March 2007

 

Relations between France and the U.S. may have taken a chilly turn in recent years, but one aspect has not changed—our fascination with French women and their style. Just look at the bookstores…titles such as All You Need to Know to be Impossibly French; Entre Nous: A Woman’s Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl; Fatale: How French Women Do It; and, of course, the best-selling French Women Don’t Get Fat and its follow-up hit, French Women for All Seasons, promise that we too can awaken our slumbering “Frenchness.”

What is that je ne sais quoi that French women seem to possess? Are they just born with it or can we all develop it (apparently so, if the number of books on the subject are any indication)? An interview I read recently probably sums up—for me at least—the essence of French style. A French woman working at a chi-chi boutique in New York was asked why she wasn’t wearing more comfortable shoes—clad as she was in her towering stilettos. Her response, more or less: “I’m European. We’re not interested in being comfortable.”

Stroll down the streets of Paris, and you’ll see what she was talking about—you won’t find a French woman anywhere in that American footwear staple--- the ubiquitous running shoe. If, for some reason, comfort is paramount, a pair of stylish flats or, at the very most, a tailored lace-up shoe that doesn’t mar the elegant line of the rest of their outfit is the shoe du jour.

And the popular American store Chico’s, with its “forgiving” cut for American figures…I challenge you to find an elastic waistband anywhere in Paris. Not that everyone there is enviably whippet-thin (ads for diet programs are now popping up on TV as are low-fat alternatives in the grocery store). But no matter what your size, if you’re a French woman, you dress to—as the old song goes—“accentuate the positive.” Wear a sweatsuit to go shopping? Dieu forbid!

It may sound strange in a country that places such an emphasis on style, but French women do not necessarily follow fashion, says my French-born friend Bibiche, who is married to an American and lives in the States. “We are more interested in looking good than being trendy,” she explains. French women are aware of their own individual physique—faults included—and will wear clothes that flatter rather than are necessarily “of the moment.”

Hence, the importance of accessories. Let’s not even get started on scarves…along with learning their ABC’s in nursery school, it would appear that little French girls all take classes in “scarf tying” (no Girl Scout-type square knot for them!). From the inside out, French women pay attention to themselves, and love doing so—little girls are taught by their mamans the importance of skin care; a visit to a spa is not a once-in-a-blue-moon treat; cosmetics, expertly applied, are not relegated to special occasions; and lacy lingerie is an everyday must, not something saved for a romantic rendezvous. In short, this is a country where the female motto might very well be, as another song goes, “I enjoy being a girl.”

So in a country where “girls will be girls and boys will be boys,” what are relations like between the sexes. In France—whose national symbol is a woman, known as Marianne—men and women actually seem to enjoy one another’s company. Flirting is an art form that adds a frisson of pleasure to the day, not merely a come-on to a sexual encounter. Women “of a certain age” do not become “invisible” to the opposite sex. A French man I once dated was perplexed at what he saw in this country as the constant “battle” men and women always seemed to be having here, whether in the workplace or in their personal lives. In France, he would tell me, everyone accepts that men and women are different and, as the saying goes, Vive la difference! (Of course, this is the same man who expected me to make him dinner at 8 p.m. every night because “that’s what French women do.” So, OK, maybe there are still a few kinks to be worked out.)

Is there a lesson here for those of us not born French (although I’m sure in a past life I too was an elegant Parisienne who knew how to drape that scarf just so!)? Oui, we can copy the Frenchwoman’s clothes, make-up, and diet, but maybe it’s just as simple as learning to enjoy the art of femininity. It’s time to embrace our inner “girly-girl!”