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!

The intense pleasure of yoghurt

As a stylish Frenchwoman, yoghurt is a food I like to consume a lot of.  When made properly, it is an absolutely delicious food that a French woman can't get enough of (if one ignores the fact that she has a dainty appetite, tee hee).  Mireille Guiliano wrote a post about the magic of yoghurt at http://frenchwomendontgetfat.com/content/magic-yogurt .

As I have said in a previous post, low-fat low-sugar low-flavour foods are a poor strategy when it comes to dieting and I much prefer the strategy of eating a dainty Frenchwoman's portion of the real thing.  There is another disadvantage to low-fat low-flavour yoghurt that helps explain why a French woman will not touch the stuff.  If one dips one's spoon into low-fat low-flavour yoghurt and lifts it out again, the so-called yoghurt tends to dribble off the spoon.  With real full-fat yoghurt, if one does the same, one can turn the spoon upside-down and it will stay on the spoon.  A Frenchwoman eats her yoghurt by turning the spoon upside-down like this, slowly inserting it into her mouth upside-down, closing her eyes, slowly withdrawing the spoon whilst pouting and keeping her lips gently pressed against the spoon and gaining a sensation of pure pleasure in the process.

I wouldn't know personally, given that I go for artesanal producers and the closest thing to a supermarket I am willing to enter is Le Bon Marché.  However, from what I have heard, the brands of yoghurt that appear in French supermarkets that also appear in Anglo-Saxon supermarkets tend to have different formulations, i.e. the full-fat varieties appear in French supermarkets.

Obviously, the last part is impossible if it is low-fat low-flavour yoghurt, MDR.  Only the highest quality of yoghurt is sufficient to cause someone with a refined palate such as a Frenchwoman to gain a sensation of pure pleasure in this way.  For this reason, if one wants to be effortlessly thin, but still gain pleasure from eating yoghurt (i.e. from the taste, rather than one's belly being stretched), one has to select the finest yoghurt the way a Frenchwoman would do.

Firstly, one should always go organic.  A Frenchwoman's refined palate can detect anything unnatural a mile off.  Secondly, one should buy from the farm gate whenever possible.  A Frenchwoman's refined palate much prefers yoghurt that is artesanal and make by the hands of a skilled craftsman.  If one lives within a city, one should pay someone to drive or travel via TGV to a parkway station (Avignon TGV and Aix-en-Provence TGV being examples of parkway stations) to travel to a farm where artesanal yoghurt is produced, rushing it back into the city without delay.  Real yoghurt does not have unnatural preservatives in it to make it last longer: - a Frenchwoman's sophisticated palate (which can detect such things with the greatest of ease) will cause her to wince when it passes her lips.

So there you have it: - a Frenchwoman knows that yoghurt is something that needs to be done properly if one is to get maximum pleasure from it.