Letter From Paris
Paris Kiosque - April 2001 - Volume 8, Number 5
Copyright (c) 2001 Harriet Welty-Rochefort - Used with permission.
An American friend of ours, a history professor who visits Paris every few
years, told us on his most recent trip that "the French have become so
dear, so polite." He recounts sitting in a café where he was given someone
else's order. "Twenty years ago," he says, "the waiter would have plunked
it down in front of me and told me it was my problem, not his. This one
apologized politely, speedily took the wrong drink away, and brought back
the right one with a smile."
He continued: "And the other day I was lost and asked my way. Not one, but
three people came to my rescue, with one of them walking me almost all the
way to where I was going."
Mon Dieu! thought I. Could the reputation of French rudeness be going by
the wayside? (Remember the days when people actually wouldn't come to
France because they "had heard the French are so uppity?") If the French,
who were masters of the art of arrogance, are no longer excelling in it,
what will be left? Will the French become just like everyone else? Will
they soon be telling people to "have a good day"? (Answer: some already
do!). Quelle horreur!
Fortunately, all is not lost. While French waiters and service people in
general have made vast improvements over the years to the point that there
is no longer any reason to equate "French" with "rude", this doesn't mean
that snottiness has been eradicated. It's just that it's become rare - so
much so that on the few occasions someone is downright rude to me it almost
warms my heart! Ah, the good old days!
For when the French are rude, they do it with such panache! As with
everything else, they have elevated it to an art form. (And, as I've always
said, since they are used to giving each other pieces of their minds on a
regular basis, it clears the air. The equivalent of what they say to each
other would elicit a gunfight in the States. Here they just take it in their
stride - c'est normal). And there are so many varieties: There's the out
and out in-your-face rudeness which is what you witness in most urban spats
(or brawls). There's the highly polite nasty little remark which people
kind of throw out for the interlocutor to catch (your French has to be
REALLY good to get these). Then there's the basic garden variety: "Get
out of my life, you're a problem, why do you exist and why do I have to
serve you?"
I experienced the latter just the other day when I wandered into a shop
selling discount designer clothes. The owner (or salesperson, or whoever
she was -for all I know she might have just walked in off the street) was
arranging a beautiful dress and barely looked up to acknowledge my presence.
"Are the clothes arranged by size?" I queried, as I tried to figure out how
to begin my search.
"No," came the reply. The disinterest in me as a potential buyer was
total. This always fascinates me, as I remain under the mistaken impression
that that salespeople are there to sell....
"Then how do you know where to look?" I continued, perplexed.
She finally deigned to look at me - if you can call a glance that would
make a flower shrivel up and die a look - and said...nothing!
At this point, another lady who was just sitting there, decided to inform
me: "What you do is tell Madame what you are looking for and then she will
select for you the most wonderful things that she has."
"Over my dead body" I said to myself. If Madame can't talk, Madame doesn't
get my business! I toyed with telling the lady that people like her are the
ones foreigners refer to when they talk about "the rude French". But since
I was quite sure she could care less - and since, as I said, these kinds of
episodes happen so rarely these days - I decided to let sleeping dogs lie.
Speaking of dogs, here's an area in which the French still have a highly
deserved bad reputation. I'd LOVE to see my friend come back some day and
say: "People used to let their dogs go just anywhere in the streets.
What's happened? The streets are so CLEAN" . The day that happens I'll
offer champagne to the entire city of Paris. Meanwhile, the problem of la
merde remains. Why? Lack of a "sens civique". The idea is: when I'm
out on the street, I do what I want and my dog does what it wants where it
wants which most of the time is RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SIDEWALK. As a
result, the City of Light has become laced with filth. And for years the
Paris City Hall has desperately tried to come up with campaigns to make dog
owners aware that THIS IS NOT RIGHT.
The latest ad campaign features a series of people - a blind man with a
cane, a lady in a wheelchair, an adorable blond tot with a shovel playing in
a public park - in various encounters with excrement. The heavily ironic
text for the ads is always the same: YOU'RE RIGHT NOT TO PICK IT UP. THEY
DO IT PERFECTLY WELL FOR YOU. The lady in the wheelchair rolls through the
crap which then adheres to the wheels, the well-dressed blind man's white
can becomes a veritable shish kebab of shit, and the little toddler is just
about to dig up, not sand or dirt, but ...guess what?
The pictures are revolting - and I fear the campaign may be effective only
for those who are already disgusted. The ones it is aimed out probably
don't even look at it - or get the message if they do.
Here's hoping I'm wrong.
And while we're on ads, here's another way in which the French have
remained very French.
Advertisers all over the world to some extent use sex to sell (soap, cars,
perfume) but no one does it as overtly and as publicly and shamelessly as
the French. Having lived here long enough not to get overly exercised about
the view of ladies and men on billboards in various states of undress, it
takes a lot to even register on my shock level. Recently, though, the sheer
number and accumulation of ads showing women in sado-maso garb, women
totally nude bent over in suggestive positions, women in bras saying "I
like my breasts. Is that a problem?" has started to get to me.
