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.

Readership

I have been closely watching the readership of this blog.  From what I have seen, readership is concentrated in a fairly small group of nations.

Not surprisingly, in first place is the USA, with 53.6% of pageviews coming from there.  Obviously, American women (who I assume have previously been stuffing their faces full of food) are keen to know about the immense wisdom that we effortlessly perfect French women possess.

Also, not surprisingly, the UK, my mother's homeland, comes in second place, with 26.6% of pageviews.  Apart from the fact that this blog is written in English, it is clear that Anglo-Saxon women are starting to recognise how effortlessly perfect we Frenchwomen are, hence why they are reading this blog.

In third place is Russia, with 9.2% of pageviews.  Maybe it is the population there?  I don't associate Russia with immense obesity, but then it is not a country I know well.

A surprising country is in fourth place.  One of France's former colonies: - Vietnam, with 4.0% of the vote.  In the CIA's 2008 statistics, France is shown in 108th place with 18.2% of its population being obese, with Vietnam appearing in 186th place (6th from the bottom of the table) with 1.7% of its population being obese.  Vietnam has been through a very unpleasant war, but it is fast becoming a prosperous nation and I'm not credulous that this statistic is the result of people starving.  Vietnamese women, I salute you!  You are among the few people who we Frenchwomen can learn from!  I am keen to hear how you guys remain so thin!  If any Vietnamese people are reading this post, please get in touch.  My e-mail address is mariannegaboriault@gmail.com .

The remaining countries in the list are the Netherlands, Germany, France, Ukraine, Canada and Poland.  I am surprised there aren't that many viewers in Canada (0.7%), but I'm not surprised that France's percentage is only 1.3%, because after all, we Frenchwomen are effortlessly perfect already and my blog is just teaching Frenchwomen to suck eggs.  A Frenchwoman knows very well that eating less is the best strategy for losing weight.

Indeed, I'm keen to hear from anyone who has any comments on my blog posts, be they positive, negative or indifferent, though I do fill with pride when I receive e-mails from people telling me that they lost loads of weight and became effortlessly perfect as a result of slavishly replicating the example of dainty Frenchwomen such as myself.  MDR!  Again, my e-mail address is mariannegaboriault@gmail.com and I'm interested to hear from all viewers of my blog, whatever their opinion.  Given that I am running my fashion magazine during the day and hunting the markets for obscure and high-quality ingredients and cooking in the evenings, I cannot guarantee that I will get back to you immediately or that I will respond to every single e-mail, but rest assured that I am interested in what you have to say, even if I might be virulently opposed to some points made.  So go ahead, I look forward to hearing from you.

Medical science aiding people with excuses

Though I most definitely don't have any interest in returning to the United Kingdom for anything other than business, given that the United Kingdom is a planned future market for my magazine, I find it expedient to keep abreast of current affairs, hence why I often find myself reading BBC News Online.

Another reason why it is expedient for me to read up on current affairs in the United Kingdom is the fact that sometimes, it gives stylish and sophisticated Frenchwomen such as myself excuses to feel good about ourselves and look down on less stylish and sophisticated British women.

I just came across one such excuse at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-24402163 .  This article talks about how lots of people are wrongly labelled as having food addiction when in reality, they are just greedy and gluttonous.

I can't stand the way people in the Anglo-Saxon world constantly try to attach medical explanations to everything to justify human shortcomings.  In the USA, yuppies have enjoyed wasting psychiatrists' time when they knew perfectly well there was nothing wrong with them.  This nonsense has been around for a very long time.  I recall George Webber (the protagonist of the film "10", played by Dudley Moore) visiting a psychiatrist for frivolous reasons: - this film was released in 1979!

Examples abound everywhere.

Dyslexia is middle-class for thick: - middle-class Anglo-Saxon parents don't want to admit their children are actually thick as two short planks, so they get quacks to diagnose them with dyslexia.

