Vive la présidente!

On Sunday, we French will be going to the first round of the polls of the presidential election.  As many of my readers will be aware, the candidate Bilal and I view most favourably (remembering that none of them are a perfect match to us) is Marine Le Pen.

Bilal thinks her niece Marion Maréchal-Le Pen (Marine's niece) is a "well buff wifey", though he views her as being less attractive than me and therefore doesn't look at her with lust, MDR.  He and I agree it is nice that we French have relatively nice-looking female politicians than the frumpy and dowdy ones on the other side of the English Channel.  Theresa May isn't the worst, but she was at best plain in her youth, as she is today.  Bilal notes that Marine Le Pen was reasonably "buff" in her youth, even if she is overweight (by French standards, but not by British standards, MDR).  Though there are many things Bilal and I like about the United Kingdom (its rich Reformation history), the physical appearances of its female politicians (and women in general) leave a lot to be desired.  However, with Marine Le Pen being the only major female presidential candidate, there is not much to be said regarding comparisons of candidates' physical appearances.

Moving on to the less important issue of what their policies are, Bilal and I view Marine Le Pen's policies most favourably.  In the past 24 hours, there has been yet another terrorist attack in France, which seems to have had Islamic motivations.  Let us be clear, being a believer is never easy in any part of France: - very few sectors of French society are in favour of biblical teaching, given how much our nation regrettably did to persecute the Huguenots over the centuries.  However, La Savine has large numbers of Muslim migrants who tend to be very actively hostile to the faith: - Bilal struggled to deal with this and enjoys the less close-knit lifestyle that my penthouse apartment offers him, though he tries to keep up his work in the community of La Savine as much as possible.  Both of us would welcome the reduction in Islamic migration that Marine Le Pen promises, given the hostility our faith already suffers.

Marine Le Pen's economic policies are actually quite leftie.  She seems to be appealing to the stick-in-the-mud Luddite French workers who want to continue doing their jobs the way they have always done them and continue to enjoy ever-rising wages.  As Margaret Thatcher said, "No!  No!  No!": - constantly rising wages require constant innovation.  This means a constant search for efficiency and better products: - as a fashion magazine editor, I very much understand the importance of keeping ahead of the game.

I don't think Anglo-Saxon economic policies are necessarily good, as they centre around the principle of knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing, as highlighted by a recent Financial Times article regarding Alstom's Belfort plant.  Continental European economies seem to work on providing long-term value, whereas Anglo-Saxon economics seems to be "slash-and-burn".  Given that France doesn't have the same silliness with shareholders demanding short-term cash flow, it is possible to focus on solutions providing long-term value.  The Financial Times article doesn't mention the fact that the order will enable SNCF to retire some fleets early and drastically reduce the number of different fleets in service.  In his work for "Le Trom de Marseille", Bilal only has to deal with one fleet (the MPM 76), but his railway industry acquaintances elsewhere tell him how annoying it is when you have to do an enormous amount of work to account for local fleet variations.  However, given their extreme ignorance about how a train operating company and rolling stock engineers work, it is easy for morons working at the Financial Times to criticise the TGV order.  I am generally supportive of Marine Le Pen's desire to avoid slash-and-burn economics.

France is actually doing very well with per-hour-productivity and I don't think increasing the working week would necessarily result in higher output (as Emmanuel Macron proposes), but its working practices are very staid.  Bilal often quotes the famous Neville Shute saying that says "an engineer is a man who can do for five shillings what any damned fool could do for a pound": - if we want to be richer, we need to be constantly on the lookout for improvements and unfortunately, Marine Le Pen's economic policies do very little to encourage this.  They seem to encourage the I-farm-cattle-because-my-father-did-and-his-father-before-him-did-and-his-father-before-him-did mentality.  In summary, I would prefer a candidate combining the best economic policies of both sides, but our presidential candidates are what they are.

