Excuses

Having just given birth to our second baby and received regular confirmation from Bilal that I am still a "well buff wifey", I am once again reminded of how thin and impossibly perfect my figure is.  Bilal is welcoming lots of visitors from La Savine (hip-hop people, in other words) to see our son: - the police were called to my flat because someone called them suggesting that there was drug dealing going on here, MDR.  When Bilal's homies visit, he lets his guard down, i.e. using hip-hop French I don't always understand and openly talking about knocking me up and me being "well buff" after two children: - his "homies" often express open agreement with the second point.  Unlike many Western women, I love this aspect of Bilal and I would never want a herbivore man: - I was always attracted to big, strong and macho men.  I ask him to try and avoid saying things too openly in front of people who aren't from La Savine (who are like him) or church (who have come to accept him as he is), as it is easier to just not have to explain, MDR.

Being a mother-of-two and still beanpole thin, one thing that has become ever more apparent to me is that Anglo-Saxon women have an endless supply of excuses for not being thin.  On the other hand, a Frenchwoman has an iron will and unbreakable self-discipline that enables her to be attractive in any season of life (both the young filly and old bag season, as Zoë Williams put it, MDR).  In this blog post, I outline typical excuses of Anglo-Saxon women and what a Frenchwoman's solutions are.

Excuses

Anglo-Saxon women seem to be under this bizarre impression that they need to eat for two when expecting a baby.  Granted, I have only given birth to two children, but having used the same strategy to stay thin during both pregnancies, my assumption is that the process is repeatable, no matter how many children a woman has: - Bilal is only too happy to oblige in enabling me to prove this, MDR.  During both pregnancies, I observed the rules I observed when not pregnant, primarily portion size.  If you remember them and have an iron will like we Frenchwomen, there is no reason to ever get fat.

Many Western women fall into the trap of comfort eating, the excuse being that because they are sad, depressed or whatever, they comfort-eat.  In other words, what they are saying is they have a bad lack of self-control when their moods are low.  A Frenchwoman knows very well that comfort eating never was the solution to low moods, as it causes large amounts of food to become like an addition, i.e. she is bad-tempered until she gets her fix.

Another common thing Western women do is blame people around them for "unrealistic" images of beauty, i.e. setting off a yo-yo dieting pattern because she does crash dieting to achieve the desired weight, which is followed up by eating more and getting heavier.  They often blame unrealistic images and the men in their lives, as Natalie Grant did in that article.  Our Heavenly Father displayed His wisdom in pairing Bilal and me: - I am able to listen to all he has to say about me being a "well buff wifey", appreciate it, and still remain in full control of my eating and weight, irrespective of anything Bilal does or doesn't say.  Natalie Grant (the author of the article the link points to) would no doubt respond in a similar way if she were married to a man like Bilal who appreciates fine women.

Solutions

Simple solutions are often the best.  A Frenchwoman knows that there is no black magic necessary to achieve a pencil thin figure: - just say "la moitié, s'il vous plaît" at every mealtime!  If necessary, keep doing so until the portion is befitting of a dainty Frenchwoman!  Simple!  This phrase has been key to keeping a Frenchwoman thin for many generations.  A French female learns this phrase that acts as the perfect solution for staying thin when she first starts to talk.

If the food portions available are more than twice as big as they should be, the next solution is to remember what proper food portion sizes are.  Mireille Guiliano discussed portion sizes she regards as standard, though truth be told, they are a little too big for me, MDR.  Even so, the principle  behind the solution is the same: - women should build an idea in their mind about what standard portion sizes are and stick to what they remember.  If she lacks ambition and she wants to use Mireille's portion sizes, she can carry such objects around with her to look at during quiet moments and continue building up her familiarity.

Exercising control of moods is another solution.  A Frenchwoman does not tend to indulge her moods in ways that lead to her indulging herself further with food.  Anglo-Saxon women tend to get angry about things and rant angrily, before resorting to comfort eating to lift their moods.  On the other hand, a Frenchwoman will just light another Gauloise (just kidding, we French women are not the stereotypical chainsmokers Zoë Williams thinks we are), do a Gallic shrug and say "bof".  She knows that self-discipline in general is key: - if she has mastered it over her moods, she will more than likely have self-discipline over food as well.  I am not saying a Frenchwoman never has trying times in life, but her solution is to deal with them by other means, such as more searching for beautiful garments.

