,” says Guiliano, who lives in Paris and the West Village. “I get that all the time.” In 2006, Guiliano published “French Women for All Seasons,” the best-selling sequel to “French Women Don’t Get Fat.” She now spends time on the American lecture circuit, warning incoming college students about the perils of gaining the “freshman 15.”
According to the 62-year-old Guiliano, her American friends envy French women. “It makes me very sad to see the fat people walking around in New York,” she says.
But when pressed, Guiliano too admits that much of this conventional thinking “is a myth. A lot of it stems from the movies and the imagery we have. Most Americans only go to Paris and never see France. In Paris, there is a specific attitude to the way you look and the way you walk. And they are very arrogant – with everyone! There is this attitude – much like New Yorkers – that they know something you don’t.”
Perhaps, like most superiority complexes, the French attitude of supremacy is born from an inferiority complex.
Like Dore, Guiliano admits to a bit of envy herself when it comes to American women – specifically, the feminist movement and the advances women have made in the working world. In October, she will publish a business book that is heavily informed by her experiences working in New York versus Paris.
“There are so few female CEOs in France,” she says. “We have no sexual harassment policies. American women – in many ways, you have much more self-confidence than we do.
“Of course,” she adds, “that’s just because you’re 15 years ahead of the French.”