All that said, I hope that next month, we will be chanting "Vive la présidente!"

Promoting bad habits

Apologies to my regular readers for the lack of postings.  Nobody said that managing a top-flight fashion magazine and being a wife and mother was going to be easy!  Our son has been reasonably easy to train to sleep through the night and is by no means an unusually difficult child, but no baby is easy to care for, hence why I have struggled.  As mentioned, we are expecting another baby, so there is the danger that my blogging will suffer even further and Bilal remains resolute in his desire for a large family, but we shall see how things go.

I read a rather shameful article which talked about how supposedly French women are fatter than people think they are.  To be honest, I think the article's author (Caroline Bell) seems somewhat covetous of French women's effortless perfection, as well as somewhat deluded.

The topic of fat-shaming has been in the news a lot recently, in particular with a Venezuelan lady named Yoseph Alicia Machado Fajardo in the context of the American president regarding the Miss Universe contest.  Inevitably, Godwin's Law has been proven correct in this instance, as she has compared Donald Trump with Hitler, accusing him of using all sorts of derogatory names against her, given that she gained 12 pounds during her reign as Miss Universe.  She talked about how she was 116 pounds when she won the Miss Universe contest and was anorexic and bulimic.  Putting aside the fact that 116 pounds is not much of an achievement as far as a Frenchwoman is concerned, one thing I have historically admired about the USA is its supposed culture of personal responsibility.  As a believing woman, I categorically say that many of the things Donald Trump has said are silly, but blaming Donald Trump for your anorexia and bulimia is ridiculous and this woman is stretching the truth.  For a start, anorexia and bulimia cannot co-exist, as anorexia diagnoses are given to people below normal weight and bulimia diagnoses to people at and above normal weight, if they do the various things associated with the conditions.  As Mireille Guiliano says, "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".  Note the last part in particular: - blaming someone else for your anorexia or bulimia indicates a lack of personal responsibility.  A Frenchwoman knows that purging is not the way to achieve our impossibly perfect figures.  We have a magic phrase to achieve our impossibly perfect figures: - "la moitié, s'il vous plaît!"  Unfortunately, this woman is now a US citizen and can therefore vote in a couple of weeks: - neither I nor anyone else in our church who I know of has any liking for Hillary Clinton.

I am digressing.  I say that Caroline Bell is jealous because she feels the need to talk French women's wonderful figures down by talking down the effortlessly perfect figures that we have: - I am quite sure that I would have noticed it if her figures were accurate.  I am interested to know how many people they translate into, but it is hard to discern, as her figures are too well-rounded, MDR!  Authors like Zoë Williams like to slag off French women, whereas authors like Caroline Bell like to insinuate that our figures really aren't that great.  She is also deluded because she actually thinks the women shown in the article look great.  *Cough!*  As a fashion editor with a steely eye for the details everything to do with fashion, I think they look awful!  Plus they are setting a bad example to their compatriots who need to take more pride in their impossibly perfect figures that they have laboured so diligently to achieve!  We work very hard to teach our daughters (admittedly, I don't have any yet) to teach them how to look great and we don't need people coming along and promoting plus-sized models and journalists to give them the message that they can slack off!

I note the part about how Lalaa Misaki goes into many French shops and is told they don't have anything in her size.  Why should French stores stock clothes for plus-sized models when they know that being thin is necessary for success and French women are thin and it is therefore an obvious business decision to target clothes for thin women?  Also, being fat looks horrid, so why should clothing manufacturers aiming to cultivate an image of exclusivity produce clothes for women who will never ever look good in anything?

My message to impossibly dainty Frenchwomen out there is be proud of what you have worked hard to achieve and don't let some haters in the public eye downgrade your achievements!

Don't forget dainty portions!