The power of imagination is another solution in a Frenchwoman's arsenal.  She considers eating more of her favourite foods and then remembers the joy of being able to fit into all her favourite clothes.  When tempted, she thinks of the joy of being able to walk round in tight outfits and the misery of being too fat to fit into beautiful clothes!  Simple!  The only times I have ever been too big are during my two pregnancies: - the danger during this time is women will slip, given that she won't fit into her previous clothes anyway, so she needs to picture a postpartum shopping spree for the most gorgeous clothes she can find (I wouldn't dream of wearing fashions from 9 months ago) and fitting into all of them perfectly as she has no pregnancy pounds.  One day, I hopped on the train at Marseille-St. Charles at 08.38, arrived in Paris 3h07m later, rushed round shops selling haute couture (that would never fit fat and dumpy Anglo-Saxon women) and found anything I wanted fitted me just like before. I got on the 16.15 train at Paris-Gare de Lyon with my hands full of shopping (plenty of room though, given how little of the seat I took up, MDR) and 3h10m later arrived back at Marseille-St. Charles to find Bilal waiting for me with our sons telling me I was a "well buff wifey" in my latest outfit and that he was treating us to an exquisite dinner at the Vieux Port.  Imaging such situations is the ideal solution for maintaining self-control during pregnancy!

Though France suffers from big government, a Frenchwoman knows the solution is to take responsibility for her own body.  Mireille Guiliano pointed out that "French women choose their own indulgences and compensations.  They understand that little things count, both additions and subtractions, and that as an adult everyone is the keeper of her own equilibrium."  It is nice that Natalie Grant chose to take control of her diet for her own health, but she is vulnerable to falling into the bulimia trap again, as she lays the blame for this at the hands of her ex-boyfriend/fiancé, rather than accepting she is the keeper of her own equilibrium.  Granted, her ex-boyfriend/fiancé was unsuitable for her as a believing lady: - my daddy made it clear he would turn away all suitors if they had no history of regular attendance, participation and volunteering in a church (eventually, he realised it was not possible to fault Bilal on this).  However, a Frenchwoman has self-control and self-discipline and accepts responsibility whatever the men in her life are like: - I would never take the easy way out and blame the men in my life (Bilal and our two sons) for sidetracking me from exercising personal responsibility for staying beanpole thin!

So there you go: - common excuses for not being thin and a Frenchwoman's way round these excuses.  Stop making excuses and be impossibly perfect as we Frenchwomen are!

A trip to London with Bilal

Recently, I needed to travel to London on business and I hadn't seen so much of Bilal on account of various other things that needed to be done (in spite of my Frenchwoman efficiency) and so I asked him to travel with me to London.  Given his relative lack of travelling experience, I wanted to show him why there is such a need for my magazine to be promoted and be part of the fight against lack of sophistication.  As always, he was reluctant, on account of his predisposition to homesickness.  We took a TGV to Paris and a Eurostar to London on the Friday afternoon: - I have made this journey numerous times, though Bilal hasn't done the Paris-London leg before.  I am eagerly anticipating the introduction of Eurostar's direct London-Marseille services.Following a bit of research, I found out about a part of London that I thought Bilal would be inclined to visit.  I found out that the Borough of Southwark contains the Aylesbury estate: - one of the roughest areas in the whole of the United Kingdom, home of the rapper Patrick Chukwuemeka Okogwu, better known by his stage name Tinie Tempah, for the first twelve years of his life.  This was so that Bilal could be with the "homies", lol.  I also found out that the Borough of Southwark contains the church where Charles Spurgeon preached.

Earlier in the visit, we visited some marginally more sophisticated places.  In a previous post, I talked about Mariage Frères, the French brand of tea that knows how to do tea properly, unlike stupid English people, who tend to drink the disgusting "English Breakfast" variants with milk.  Yuck!  They have a counter in a British store named Selfridges on Oxford Street.  I was booked into a hotel that had the disgusting English stuff and I had forgotten to pack some Mariage Frères tea, so I was pleased to discover this.  While in Selfridges, I also discovered that Selfridges has a mini gluten free section in the food hall.  Bilal bought a few gluten free cakes: - as I mentioned, he is an extremely ravenous man on account of being tall, muscular and having coeliac disease!  The complete antithesis of me as the Impossibly Dainty French Woman!  I explained to Bilal that he should make sure to avoid developing a taste for sweet foods such as creamy cakes, given that they are characteristic of unsophisticated people.  Unfortunately, the taste was already there, as people in Mali are used to drinking extremely sweet tea!  Still, he is thankfully unlikely to consume such things regularly, given that coeliac-friendly bakeries are not exactly ubiquitous in Marseille!

