I have just come across a most terrible example of covetousness by Zoë Williams of the British newspaper The Guardian here.
I am absolutely outraged that anybody dares to question the idea that we French women are anything less than perfect and that foreign women should have any pastimes besides aspiring to be like impossibly perfect and dainty French women such as myself.
I thought I would take this opportunity to tell my readers a bit more about myself.
I may appear to be a pure-bred French woman, but this is not the whole story. Some of you may have been reading this blog and wondering if it was actually written by a native speaker of English. Well, you were right. I was born to a mother from London. My mother made sure to teach me to speak English with me from the beginning and made sure I read lots of English material, even though it pales in comparison to the sophisticated French philosophers. However, the pain of reading such unsophisticated material was mitigated by reading English translations of great works of French literature, such as Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo and Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, though the beauty of the original novels was never fully captured in the English translations.
Still, even though I had to endure such a horrific lack of sophistication in my reading material, I am glad my mother made sure she imparted her command of the English language, as it proved very useful in my career. One of the few things I am willing to slag off France about is the stale labour market. In France, the government is mostly concerned with protecting jobs for useless older workers and it is very difficult for a young ambitious professional such as myself to get a foothold in the labour market. I moved to London to work in the fashion industry and build up my expertise. I worked for various fashion magazines, honing my writing and journalism skills, climbing the career ladder as quickly as I could.
I am grateful to the UK for giving me the chance to build up my career, but even so, I still feel obligated to comment on the fact that it is an unsophisticated wasteland. Luckily, the extension of the UK's HS1 (the high-speed railway line between London and the Channel Tunnel) to St. Pancras opened in November 2007, shortly before I took up my employment in London, meaning that I could get back to Paris in two hours and fifteen minutes. Every weekend, I would travel back to Paris on the Eurostar to give myself some respite from the UK's severe lack of sophistication. On anything longer than a standard weekend (e.g. holidays, weekends followed by a Monday public holiday etc), I would take the Eurostar to Paris, stay the night in Paris and hop on a TGV to Marseille the following morning. Since the extension of the LGV Méditeranée opened in 2000, it has been possible to go between Paris Gare de Lyon and Marseille St. Charles stations in just three hours and five minutes. Absolute bliss!
In case you are wondering how I know all this despite viewing it as severely unladylike to be a gricer, my father has worked as a rolling stock engineer for SNCF for many years and he regularly talked about railway-related matters at home, much to the chagrin of some family members, but nevertheless, I have a latent knowledge about railway-related matters as a result.
Eventually, I had the expertise that enabled me to seek my dream job in France's fashion industry and I got out of the UK as quickly as I possibly could. A short while later, the magazine I worked for went under, not through any fault of my own, I might add: - over time, the magazine made some very poor recruitment decisions, employing some people who didn't know their left hands from their right when it came to fashion. After this, I set up my own magazine using the contacts I had acquired. The magazine's main office is in Marseille, as this is home to me, but all the glamorous fashion shows happen in Paris and pretty much all the glamorous people without which my business wouldn't be possible are based in Paris, so the magazine's secondary office is in Paris and I spend most of my time in Paris and Marseille, using the TGV, given that I selected offices near to the stations named Paris Gare de Lyon and Marseille St. Charles.
In terms of how my mother came to move to France, in short, attitudes such as those shown in Zoë Williams' article drove her to move. Following family holidays to France, hearing about French culture in the media etc, she started to find herself more interested in French culture and disapproving of the lack of sophistication of English culture. People started accusing her of being "up herself" and "pretentious", until eventually, she felt she could no longer put up with such backwardness and decided to move to France. She took a trip to Marseille, met my locally-born father whilst sipping pastis on the Vieux Port, who soon wooed her with his sophisticated charms (a world away from the bumpkins my mother had encountered among the British male populace) and, as they say, the rest is history. My mother gave up her English nationality and received French citizenship as soon as she was able: - she was glad to kiss goodbye to the lack of sophistication in the UK. I regret the fact that I had to go to the UK to build my career, but I hope that in future, my beloved homeland will offer trendy upwardly-mobile young somethings such as myself the chance to build a career at home, rather than having to make a decision between not fulfilling one's dreams or being surrounded by unsophisticated British bumpkins.
I personally have no time for François Hollande, the man who has been doing his best to get in the way of me and my dreams, given his taxation plan. I much preferred the bling-bling playboy Nicolas Sarkozy. I admire Nicolas Sarkozy, given that he is a man not afraid of conspicuous consumption and rubbing other people's lack of success in their noses.
I'm reluctant to say anything positive about the UK, but I hope France will one day adopt the UK's lack of willingness to stand in between me and my dreams.
