Read The Secret Life of France for Free Online

beauty.
    ‘Nobody looks at each other here,’ she once remarked as we stepped off the London tube. ‘It’s not just the men, women don’t look at each other either.’
    ‘It’s rude to stare,’ I said, unconvincingly.
    But for Ella, of course, it was rude to be ignored.
    * Nicolas Sarkozy was the first president to decide to break this tradition – which never became law.

3
Being a Woman
La Libido, La Femme Fatale and the Sisterhood
    The cults of Pleasure and Beauty are allegedly why French women don’t get fat. This, of course, is simply not true. There are plenty of fat French women about and as fast-food invades France, they’re getting more and more numerous. * But because there is no sin attached either to the pleasure of sex or to the pleasure of food, overeating tends not to be a manifestation of self-loathing. Put simply, if your body is a temple for the pursuit of guilt-free sexual pleasures, then you’re less likely to want to trash it.
    I, like most women in France, have a gynaecologist. When I first arrived, my mother-in-law, Madeleine, had insisted on it. The French gynaecologist is usually a self-appointed sexologist as well. Every time I went for a check-up my gynaecologist would look up from his notes and, with an earnest expression, ask me:
    ‘ Et la libido? Ça va? ’
    Once, I admitted that things were a bit sluggish in that department.
    ‘How long have you been married? Eight years? C’est normal . I can give you a little testosterone if you like.’
    He then warned me that it might produce a little unwanted hair but that it worked wonders.
    I told him that I’d leave it for the time being.
    Even French GPs concern themselves with their patients’ sexual health. An English friend of mine who has been living in Paris for five years recently went to his GP for a check-up. In the middle of the consultation, there was a knock on the door. The doctor’s secretary begged to be excused for the interruption. She had a patient on the phone who was complaining that she hadn’t had an orgasm for a month and she wondered if it could be the result of the medication the doctor had prescribed. My friend watched the doctor in disbelief as he pondered the matter for a moment.
    ‘ Non, non . It’s not the medication. It’s probably psychological factors. Tell her she can make an appointment to discuss it.’
    The secretary smiled sweetly at my friend and then closed the door behind her. Without the slightest ripple of unease, the GP picked up where he had left off.
    *
    There is an entire sub-genre within the canon of French cinema that deals with the subject of frigidity. When I first arrived, Laurent was always taking me to see these films, the first of which was one of his favourites: L’Eté Meurtrier , with Isabelle Adjani. This film is also part of the category known as Femme Fatale films, for which the French seem to have an inexhaustible appetite. In the filmAdjani plays a tragically frigid, pouting beauty who seeks revenge for the rape of her mother by marrying and mentally torturing the son of one of the supposed rapists. The film, set in a picturesque village in Provence in the mid-seventies, is a vehicle for Adjani’s lithe and permanently sweaty body. At the time I couldn’t believe that my new husband, a man who had three university degrees, could actually fall for such drivel. Now, when I see the film, I’m struck by how accurately it portrays French provincial life – a certain turn of phrase, a certain era and a certain type of French woman, who really does exist. French women do pout. Widespread pouting among women is a reflection of the belief that women are allowed to, expected to, behave badly. (It is also a fact that the French language – with its reliance on the various forms of the short ‘o’ and ‘u’ sound – is set up for pouting.)
    Pouting is also the speciality of the femme-enfant , a label that would be highly inappropriate in Britain but which has wide