As many readers will know, I have a particular dislike of the British journalist Zoë Williams, who is somewhat covetous of the effortless perfection that we Frenchwomen possess. She wrote a
review of Mireille Guiliano's French Women Don't Get Facelifts.
Nobody (save for our Lord and Saviour) is perfect, but I particularly like the way Mireille Guiliano proclaims the effortless perfection of French women. In this book, she tells the world how French women age well, choosing natural beauty over horrid facelifts.
It is not as if we Frenchwomen don't know anything about ageing. French women tend to rank very highly in life expectancy tables.
According to the OECD, in 2013, only Japan and Spain had higher female figures (pun intended). Many will be aware of
Jeanne Calment, who lived her whole life in
Arles, a town not too far from Marseille. Some of the stories she told were a bit silly, e.g. eating 1kg of chocolate a week. Any Frenchwoman will tell you that if you did this, you would be incredibly fat, especially given the reduced physical activity that comes with advancing age (unless one is very diligent). Mireille Guiliano recommends a one-square fix of chocolate each day.
Many Anglo-Saxon women choose to have cosmetic surgery after giving birth, e.g. to remove surplus skin, stretch marks etc. Having just had a baby, I know that it can be a challenge to avoid the changes to one's tummy, but it can be done. If you look after your body, you can keep your skin supple and able to cope with the changes pregnancy brings.
I note the bitchy comment about the supposed contradiction between not spending a lot on vitamins, but spending money on Bottega Veneta. A Frenchwoman knows that nature is best when it comes to food and real natural stuff does not come at great cost. However, when one buys fashion, one pays for the skill of the designer. Granted, there are some deviations to this rule, but generally, you get what you pay for in the word of fashion.
I also disagree with the comment that watching one's weight and receiving admiring glances are a betrayal of feminism. Readers will be aware of my desire to allow Bilal to build our family in the image of the Bible (with the husband as the head). Zoë Williams would say the Bible oppresses women, to which I would say that she doesn't know about the very capable businesswoman in Proverbs 31, but anyway. A Frenchwoman knows that it is possible to both look good and do well in life, be this one's career, business, politics etc. Segolène Royal was, as Bilal would say, well buff (though far less so than me). Granted, she lost to Nicolas Sarkozy, but in my opinion, that was because she promoted socialist policies which France did not need. Mireille Guiliano was the CEO of Veuve Cliquot before her retirement and she wrote all these books showing the world how wonderful we Frenchwomen are. Who says such women have betrayed the feminist revolution?
I always find Zoë Williams' francophobic diatribes funny and I particularly loved her rant in the last two paragraphs about Mireille Guiliano playing, as I understand things, a Borat-style naïve foreigner. However, when I finished laughing, I thought to myself, why doesn't she just face up to the fact that we Frenchwomen know how to be beautiful and live life to the fullest?