Autism is also middle-class for badly-behaved.  Michael Savage, one of the few Americans with any common sense at all, was noted for saying, "Now, the illness du jour is autism. You know what autism is? I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they're silent? They don't have a father around to tell them, "Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot.""  The Anglo-Saxon medical establishment, rather than admitting that it over-diagnoses people with autism spectrum conditions turned on him and persecuted him.  On the other hand, whilst the Anglo-Saxon world remains in ignorance, French people know all about how to raise children properly: - a lady named Catherine Crawford from Brooklyn, New York finally admitted that we French know best when it comes to raising children in her book "Why French children don't talk back" (a parody of Mireille Guiliano's "French women don't get fat").  However, she is a very rare breed.  Most of the time, rather than admit that we French know best about everything, the Anglo-Saxon world chooses to slag us off, e.g. this article about France's supposed autism treatment shame at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17583123 .  There is also a documentary in post-production called "Shameful" produced mainly by Alex Plank, an American autism advocate and film-maker, which attacks France's supposed poor record when it comes to autism treatment.

The truth is that we French, in our effortless perfection, recognise that sometimes, medical explanations are attached to human shortcomings to try unsuccessfully to justify them.

This is not to say that there aren't people out there with genuine binge-eating disorders, dyslexia, autism etc.  In fact, another reason I dislike all these phoney medical diagnoses is the likelihood that this will lead to the few people who do genuinely have binge-eating disorders, dyslexia, autism etc not being taken seriously, given that for every one person given a correct diagnosis, the medical profession probably gives 50,000 wrong diagnoses.  If the medical profession is not willing to stop phoney diagnoses on the basis that they are just excuses, it should stop phoney diagnoses on the basis that they make a mockery of people who really have the conditions.

Anyway, rant aside, because according to Zoë Williams, French women don't rant like this: - instead, we just light up another fag and say, "bof".  MDR!

Anyway, back to the main point.  Why won't people in the Anglo-Saxon world just realise how effortlessly perfect we French are and slavishly replicate our wonderful example?  We don't pig out on food and then blame it on phoney psychiatric illnesses.  No, what we do is we take responsibility: - we only eat the daintiest quantities of food of the highest quality, use the stairs rather than the lift, walk rather than take the car (though I have to admit I use the TGV for Paris-Marseille journeys, given that the distance is almost 750km, MDR) etc.

If one is overweight and does not feel "bien dans sa peau", one can do no better than refraining from seeing a psychiatrist and looking to the effortless perfection that we French display.

Misperceptions about French women being chainsmokers

One thing that bothers me considerably about the perceptions English and American people have of we French women is that we are only slim because we smoke like chimneys, mentioning that tobacco causes appetite-suppressing effects.  This is nonsense.  There are various reasons why a French woman is able to feel full on very little food.   Firstly, her taste buds are able to discern the finest flavours and, if she follows this up by eating them, she gets her jollies primarily from the taste, rather than her stomach being stretched (as is the case with gluttonous American and British women), causing her to feel full.  Secondly, France contains only the finest ingredients and recipes, combined with innately capable chefs, making this possible.  I must point out that smoking is most unattractive to my way of thinking.

I recall Zoë Williams' article that I discussed in an earlier posting, where she said words to the effect that rather than rant like she was doing, a Frenchwoman would light up another fag and say, "bof".  According to data at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_tobacco_consumption , the smoking rates in the USA are 26.3% and 21.5%, in the UK, they are 36.7% and 34.7% and 36.6% and 26.7% in France for men and women respectively.  Granted, American data seems to be significantly lower, though it appears the smoking rates for British women are higher than for French women.  

However, there is a huge difference in the obesity rate in France, according to the CIA's statistics at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2228rank.html , which says that the USA's figure is 33%, the UK's figure is 26.9% and France's figure is a paltry 18.2%!  Now, one could argue that there are lies, damned lies and statistics, but the suggestion that French women are only slim because they smoke so much is untrue: - firstly, it is not backed up by data and secondly, it is just an excuse for gluttonous American and British women to gorge themselves on gigantic quantities of food endlessly and avoid taking responsibility for being disgustingly obese.