I bought some Mariage Frères tea from Selfridges in the evening.  Given the late hour of our arrival, there weren't many options available for sophisticated French stuff in London (our decision to visit London was last-minute).  I found some French restaurants in London, though they were a pale imitation of the real thing.  Bilal and I ate in various French restaurants on the Friday evening and on the Saturday.  On account of our unwillingness to do anything that would generate employment on the Lord's Day (Sunday, remember the 4th commandment), we had no intention of visiting restaurants, meaning we therefore desired a packed lunch.  Good quality food stores are hard to come buy in the UK, so we decided to go to a bog-standard place in the Knightsbridge area known as Harrods.  The food wasn't particularly good quality, but it was the bare minimum that I was willing to condescend to, MDR.

I conducted my business meetings late on the Friday and during the Saturday: - a Frenchwoman is careful about work-life balance and does not avoidably work on a Sunday, much less a Bible-believing Frenchwoman!  The people involved in the business discussions wanted to resume discussions on a Sunday and I completely refused, saying that I would sooner refuse their business than work on a Sunday: - luckily, they agreed to have some late-night business discussions instead.  The discussions finished just early enough for me to catch up with Bilal that evening, who was at the Aylesbury Estate when I called him.  The estate is currently in the process of being demolished, though not all of the residents have left yet.  Bilal doesn't speak English and so had been struggling to communicate with the locals, though some of them were French speakers.  When I arrived, I agred to help him out by interpreting for him.  My interpretation capabilities were pushed to the max, as Bilal was talking in French hip-hop slang and the people in the Aylesbury estate also spoke hip-hop slang!  I probably looked rather ridiculous like Cléo Le Tan, a middle-class "bien élevée" ("well-brought-up") woman using hip-hop slang!

Bilal was asked by some hip-hop people if he would sing them a song.  They probably thought he would sing something silly, such as "Jungle is massiv", but instead, Bilal gave the most beautiful performance of "Je suis Tien, Seigneur" ("I am Thine, O Lord", by Frances Crosby): - http://www.mcreveil.org/Recueil/cantiques/lyrics/jsts278.htm .  One of the others present was from Congo and was therefore able to tell his friends what the lyrics meant.  Rather than an encore, he opted to sing "Croire, obéir" ("Trust and obey", by John Sammis): - http://www.mcreveil.org/Recueil/cantiques/lyrics/co396.htm.  Prior to his performance, the people present were boisterous, yet almost as soon as Bilal started to sing the first hymn, the silence was deafening.  Again, I know Bilal has made some friends for life and again, they parted with a fist bump!

The following day, we visited Charles Spurgeon's church.  In my church, we are very familiar with the work of Charles Spurgeon.  As with Bilal, The Assistant Pastor comes from Mali, yet he speaks a very educated form of French, rather than Bilal's hip-hop slang: - a fact I can hopefully use to persuade Bilal to learn to speak properly! I don't believe I would find a better boyfriend anywhere else and I adore Bilal in spite of this idiosynracy, but this is nevertheless something I want to work on.

We took the very earliest Eurostar service to Paris (05.40-09.26), as I was eager to be surrounded by sophistication again, with the Marseille train following shortly afterwards (I'm posting this via mobile broadband).  During the journey, Bilal told me that he is beginning to loosen up when it comes to travelling to unfamiliar destination, given that "homies" don't only exist in La Savine!  MDR!  Bilal has always been awkwardly shy, but I seem to be having some success in getting him to come out of his shell.  I am enjoying having a new travelling companion who I absolutely adore.  I hope our relationship progresses quickly.  Bilal refuses all physical contact with me (quite rightly, given that we are unmarried) and I have very rarely seen him without some sort of head covering (given that he is a tuareg): - he wore a hooded sweatsuit during the trip to London.  I can't bear to be apart from him for long and I can very easily see myself being his wife one day.