I am absolutely outraged that anybody dares to question the idea that we French women are anything less than perfect and that foreign women should have any pastimes besides aspiring to be like impossibly perfect and dainty French women such as myself.
I thought I would take this opportunity to tell my readers a bit more about myself.
I may appear to be a pure-bred French woman, but this is not the whole story. Some of you may have been reading this blog and wondering if it was actually written by a native speaker of English. Well, you were right. I was born to a mother from London. My mother made sure to teach me to speak English with me from the beginning and made sure I read lots of English material, even though it pales in comparison to the sophisticated French philosophers. However, the pain of reading such unsophisticated material was mitigated by reading English translations of great works of French literature, such as Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo and Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, though the beauty of the original novels was never fully captured in the English translations.
Still, even though I had to endure such a horrific lack of sophistication in my reading material, I am glad my mother made sure she imparted her command of the English language, as it proved very useful in my career. One of the few things I am willing to slag off France about is the stale labour market. In France, the government is mostly concerned with protecting jobs for useless older workers and it is very difficult for a young ambitious professional such as myself to get a foothold in the labour market. I moved to London to work in the fashion industry and build up my expertise. I worked for various fashion magazines, honing my writing and journalism skills, climbing the career ladder as quickly as I could.
I am grateful to the UK for giving me the chance to build up my career, but even so, I still feel obligated to comment on the fact that it is an unsophisticated wasteland. Luckily, the extension of the UK's HS1 (the high-speed railway line between London and the Channel Tunnel) to St. Pancras opened in November 2007, shortly before I took up my employment in London, meaning that I could get back to Paris in two hours and fifteen minutes. Every weekend, I would travel back to Paris on the Eurostar to give myself some respite from the UK's severe lack of sophistication. On anything longer than a standard weekend (e.g. holidays, weekends followed by a Monday public holiday etc), I would take the Eurostar to Paris, stay the night in Paris and hop on a TGV to Marseille the following morning. Since the extension of the LGV Méditeranée opened in 2000, it has been possible to go between Paris Gare de Lyon and Marseille St. Charles stations in just three hours and five minutes. Absolute bliss!
In case you are wondering how I know all this despite viewing it as severely unladylike to be a gricer, my father has worked as a rolling stock engineer for SNCF for many years and he regularly talked about railway-related matters at home, much to the chagrin of some family members, but nevertheless, I have a latent knowledge about railway-related matters as a result.
Eventually, I had the expertise that enabled me to seek my dream job in France's fashion industry and I got out of the UK as quickly as I possibly could. A short while later, the magazine I worked for went under, not through any fault of my own, I might add: - over time, the magazine made some very poor recruitment decisions, employing some people who didn't know their left hands from their right when it came to fashion. After this, I set up my own magazine using the contacts I had acquired. The magazine's main office is in Marseille, as this is home to me, but all the glamorous fashion shows happen in Paris and pretty much all the glamorous people without which my business wouldn't be possible are based in Paris, so the magazine's secondary office is in Paris and I spend most of my time in Paris and Marseille, using the TGV, given that I selected offices near to the stations named Paris Gare de Lyon and Marseille St. Charles.
In terms of how my mother came to move to France, in short, attitudes such as those shown in Zoë Williams' article drove her to move. Following family holidays to France, hearing about French culture in the media etc, she started to find herself more interested in French culture and disapproving of the lack of sophistication of English culture. People started accusing her of being "up herself" and "pretentious", until eventually, she felt she could no longer put up with such backwardness and decided to move to France. She took a trip to Marseille, met my locally-born father whilst sipping pastis on the Vieux Port, who soon wooed her with his sophisticated charms (a world away from the bumpkins my mother had encountered among the British male populace) and, as they say, the rest is history. My mother gave up her English nationality and received French citizenship as soon as she was able: - she was glad to kiss goodbye to the lack of sophistication in the UK. I regret the fact that I had to go to the UK to build my career, but I hope that in future, my beloved homeland will offer trendy upwardly-mobile young somethings such as myself the chance to build a career at home, rather than having to make a decision between not fulfilling one's dreams or being surrounded by unsophisticated British bumpkins.
I personally have no time for François Hollande, the man who has been doing his best to get in the way of me and my dreams, given his taxation plan. I much preferred the bling-bling playboy Nicolas Sarkozy. I admire Nicolas Sarkozy, given that he is a man not afraid of conspicuous consumption and rubbing other people's lack of success in their noses.
I'm reluctant to say anything positive about the UK, but I hope France will one day adopt the UK's lack of willingness to stand in between me and my dreams.
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Hello and welcome to my blog Impossibly Dainty French Woman where I tell everyone how wonderful we Frenchwomen are and how to be impossibly perfect and thin like us. Feel free to comment here or e-mail me on mariannegaboriault@gmail.com .