I have some advice for such people: - slavishly replicate the French way of life so you can be effortlessly perfect like Frenchwomen.  I have often mentioned my English mother.  She openly admits that she was disgustingly overweight in her teenage years because she ate gigantic quantities of low quality food.  She went on family holidays to France, though she didn't lose any weight then because she was still in her substandard English eating habits.  However, she went to France on a week-long exchange visit with her secondary school during Year 10 (the year one attends in Britain when one is 14/15 years old).  Though a week is not long enough to burn off huge quantities of flab, she lost a notable amount of weight in that week alone.  She enjoyed that week so much that she asked if her exchange family would allow her to stay over her school's summer holidays: - her host family was immediately enthusiastic, as it greatly enjoyed her company.  Her parents were initially reluctant, but she pestered them endlessly to agree to this until they caved in.  She then spent her summer holidays in France and when she returned home, her father said, "You look like you're suffering from anorexia or bulimia!"  

Silly Grandad!  He didn't know that my mother's stay in France was the making of her as an effortlessly perfect Frenchwoman.  When my mother was back in England, she was constantly lecturing her family members about how to cook properly and they grew grumpy, because hey, the truth hurts!  Her French teacher was very pleased with her greatly improved performance though and scored the top grade in O-level French, going on to study French as part of her A-levels, again scoring the top grade.  By the time she was halfway through her A-levels, she decided she was fed up of backward British attitudes and the general lack of sophistication, so she applied to French universities.  The day she received her A-level results was the happiest day of her life, as her grades were more than good enough to get into her choice of university (in Marseille) and she was able to kiss goodbye to her unsophisticated homeland.  She occasionally returned for important family events, such as weddings, funerals etc, but after departing for Marseille, she never returned to Britain for any length of time.

In other words, it is quite possible to be impossibly thin and perfect like a Frenchwoman: - my mother is testament to the fact that being impossibly perfect is possible.  As mentioned in an earlier posting, she only eats the daintiest quantities of the highest quality of food and she will not take the lift or escalator unless her destination is at least 10 floors away.  Also, she gains huge pleasure from eating dark chocolate and finds chocolate with less than 60% cocoa repulsive.  She knows French cheeses inside out and can identify pretty much every French wine by its taste alone.  She does everything in Mireille Guiliano's French Women's Manifesto.  And she doesn't smoke.

To all the American and British women reading this posting, stop using the nonsensical idea that French women smoke all the time as an excuse for not accepting responsibility for your weight and be effortlessly perfect like we Frenchwomen!

Okinawa, Japan's closest thing to effortless perfection

I thought I would revisit my trip to Japan and discuss a region of the country I visited that I particularly liked.  The region in question is the archipelago province of Okinawa.  As you will see, it was my favourite region of the regions I visited on account of the people there being almost as naturally fabulous as in France.

Okinawa is a province (prefecture) of Japan with a colourful history.  Anecdotally, I have heard that it received more Chinese influence than other Japanese provinces, given its proximity.  The area was pivotal during WWII (a quarter of the population was killed in the 1945 Battle of Okinawa) and to this day, the Americans maintain bases on the archipelago (3/4 of American bases in Japan are in this province).  This is a source of controversy, given various sexual assaults that have been perpetrated by American soldiers against local women (if American soldiers are as fat as the rest of the American population, no wonder rape seems like the only option to them).

Being an archipelago province, Okinawa has very little in the way of railways: - as far as I know, the monorail linking the airport to the centre of the city of Naha is the only one.  I personally think monorails are generally a rubbish way of doing things when it comes to railway technology, given that the ride is less comfortable, they use less common technology (driving up the price), they don't corner so well etc.  The only advantage I can think of is that the flyovers needed to support them aren't so wide.  I am aware that the island also has at least 13 airports: - a necessity, when you consider that the archipelago stretches over 1,000km.

The islands stretch in a gradual fashion from being not far from the coast of the Japanese island of Kyushu to, at the the furthest extremity, not far from the coast of Taiwan.  I was informed that the island of Ishigaki was the major inhabited island that was furthest south and so decided to visit there as well as Okinawa.  According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishigaki,_Okinawa#Climate , the climate seems to be borderline tropical: - I recall that for a climate to be defined as tropical, all the monthly average temperatures need to be above 18 degrees celcius.  With the January average temperature being 17.7, the island's climate falls short of being classed as tropical by 0.3 degrees celcius.  I loved the tropical weather and vegetation on the island.  Once I accumulate enough money from sales of my magazine, I plan to buy some homes in other areas of the world: - Japan is one place I plan to buy some, with the island of Ishigaki or its environs being one place.

