Gabrielle Deydier

Apologies for the lack of postings as of late: - I gave birth to our fourth son a couple of months ago.  Bilal is obviously delighted and wanting more.  I have no reason to say no: - I always eat sensibly and therefore have no worries about what effect this will have on my impossibly dainty figure.

I have been asked a few times what I think about Gabrielle Deydier, the supposed Frenchwoman denouncing "grossophobie", so I thought I would write a blog post on this subject.  For English-speaking readers of this post, an article summarising the situation can be found at https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/sep/10/gabrielle-deydier-fat-in-france-abuse-grossophobia-book-women .  Note that The Guardian is the British publication that Zoë Williams tends to write for: - she is the journalist who whinges about how perfect we Frenchwomen are.

Gabrielle Deydier claimed she was pushed out of her job as a special education classroom assistant because of her weight.  Me personally, I think it is useless speculating about whether this is true or not.  Maybe she was difficult to deal with in other ways?  We will probably never know.  In my experience as an employer, people often make silly claims like this to divert attention away from poor performance, bad behaviour and other things that make them undesirable employees.

I also note the part about how she spent a year in Spain where her weight wasn't an issue.  Let's be honest here: - France and Spain are not only part of the Single Market (people can live and work in each other's nations under the Maastricht Treaty), but also the Schengen Zone (no hard borders).  You can get on the TGV at various French stations and there is nothing (except perhaps ticket checks) stopping people getting to Spain.  If I were that unhappy with life in France (I am not by any stretch of the imagination), I would ask myself if emigration would improve my life.

Let me be candid here: - I think she looks disgusting and a disgrace to the effortlessly perfect French women you see all around the country.  When I showed Bilal a photo of her and asked his opinion, he didn't hesitate to describe her as "cheum" (verlan for "moche", French for ugly).  I understand the school's difficulty in allowing someone so fat to be around children and set a bad example, but if you are running a fashion magazine (like I am) and someone turns up at an interview looking like that, it makes it clear that they don't have any interest in what we cover as a magazine (looking good, which fashion contributes to).  It reminds me of the interview scene from "The Devil Wears Prada" where Anne Hathaway's character turned up for the interview with Meryl Streep's character unrepentant about her lack of interest in fashion.

That said, I do feel sorry for her, as The Guardian's article makes it clear that the doctor prescribed some remedies that are just not French!  He prescribed medication and a diet of meat and boiled vegetables.  Did the doctor just not know what he was doing?  We Frenchwomen eat all sorts of things that the outside world considers "naughty", such as cheese (I love local cheeses like Banon, Saint-Marcellin, Picodon de la Drôme and Picodon de l'Ardéche), tartiflette, foie gras, Nutella crêpe, steak frites, baguettes, Quiche Lorraine, Croque Monsieur, Raclette/fondue, confit de canard and many other lovely dishes.  As Mireille Guiliano rightly points out, we eat for pleasure (not punishment), but there are some things we do to maintain our wonderful beanpole thin figures: -

• Not eating between meals: - we have proper meals three times a day to eliminate the temptation to snack
• Concentrating on meals properly, so as to avoid mindless eating
• Passive exercise: - walking and taking the stairs as far as reasonably practicable
• Choosing foods that taste delicious, so we get our jollies from the taste, rather than our stomachs being stretched
• Make food look visually appealing for the same reason
• Avoiding uselessly sweet foods, say having desserts slightly sour and only as sweet as they need to be to cleanse the palate of the previous course (e.g. tarte au citron) or perhaps a cheese course before the dessert
• Eating real foods: - breaking the link between sweetness/fat (say with artificial sweeteners and low-fat foods) and calories confuses the body, causing people to eat more
• Never dieting: - we change our habits permanently if something goes wrong
• Drinking bottled water, rather than unhealthy fizzy drinks: - I don't care if Greta Thunberg, the high priestess of the green religion, disapproves of me for this
• Sip champagne and fine wines regularly, but not hard liquor: - hard liquor comes with many additional calories and blunts the taste buds, making it harder to get our jollies from the taste

And, drum roll............................................................

• Saying "la moitié, s'il vous plaît" ("just half of that, please") when offered some food, not forgetting what Mireille Guiliano said about how there are three ways French women stay thin: - portion control, portion control and portion control

In summary, I think Gabrielle Deydier could turn her situation around if she tried (along with some sound advice from an average French woman that she seems to lack).  She has passed her prime career years, but she may be able to recover some semblance of a career if she gets herself back on track.  Rather than whingeing about "grossophobie", she should take responsibility and lose the weight.

Belately realising things

I recently read an article by a Northern Irish lady named Lorraine Wylie belatedly realising how wonderful French women's lives are compared to Northern Irish women at https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/life/features/northern-ireland-can-learn-a-little-on-lifestyle-food-and-fashion-from-the-french-37451558.html .  What struck me most about this is that this was published on the 24th of October 2018 (less than a month ago).  Clearly, though the author has a French first name, she has been stuck in a bunker for the last decade-and-a-half or so!  Has it taken her this long to realise how effortlessly perfect we Frenchwomen are?  No wonder effortlessly perfect Frenchwomen like myself feel the need to go on endlessly about this!  MDR.

