If you even remotely harbor the slightest tendencies towards Francophilia, you’ll be familiar with the great Mireille Guiliano, author of the international bestseller French Women Don’t Get Fat
The latest attempt to cash in on the French-women-as-icons-of-perfection is Jamie Cat Callan‘s French Women Don’t Sleep Alone
Callan delves into topics such as the importance of lingerie, the skillful use of food as a tool of seduction, the lost art of conversation and the attendant indispensability of intelligence as yet another means by which to capture a man’s imagination and attention, and the absolute necessity of caring for one’s physical self as an expression of self-love. Nothing unique here, of course — Frith Powell, Harriet Welty Rochefort and Anne Barone have all tread the same familiar ground.
She does introduce the interesting idea of the coterie, i.e., a woman’s “posse” or entourage of friends who serve as a sort of emotional armor as well as instant social circle, sort of like the group you usually see following Hugh Grant around in all those Richard Curtis films. Callan emphasizes frequently throughout the book that French women don’t date (indeed, that’s the title of her first chapter); instead, they generally get together in groups at dinner parties, films, museum events, and the like. Callan believes that this tradition serves a dual purpose: it allows the woman to see a man in a more casual, unforced context as opposed to the nerve-wracking one-on-one of a date, while also allowing the man to observe how the potential object of his affections interacts with others. Apparently, this is a superior mating ritual to the American dating system, since we Americans can get so uptight and desperate that we sabotage fragile relationships by putting too much pressure on Every. Single. Date.
I can see Callan’s point, and she builds much of the argument of her book on this premise. It’s not exactly original, of course — in many, many cultures and not just among the French, the American style of dating is a foreign concept. In most of Asia and the Latin countries south of the border, men and women usually interact in group settings, pairing up only much later, when they get to know each other better. Heck, one of my girlfriends, an African-American, told me bluntly that “Black women don’t date. We hang out.” So French women aren’t alone in engaging in this safety-in-numbers practice.
Still, I can’t help but wonder at times as I read through the book: Okay, so she interviewed tons of French citizens and even American men and women who now (or have in the past) live in France, but did interview any American men and women? Seriously, I often tire of the stereotypes of French women inflicted on us by the media intent on painting an entire nation a monochromatic shade of beige. You’ve heard the drill: French women are paragons of style; they’re smart and sexy; they read Descartes and worship at the House of Chanel; they eat three square meals a day and never snack; they drink cafe au lait for breakfast and wine with dinner…you can fill in the rest. Actually, anyone who’s cracked open an American women’s magazine the last few years can fill in the rest.
Read enough of it, however, and you begin to be suspicious that perhaps this is all an illusion, a grand plan by the French Culture Ministry to showcase their women as yet another tourist attraction, minus the cracks under the pedestal and the meticulously pedicured feet of clay. You start hearing about French women who are fat, who wear cotton granny panties and have never owned even a Chanel luggage tag. French women who wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a scarf or couldn’t kiss to save her life. We’ve all heard about how popular McDonald’s is in Paris, despite all this talk about the French obsession with fresh, made-from-scratch foods.
Callan’s book, however, reminds me, too, of the stereotypes of American women we so often hear, from overseas tourists and media, and well, our own media. We American women are materialistic. We are sloppy dressers and live under the impression that we can either be “smart and plain” or “beautiful and dumb.” We don’t know how to use beauty products. We defeminize ourselves in public as a lasting legacy of the “bra burning” era (anyone who actually burned their bras in the Sixties, please raise your hand). We don’t know how to flirt, how to keep a man’s attention focused on us, or even how to meet a man, and therefore must resort to playing an endless round of Internet- and speed-dating, forever doomed to meet the dregs of society.
Does this describe you or anyone else you know? I’d like to think that it doesn’t describe me, and it certainly doesn’t sound like any of my girlfriends, past or present. My girls have all been smart and beautiful; they love their Sephoras and Ultas as much as French women love their grands magasins; they meet guys everywhere, from bookstores to libraries to museums to movies to, yup, their own circle of friends; and we like our bras perfectly intact and away from direct sources of heat, thankyouverymuch. I’ve personally met wonderful men at the library; at Barnes & Noble; while taking the LSAT (Law School Admission Test); at the Y; in class; on my travels; on the beach; at the airport; on a plane; and, oh yeah, on the Internet.