Naha, the prefecture's capital, is a reasonably major metropolis, even if it isn't as major as Tokyo and it isn't as stylish as Paris and Marseille.

The archipelago produces some lovely and cute pottery.  I nearly filled up my suitcases with the stuff and it looks pretty in my cabinets in my homes in Paris and Marseille.

On account of the rich history, there are some beautiful historical buildings to see, such as the Gusuku ruins.

And Shuri castle in Naha.  If taxes in France weren't so high, I think I would probably buy a castle like this in Japan or construct a replica if it turned out none were for sale.

Anyway, though these aspects of Okinawa are lovely, one thing I must move onto is why I think the Okinawans are almost as naturally fabulous as we French.  Okinawa, though unfortunately succumbing to the influences of the USA with its fast food emanating from its military bases, was previously famous for having the highest life expectancy in the world on account of the extremely good eating habits.  Although the gastronomy isn't quite as stylish as in France, it was absolutely delicious.  Probably the most famous dish is chanpuru, whose main ingredients are normally tofu, bitter melon, eggs and sliced pork or Spam (as for me personally, I dislike American cuisine and steer clear of Spam).

Another famous dish is Okinawa Soba.  If anyone here is yuppie enough to be gluten intolerant, you should note that Okinawa Soba is not made with buckwheat like normal Japanese soba noodles.  It is just that it has been known as Okinawa Soba for so long, that a dispensation has been given to allow the Okinawans to continue referring to them that way, even though they are made with wheat rather than buckwheat and they more closely resemble udon noodles.

One noteworthy feature of Okinawan cuisine is the fact that it doesn't use much fish, even though the island is an archipelago.  Given the tropical climate, it was traditionally not very easy to store fish and the mountainous climate made transportation from the sea difficult.  As a result, pork became a staple of the local cuisine rather than fish.  Jews and Muslims may not like this situation, but past life expectancy figures for the island speak for themselves.  A Frenchwoman is so effortlessly perfect that she doesn't feel the need to abstain from any foods, so long as they aren't unnatural (e.g. margarine) or excessively sweet, (e.g. cupcakes): - both of these food types are characteristic of less stylish people.

However, what I just adore about Okinawa is the commitment of the inhabitants to dainty eating.  There is a famous Confucian saying which goes 腹八分, or in a transliterated form, "hara hachi bu", which translates roughly as "eat until you are 8/10 full".  This avoids stretching the stomach and French women are also aware that if one eats slowly and daintily, one can feel full by the end of the meal, as one's stomach receptors take time to respond to say that they have received enough.  The Wikipedia article about hara hachi bu claims that the Okinawans are the only people who deliberately practice calorie restriction at a societal level.  I'm not sure what to make of this claim: - I suppose I would say that French women are so effortlessly perfect that they can feel full without needing to artificially practice calorie restriction.  However, whatever the reason, one can look at the people of Okinawa and see how incredibly skinny they are: - 18 to 22 is a typical Body Mass Index for them.  Healthy living is traditionally very well integrated into daily life there, as one can see in the video below.

It would be quite fun to have competitions with these people to see who can feel full on the smallest amount of food, but then such a competition would be impractical, given the difficulty in ascertaining whether or not someone is telling the truth: - anyone could just fake it!  However, I have to concede that Okinawa is probably the only place in the world that has anything whatsoever that French women, in their effortless perfection, can learn from.  The only problem I can see with life here is people succumbing to American lifestyle habits and obesity consequently rising.  It is also noteworthy that Okinawa no longer has the highest life expectancy in Japan: - from what I have seen, Nagano seems to be top or nearly top of tables these days.  The prefecture of Nagano also has an advantage that Okinawa doesn't have: - a Shinkansen line known as the Nagano Shinkansen.

Maybe I will visit the prefecture of Nagano next time I visit Japan, but for now, I am delighted to have spent time in a place outside of France where people know how to eat properly, are lovely and thin and actually have something to teach us effortlessly perfect French women.