The article talks about her visit to her French friend Véronique Maquin Chillou.  She doesn't give the name of the town in which this article is set, though she mentions that it is part of Vienne.  I don't think I would be breaching privacy laws to say a quick Google search reveals it to be Chauvingy in Nouvelle Aquitaine.  This part of France is particularly famous for goat's cheese, with less famous foods being Echiré butter, Farci Poitevin paté and Tourteau Fromagé.  Not as wonderful as Provence, but every culinary region of France is wonderful compared to any region (or country) not under French sovereignty.

Lorraine Wylie talks about how she walked up the steep cobbled streets.  I must say, if she views French women's passive exercise as a new revelation, I can't think what sort of isolated circumstances she has been living in.  This woman has probably been sweating away in a gym (and overeating afterwards) in an attempt to lose weight, as is typical among frumpy Anglo-Saxon women.  Meanwhile, we Frenchwomen are staying effortlessly thin, to oversimplify things slightly, by just walking more (using the stairs and less car travel) and saying "la moitié, s'il vous plaît" when offered some food.

Regarding the tips about beauty, yes, a Frenchwoman definitely knows how to use a beauty regimen to make herself look nice, though I think Véronique Maquin Chillou has a fairly laborious routine.  I don't spend anywhere near the time she appears to spend on beauty (I have compressed my routine to a few minutes in the morning) yet Bilal still thinks I am a "bufft'ing" and comes home each evening with a huge appetite for after our sons have been put to bed.

The advice on food is hardly revolutionary.  Véronique Maquin Chillou says she makes rich dishes and avoids processed foods, sticking to simple things (a Frenchwoman loves elegant simplicity).  She also doesn't avoid cheese, desserts and wine, three not-so-guilty pleasures that Frenchwomen regularly enjoy.  The biggest No-sh"BLEEP"-Sherlock part of the article is "As suspected, a slender silhouette has nothing to do with national heritage. It doesn't matter which side of the channel our bread is buttered, staying in shape is simply about portion control."  I don't know how many times the phrase "La moitié, s'il vous plaît" has appeared in this blog so far.  Okay, she might have been suspecting it for a long time, though I don't know why it took so long for her to confirm her suspicions.

Okay, it is generally harder to reach Northern Ireland from France than the nations making up Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) by land, but how has Lorraine Wylie been in the dark for so long?  She talks about the tips as if they were groundbreaking new revelations, which they should not be, even in the Anglo-Saxon world.  This demonstrates that there is plenty more work to do with this blog!

Taking credit where it isn't due

As many of my readers will be aware, I am strongly in favour of trains as a transportation mode.  Mireille Guiliano has often pointed out passive exercise as being a reason why French women are so effortlessly thin and perfect.  In order to make this situation workable in today's globalised world, it is necessary to have good public transportation networks, of which high-speed intercity railway plays an important part.

Of the presidents we French have had in the past few years, Nicolas Sarkozy is the one I am most favourably disposed towards.  He didn't help himself by being a bling-bling president pursuing a glamorous romance with his now-wife Carla Bruni, but he did many good things, such as coming up with some ideas for economic reform (rewarding hard work) and setting the process in motion for construction of LGVs (Lignes à Grande Vitesse, or high-speed lines), in particular Le Mans-Rennes, Tours-Bordeaux and Nîmes-Montpellier.  In addition to this, he played a key role in starting the process for introducing high-speed rail to Morocco.

Granted, an organisation cannot go on indefinitely if its debts just keep ballooning and I am pleased that Emmanuel Macron is cracking down on the gravy train that many SNCF employees enjoy, but I am not happy with the change in the way high-speed lines will be funded.  https://www.railjournal.com/in_depth/sncf-reform-back-on-track-after-devastating-strike explains that SNCF Network will not fund any more high-speed line projects, but the funding will come from the regions.  I don't mind the idea that people in Marseille shouldn't be funding the Tours-Bordeaux line, given the limited benefits we will receive from it.  Some of the principles behind it are good, but what I am unhappy with is the possibility that it will make LGV construction unviable, given the relative lack of power regions have to pull together disparate funding sources.  It is hypothetically possible that Languedoc-Roussillon will persuade say Catalonia and the Spanish government to chip in for the LGV Montpellier-Perpignan.  Maybe PACA (Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur) will persuade Liguria, Italy and other French regions to chip in for the upgrades to the Marseille-Nice route.  I am not holding my breath though.  Marseille-Nice is already badly congested and Montpellier-Perpignan stands to get worse, given the lines that converge at the ends of the proposed route (two in Montpellier and three in Perpignan).

Having done so much to stop future high-speed line construction, our ridiculous president is making appearances when new lines kicked off by Nicolas Sarkozy are opened.  He showed up at the ceremony concerning the soon-to-be-opened Tangiers-Kénitra line, even though it clearly wouldn't have happened under him: - https://newsbeezer.com/franceeng/morocco-inaugurates-the-first-tgv-line-in-africa/ .  I am pleased that the government pushed through the Paris-Marseille route with a lot of enthusiasm, but it is a shame LGV development looks like it has come to a grinding halt in France.