A BBC article criticising the Champs-Élysées

I was recently reading a BBC article criticising the Champs-Élysées.  Regrettably, I have to say that I agree with this.  The Champs-Élysées are not the best place to go to see the real France: - they are a very definite tourist trap.  They are certainly not the place to see and be seen.  The really stylish people go elsewhere and only ignorant tourists seeking clichés go to the Champs-Élysées in search of something French.  Where do the really stylish people go?  As if I would give away our trade secrets!  I'm not going to reveal this here, as I don't want me and my stylish acquaintances (not all of them are friends, some of them I just suck up to for the sake of business expediency) to be bothered by bumpkins.

The over-monied Arabs with the flash cars are something very un-French.  The Arab lifestyle is not something a dainty Frenchwoman aspires to, given the CIA's statistics showing many Arab nations near the top of the obesity rate table .  A Frenchwoman doesn't like driving and much prefers to walk or take the train when walking isn't practical.  Granted, we have brands such as Peugeot, Citroën, Renault etc, but a Frenchwoman tries to avoid travelling by car where possible.

I won't tell people the exact locations of where super-stylish people hang out, but I can give some simple directions for how to find something absolutely divine!  SNCF Transilien's website (http://www.transilien.com) gives journey times for the Paris area.  If one is not an impossibly perfect and dainty Frenchwoman and therefore used to walking everywhere, the website in question can give directions for going between Charles de Gaulle – Étoile Métro and RER station (which serves the Arc de Triomphe) and Paris Gare de Lyon's RER station.  When arriving in Paris Gare de Lyon, take a train to Marseille (from 3h05m upwards).  Simple as.

Ok, I know I said I wouldn't say what the hide-outs of super-stylish people are, but this one is far too famous to be worth bothering to hide.  Monaco's casino is a famous hide-out of James Bond.  Monaco can be reached from Paris by train.  Currently, there are no direct trains, but they exist at other times of year, typically taking 6h03m: -  obviously, one needs a day when one is wanting to sit and unwind, as it won't be for a few years yet that the partially new and upgraded line between Marseille and Nice will be completed.  The details of the project can be found online.  Monaco is a place I have sometimes considered moving to, given the very low taxes, but then its history is nothing compared with that of Marseille.  Nevertheless, I visit Monaco regularly, as it is full of stylish and successful people like myself and I love its ritzy glitzy atmosphere.  I love the way the government there has decided to crowd out bumpkin locals by bringing in stylish expats with low taxes: - members of the global jet-set elite such as myself do not give a monkeys about local people and we would much rather be in the presence of foreign elites.  Monaco's strategy of pricing out lesser people seems to really work wonders.  I was disappointed to see a branch of Carrefour in Monaco recently, as this will give lesser people an incentive to stay, but at least Carrefour is a French brand.  Tee hee!

I wish SNCF would do more mixed TGV services serving Monaco, say starting in Paris, stopping in Marseille-Blancarde along the way (I'd have to check if the platform length is the requisite 200m or so necessary to support TGVs) and then continuing to Monaco along the conventional line.  I love Monaco's glamorous station, with the multicoloured lighting in a corridor leading to the platforms showing how impeccably stylish the country is.

Marseille isn't quite as stylish as Monaco, but it is a place where real French people live, which helps to illustrate the point that even poor people can eat properly (a point which cannot be properly demonstrated in a society where almost everyone is rich).  It does unfortunately have a high proportion of foreigners.  They made up 12.7% of the population in 2008 (2.2% born in Europe, 10.5% outside Europe) and in 1999, 41.8% of people under 18 had at least one foreign parent.  Ok, I can't criticise on this matter, as I was part of that 41.8% and my mother was part of the 12.7%.

However, I get sick of hearing people saying "Wesh-wesh renoi/poto/rebeu/toubab?" on the street.  For those not au fait with French street slang, "wesh-wesh...?" means "How are you?" (a bit like "wagwan...?" or "wassup...?" in English).  "Renoi" is Verlan (Verlan being an inversion of "l'invers", which means "the inverse) for "noire", a black person.  "Poto" is street slang for "friend", roughly equivalent to "fam" or "bruv".  "Rebeu" is a double inversion of "arabe" ("Arab"), the single inversion being "beur".  "Toubab" is an inversion of "babtou", a word for a white person.  Me personally, I am a stylish Frenchwoman and I can't stand the sound of silly street youths murdering our beautiful language.

