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!