We are almost at the stage where this is no longer news.  Today, I read yet another story about how British females are letting themselves go when it comes to their weight: - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2642305/British-girls-fattest-Europe-Almost-females-age-20-UK-overweight-obese-claims-study.html

 The article talks about how peer pressure has lead to British schoolgirls eating fast food more often than they should.  However, what they have failed to realise is that it is still hypothetically possible to remain slim and trim even if one eats fast food: - one just needs to eat dainty portions!  Simple!

Or is it?  I admit with great shame and reluctance that I once ate a McDonalds e-mail and a Burger King meal.  Worse still, they happened to be on the same day!  The reason for this was I was working at a British fashion magazine at the time and, for work purposes, I was obliged to visit an extremely ugly-looking town named Basildon in Essex with lots of tanning salons and nail bars.  If anyone has ever seen the series "The Only Way Is Essex" (often abbreviated to "TOWIE"), you will have a good idea of how gormless the people there are!  It seems that whenever you go to Britain, you cannot avoid hearing about this awful programme!  As Mireille Guiliano points out, "French women don't have much TV to watch".  We have much better things to do, such as internet shopping for a new pair of tods!

As we were in a rush to get several things done, I had to accede to the suggestion of a colleague to get some very quick lunch.  I was horrified when the colleague came back with a McDonalds meal, but I knew that the colleague carried an enormous amount of influence behind the scenes, so I steeled myself to eat it.  I felt physically sick, but then a short while later, I felt extremely hungry, on account of the lack of pleasure given to my taste buds on account of the low quality of the food.  In the evening, I had to accede to a similar suggestion, on account of time pressures to get some food before the departure of the only train that would enable us to get back into London for an important meeting.  Again I was horrified: - the colleague had brought back a Burger King meal!  Again, I ate it on account of my desire not to stir up political problems, but the experience scarred me for life!  It was then that I became particularly motivated to find a way into the French magazine industry!

A Frenchwoman does not like to use scales, but I thought I would break with tradition, on account of the dire situation.  I weighed myself at various points during the week and, in spite of my desperate efforts to make cutbacks, I gained half a kilogramme over the following fortnight because the two fast food meals had knocked my body out of kilter and caused me to crave large amounts of food!  This was, without doubt, the worst experience of my entire life!  If I were a British woman, I would have gone to the nearest detox practitioner, though the catch-22 is that if I were a British woman, I would not care about putting polluting foods into my body in this manner!  MDR!

As a stylish Frenchwoman, I knew that the only thing to do was to eat even lighter meals until my equilibrium was restored.  I give myself treats from time to time, but I had to have fewer treats to compensate for the filth that entered my body and the experience left severe psychological scars as well!  MDR!  So, in conclusion, I say what I always say.  Eat only food of the highest quality so that you get your jollies from your taste buds experiencing pleasure, rather than your stomach being stretched.  Simple really!

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.

An unpatriotic chef

In recent years, British celeb chef Jamie Oliver has been in the news for his dislike of his own country.

There were two main areas that he discussed.  One was the working ethos of his fellow Brits.  He claimed that British youngsters don't work very hard and are wet between the ears, with parents phoning in for 23-year olds saying they are too tired to do a 48-hour week.  He claimed that in his twenties, 80-100 hours was the norm.  My comment is that a Frenchwoman knows that a 35-hour week is quite enough to get one's work done.  He said, "I've never experienced such a wet generation.  Meanwhile I've got bullet-proof, rock-solid Polish and Lithuanians who are tough and work hard."

A Frenchwoman is effortlessly perfect and she works efficiently to get her work done in 35 hours per week.  So therefore, if Jamie Oliver worked 80-100 hour weeks, he probably wasn't very efficient.  An efficient and competent worker should have no need to work longer than his/her contracted hours.  In Britain, my fashion magazine employers would scowl at me for leaving on time, insinuating that I wasn't committed to my job, even though I got twice as much done as the people who worked twice as long as me.  Lots of them were just pretending to be working and looking busy, rather than producing things: - a Frenchwoman has much more important things to do than pretending to be working or staying in useless post-5PM meetings, such as scouring the local markets for the choicest ingredients with the best flavour.  What is it like working at my fashion magazine?  I scowl at my workers if they stay past normal closing time!  MDR.