How is it that I am so familiar with street slang?  Lots of reasons really.  When I walk around Marseille, I hear people using it.  There are lots of Arab-style shops just to the south of La Canebière (the main street leading to the Vieux Port): - one thing that is unusual about Marseille is that the rough immigrant districts tend to be in the city centre.  Also, I get loads of wannabe fashion designers trying in vain to convince me that their hip-hop wares are stylish *cough*: - some of them severely let themselves down with their poor command of the French language.  If one wants to see what I am like as a person, watch Meryl Streep in "The Devil Wears Prada".  Also, some of my employees have probably changed their names by deed poll to hide their Arab origins: - I get this impression from the large amount of slang in conversations that take place in my workplace.  I have also interviewed people for journalistic positions and have had to decline them jobs because they used hip-hop slang all the way through the interview: - if anyone reading this wants me to give them a job in a role that involves writing, the first two things you need to do are convince me that you are interested in fashion and that you have a good command of the beautiful French language!  If you come in and say, "Wesh-wesh toubab?" to me, you are unlikely to get the job!

Anyway, though Marseille has its negative sides, it is both home and a very stylish tourist destination to me.  If one wants to see the real France and one is too lazy to walk between Charles de Gaulle – Étoile and Gare de Lyon stations, take an eight-minute RER train between the two stations, hop on a TGV and be in Marseille in 3h05m upwards.

Provence

As I have more or less said in earlier postings, I grew up in Marseille, the largest city in Provence.  As a whole, France (with its impossibly thin women) is impossibly perfect, but superlatives let me down when it comes to describing my home region of Provence: - it is not just impossibly thin women that make Provence just divine.

I can't stand being away from Provence, so I am very pleased that it is possible to cover the approximately 750km or so between Paris and Marseille in only 3h05m by the train.  Paris is the fashion capital of the world, but I think it would be absolutely divine if the capital relocated itself to Marseille!  I would rarely need to leave the city to conduct my business activities, though I do think the train journey is just fabulous!  The Eurostar services also make transportation a little easier when I regrettably find the need to go to London on business.

France's Mediterranean coast is pretty much the only area of France where olives can be grown.  Olive trees are a very important plant to a French woman for various reasons.

We just adore using olive oil in our cuisine: - Jeanne Calment of Arles, a town within the boundaries of Provence, set the record for the confirmed oldest person (though a Bolivian man is vying for her title).  She was 122 years old when she died and used olive oil with all her food, as well as using it as a moisturiser.

The moisturiser part brings me onto another thing I just adore about Marseille: - Savon de Marseille, which is made using olive oil.  When buying Savon de Marseille, one must be careful, as it is often mislabelled.  The green variety is made using olive oil (as mandated by Louis XIX in the Edict of Colbert), whereas the white variety is made using a mixture of copra oil and palm oil!  Yeek!  Palm oil is a disgusting ingredient that is used by the food industry as a substitute for real fats that I will not touch!  Savon de Marseille should also be made from sea water from the Mediterranean Sea: - the water of any other body of water simply will not do!

When I am in the UK on business and I struggle to cope with the lack of sophistication, I tend to head for branches of a chainstore called L'Occitane en Provence, which sells various beauty products of Provençal provenance and has its headquarters in the town of Manosque, Provence (Olivier Baussan wanted to promulgate the Provençale lifestyle).  When I am at home in Marseille, I tend to buy such things from artesanal producers, but L'Occitane en Provence is the next best thing if this option is not practical.

Let us not forget the dietary things one can do with olive oil: - after all, if you are filling your body with filth, some absolutely divine olive oil used as moisturiser is of no avail.  A French woman just adores good wine and there are many useful things that come from the process: - I cannot stand unnatural and artificial dressings that one buys in a supermarket that are laden with E-numbers.  A French woman knows that it is very easy to make proper dressings using olive oil and wine vinegar (1 part vinegar to 3-4 parts olive oil or whatever ratio you prefer).  Olive oil made in Provence is great as a salad dressing all by itself: - drizzled on freshly-picked and sliced tomatoes from Provence, it tastes divine!

Note that both ingredients need to come from Provence for the sensation of pure pleasure!  They taste a world better than poisonous tomatoes covered in pesticides imported from the Canary Islands in the depths of winter!  As the saying goes, you are what you eat: - a French woman's dislike of unnatural food helps explain her unrivalled perfection.  I hope that Paris' fashion industry will move to Marseille, as I couldn't stand living anywhere but Provence.