That’s probably one of the most disappointing aspects of this book, the assumption that we American women are quite the dog when it comes to romance, while French women represent the ideal of sexual appeal. It can be depressing and surprising to read if you were under the impression that we Americans are doing quite well in the romance department, although it likely only reinforces the wrongheaded stereotype harbored by many non-Americans who only know us through our movies and TV shows. French women as a whole do indeed have a well-deserved reputation for their femininity, grace, and allure, and we can learn a thing or two about how they treat themselves (with utmost respect and love, as much as we give others) and how they live their lives in pursuit of pleasure. But this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t celebrate the many things that make American women equally intriguing: our casual, carefree personalities; our openness and hospitality; our embrace of diversity; our appetite for life (even if it does mean a few extra pounds, or thirty); our lack of pretension; our generosity; our individualism.
In some ways this book seems like an update of The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right. Remember that awful, regressive bestseller that was such a huge hit in the early 1990′s? It advocated for women to be the passive and manipulative, to exude an “air of mystery” by not laughing out loud, not calling a man or asking him out, not taking the initiative, and basically not making a fuss. It caused a huge controversy but was inexplicably quite popular, and to this day I still hear the occasional reference to it. Never mind that it did women a terrible disservice by throwing them back to a time when sexual harassment was the unspoken perk of men in the workplace and women were supposed to be seen and not heard.
Callan basically repeats much of the same information, sometimes even sounding exactly like that book. Consider:
Here in America, it may take a little time, but our men are pretty darn smart. They’ll catch on and take notice before you know it. They’ll see that there are women out there — gorgeous women, but they’re just not chasing them anymore. Slowly, it will dawn on our men that we’re not calling them up in the middle of the night. We’re not arranging fabulous dates to get their attention. We’re not willing to accept the occasional booty call. They key is to show our men that the tide has turned and not to simply tell them. Whenever you are dealing with men, don’t forget, actions speak louder than words.Before you know it, they’ll take the cue and start pursuing us.
The truth is, just as we love men, they love us. They’ll do anything we want. We just have to show them what we want. (pp. 96-97)
(By the way, despite the attempt to flatter men by telling us that they’re smart, American men actually don’t fare much better in Callan’s book than we do. Am I the only woman out here who is tired of all this talk about “training” men, as if they’re dogs? Who wants to date, let alone marry, a dog?)
If it all sounds a bit like game-playing, you’d be right, and Callan herself rejoices in this “child’s play.” I personally found dating to be a fun, adult game that doesn’t require the machinations of a general; I long ago learned that mixing dating with mind games is not only counterproductive in the long run, but also quite exhausting. In fact, although Callan claims that it’s quite easy and fun to do all the things she recommends women do to attract lots and lots of men, when you really think about her advice, it’s head-spinning when you consider all the things we must do and buy in order to keep up with our French sisters. Forget having time to work or study or plan your future; your entire life will be devoted to making yourself sexy, alluring, mysterious, and fragrant for every random guy who shows up in your coterie. It’s hard out there for a French woman, apparently, and now we must join her in that all-consuming pursuit of love.
Callan’s book does makes for decent light reading and wouldn’t be entirely out of place in a Francophile’s library. It gets better in the later chapters, when she zeroes in on the power of lingerie and the absolute importance of having le Jardin Secret (i.e., a place or thing or ritual that’s just your own to enjoy in privacy). Her publisher didn’t do her any favors by releasing the book with a rather dull, utterly derivative cover design, complete with the requisite Eiffel Tower and the scarf-wearing, shopping bag-wielding French woman; the typesetting on my copy is actually a little off, although it’s not a reviewer copy but the actual retail version, making it look cheap.
Is it worth the purchase? By all means, have fun with it, as it does a good job of augmenting what you probably already know about the so-called secrets of French women. (Can authors really continue to call them “secrets” now that so many books exist in the marketplace that promise to share them with you?) But don’t expect any earth-shattering revelations; rather, take it as yet another boost of inspiration for those of you who find your Inner French Girl occasionally flagging in confidence. (And it happens to even the best of us.) Try and ignore the overly self-deprecating digs at American women. We’re gorgeous, baby.
You know, I suspect that one of the reasons why Mme. Guiliano’s original book struck such a chord among us — despite all previous attempts to cash in on the growing Francophilia craze prior to the publication of her seminal book — is that, unlike many of her predecessors, she doesn’t try to pit French women against their American sisters. She celebrates the culture of her heritage while also praising the virtues of her newly adopted country. She’s the perfect ambassador of the cult of French women, as she recognizes that there’s no lasting glory to be found in tearing down one group of women in order to elevate the status of another. It’s a lesson her wannabes would do well to learn.
By the way, if you’re really hankering for a well-written self-help book about how to incorporate the best of the French with the best of the American, I would highly recommend a totally non-Francophile book titled Kiss My Tiara: How to Rule the World as a SmartMouth Goddess
Happy Reading!
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