However, it is the second main subject he covered that caught my attention.  Jamie Oliver's words were as follows: -
"I meet people who say, “You don't understand what it's like.” I just want to hug them and teleport them to the Sicilian street cleaner who has 25 mussels, 10 cherry tomatoes, and a packet of spaghetti for 60 pence, and knocks out the most amazing pasta. You go to Italy or Spain and they eat well on not much money. We've missed out on that in Britain, somehow."

Now, a stylish Frenchwoman like me is sure to agree with this.  I know that it is possible in most places to buy the food items he mentioned for the price he mentioned.  Even in Monaco, this is probably possible or nearly so, given that there is a branch of Carrefour in the country.  As for me personally, I can't verify whether or not it is possible to buy the items mentioned at the price mentioned.  As my regular readers will know, my mentality for shopping is buying the best at whatever cost.  I'm the bee's knees: - nothing but the best will do for me!  It is probably possible to buy these things at that price, but they wouldn't be of the highest quality.

Mind you, I do agree with the things Jamie Oliver says about the immense stupidity of British people.  When I was a fashion journalist, I was given the task of writing a fake rags-to-riches story about a fashion designer who had come from a pikey household with a single mother and a child eating chips and cheese from a styrofoam container in front of a huge television like the one described by Jamie Oliver.  The fashion designer had actually come from a boho chic household with parents who were very knowledgeable about sartorial matters (not a very common household type in Britain), but my editor demanded that I write a fake rags-to-riches story, because hey, the truth doesn't sell as many magazines as a sensationalist lie.  We visited a chav home, having bribed them with £50 to participate in this blatant lie.  The photographers took photos of the mother with her brood of various different skin tones (indicating the low likelihood that any of them had a father in common) sitting in front of the large television watching reality TV (the word "reality" is a bit misleading), occasionally punctuating this with video games.  The children and the mother were eating burger and chips, cheese and chips, battered sausage and chips, battered Mars bars etc.  Yeek!  The mother was a big fat ugly chav and the house reeked of the fast food and I spoke with this woman to discuss what sort of lies we would tell about how this stylish designer grew up in this impoverished situation, but rose above it.

We wrote the article, published it and got away with it, but I must say, this article is still a huge stain on my conscience.  I kept trying to tell the editor that we should follow my mother's example of openly repudiating our background if we dislike it, rather than telling lies about it.  Apart from the fact that my mother did not emigrate early enough to acquire a native-level competency of French and therefore makes idiomatic errors in her French and doesn't have a French accent, she is pretty much as French as possible: - she only eats very dainty portions of the best quality food, she refuses to take the lift if the destination is less than 10 floors away, she walks wherever she is able and she is therefore effortlessly thin in spite of all the children she has had (I'll do an article on the tax system in France favouring "familles nombreuses" another time).

Anyway, this visit to a chav British household, apart from scarring my conscience, left me psychologically scarred for life, lol.  People might accuse me of being supercilious, but I just can't stand being in the presence of such disgusting people.  Even French people just above the breadline have more class than this.  In an earlier post, I linked to an article by Cécile Delarue where she talked about how an elderly widowed Frenchwoman with a limited income who grows her own fruit and vegetables will eat well and not waste food, knowing how much effort it takes to produce it this way.  Being an impeccably stylish French woman, I go for the best quality at whatever price, but if one has been stupid and lazy in life and therefore does not have money to burn like me, it is still possible to eat very well.

Some British right-wingers would respond to Jamie Oliver's sentiments by saying, "If you don't like our glorious homeland, don't let the door hit you on your way out".  My response would be similar: - if you hate Britain, your severely un-stylish homeland, do what my mother did: - emigrate to France and surround yourself with lots of stylish French people.