And the best part of it is: I'm not alone.
As I picked up Le Monde the other night, I was surprised to see pictures of
the very ads which had offended me with an article reporting that the Bureau
de vérification de la publicité (BVP), a bureau of self-regulation in
advertising, is looking into them because they think they've gone just a tad
too far in terms of abusing the "dignité de la femme".
An example: the Yves St. Laurent publicity for Opium in which a red-head
with a magnificent body dressed only in high heels reclines in an erotic
positions as she touches one of her her breasts. (Her legs by the way are
invitingly apart). Well, I don't know about you but this turned me off
Opium perfume and I'm not the only one - the British forbid the ad.
That's perfume (and just one ad - there are too many to cite). Then
there's lingerie which quite naturally lends itself to selling with sex. A
recent campaign for bras by Barbara features an enticingly juicy young woman
clad in her bras saying "J'adore mes seins. C'est grave?" (I love my
breasts. Is that a problem?") In another ad in the same campaign, she
wonders aloud: "My breasts make my husband infantile. Is that normal?"
Even shoemakers have jumped on the bandwagon. An ad for Weston (French
luxury shoes) showed a sparsely clad young woman facing an enormous foot (a
Weston, of course). The subliminal message wasn't hard to figure out even
if you're not into sado-maso relationships - and the BVP got the company to
take down the offending image.
These campaigns have gone so far that the (female) Minister of the Family
and Childhood (Ministre de la famille et de l'enfance) who calls the ads
"the zero degree of creativity" has become involved. She says she hopes
the government and the ad agencies will reach an agreement to stop these
degrading images of women. If not, the government will be forced to pass a
law and do it for them. An encouraging sign - and if on this score the
French become a little less French, well, I for one, won't cry.
But if the French continue to be French on the dog poop front and the ads
which insult women front, fortunately they are French on many other fronts
which are positive and pleasant.
Take the May 1 "Fète du Travail" holiday for example. On this day the
entire country is deluged with "muguets" (lilies of the valley). People of
every age are selling them on every street corner, in every town, large or
small. This is a favorite holiday for the very reason that in spite of its
name, people are NOT working. It's often a wonderful excuse for a prolonged
week-end or "pont" (bridge) if it falls on a Tuesday as it does this year.
The flowers are thought to bring good luck and their heady fragrance lends
hope to the thought that there may indeed be a real spring (especially this
year when the impressive rainfall of the past few months has caused rivers
to rise and spirits to sink).
Today, as is the custom, my husband and I drove to his mother's apartment
across town from where we live and brought her a bouquet of muguets. As we
drove we watched people walking to and fro buying their flowers, lining up
for movies, strolling along, sitting on café terraces. On our way back home
we stopped the car and got out to visit a tiny little park I'd never heard
of. It was a small beautifully landscaped patch of land in the middle of
the rather colorless 13th arrondissement. Children played near a little
fountain while parents watched. A couple of adolescents played some ping
pong. Older couples read books or newspapers.
I thought back to a trip my husband and I had recently taken to the charming
port city of La Rochelle. Since we both love oysters and this is where the
best ones are raised, we gorged on them for the entire week-end. At one
point we decided to take a boat to the tiny island of Aix but since it was
pouring rain and we had some time before the boat left, we ducked into a
modest little restaurant-café and ordered a dozen oysters and a glass of
Muscadet to wash them down. The weather was lousy but we were inside and we
didn't care.
This is a country of moments, some of them magic ones. You don't expect
them and don't know when or where they'll come. Your magic moment might be
someone's smile in the metro, or it might be just sitting there on that park
bench. Sure, from time to time you have to contend with dog poop
(especially in Paris) and occasional rude behavior (again, especially in
Paris). But then nothing's perfect anywhere you go, n'est-ce pas?
So in spite of the inconveniences and things I gently rail about from time
to time, it's very clear to me. I'm glad to be here. And I'll stay on.
Just in case there's another magic moment.
Harriet Welty-Rochefort, is the author of
French Toast: An American in Paris
Celebrates the Maddening Mysteries of the French, published by St. Martin's
Press in 1999, and which the Los Angeles
Times called "wise and devastatingly funny."
Her latest book,
French Fried: The Culinary Capers of an American in Paris
was just published by St. Martin's Press. American Way Magazine's book
reviewer writes: "...the author, an American who has lived in France for 30
years, describes the food scene there in hilarious detail, from dogs (the
real, live four-legged ones) in every restaurant to rather hard-to-swallow
French delicacies. Boar's head, anyone?" Paris Voice calls French Fried "a
literary wink at the culinary discrepancies between Gallic gastronomy and
stateside munching.
For more information on Harriet's books, click on
www.hwelty.com.
If you've had some funny, startling, satisfying, or dismaying
food experiences in France you'd like to share,
you may contact Harriet directly at
hwelty@club-internet.fr.
Editor's Note:
Dear Readers, while our writers are always
delighted to hear and to receive comments, both about their columns in the The Paris Kiosque,
as well as your experiences in Paris,
they are unable to answer any requests
for travel information.
Thank you for your understanding.
