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!

Pregnant again

I am delighted to announce that, having had a baby in April, I am a few months pregnant with another baby.  Bilal and I planned have a large family for as long as marriage was on the cards and we are delighted that our heavenly Father has elected to bless us with another baby.

British and American women like to play the martyr regarding their post-pregnancy weight and tell everyone they could not help it.  As I demonstrated, it is entirely possible to be exactly the same weight before and after pregnancy: - I weighed myself on my wedding day and just after giving birth and there was no change.  A Frenchwoman knows how to eat properly and stay thin, whatever her stage of life, whether she be a growing adolescent, in her 20s prime of life (what Zoë Williams calls the "young filly" season), pregnancy, middle age, the menopause (presumably what Zoë Williams calls the "old bag" season), old age and even very old age (and the associated reduction in physical activity).  Regarding the last one , I am thinking of Jeanne Calment (from nearby Arles), who died aged 122, though admittedly, she only had one child (he died, as did his son, leaving her with no heirs).  She claimed to eat nearly 1kg of chocolate a week: - I would say that either old age affected her memory (in spite of claims she was mentally intact until the end), or she was prone to telling tall stories.  Unless she was abstaining from all other food, she would probably have become enormously fat: - as Mireille Guiliano pointed out, French women will normally carry round chocolate in their handbags and have a single square each day to give them their daily chocolate fix.

Our son tended to wake up several times during the night (though he started sleeping through the night aged six weeks) and the work involved with looking after him is generally about average for a small baby (a lot, in other words).  Bilal works in a safety-critical environment, so there is no question that his sleep is most important.  As well as taking care of his sleeping habits, he has been a very attentive father, including during the night.  He took the restrictions imposed on our lifestyle by parenthood in his stride, but then he has always been used to responsibility (the various children's ministries at the church, his family's livestock when in Mali etc).  Bilal has never been a male who lives a freewheeling bachelor lifestyle: - many men who have approached me have unfortunately been that way.  He has always been self-disciplined and this has served him well in life.  None of this treating life as one big party and going off on gap years, accomplishing nothing except clubbing and acquiring a cannabis addiction.  Maybe parenthood isn't quite such a drastic change if you are already used to responsibility?

With this in mind, Bilal wasted no time in expanding our family.  I wasn't checking, but I realised that some of the signs of pregnancy had arrived in the past week, so I went about properly confirming this.  Bilal was naturally delighted: - it is obvious that he has desired a big family throughout his life.  Bilal has always felt lonely as the only believer in his family and I am delighted that he is able to lead a growing believing household like this.

Of course, I plan to continue showing the world that a Frenchwoman has enough self-discipline to remain thin during pregnancy and still give birth to an entirely healthy baby.

The wedding

As discussed, Bilal and I got married during the summer of last year.  Very many apologies for the very long delay.  I continue to be keen to share with the world how impossibly perfect we French women are with the world, but with being a wife and mother, there are many distractions.

It was a fantastic affair and the Marseille high-society event of the year.  Some members of Marseille's high society were miffed that an it-girl such as myself would get married to a hip-hop person from da ghetto like Bilal, but I have no doubt that Daddy vetted all suitors very carefully: - he was the first and only suitor to get through Daddy.  If a man expressed an interest in me, I would give him Daddy's business card and say to go through this channel if he was serious.  I would always advise men to be ready to e-mail Daddy a copy of their Christian testimony (i.e. a brief summary of their life and their coming to Christ).  I must have given out thousands and thousands of business cards out in my time.  Whether they viewed this route as an expression of lack of interest, whether they didn't have the guts to approach Daddy, whether they approached Daddy and Daddy realised there were holes in their Christian testimony, I don't know.  It no longer matters.  Bof (I would light up a Gauloise at this point if I were a smoker, MDR).

After a few months of courtship, Bilal made a proposal of marriage, which I accepted straight away.  As soon as the news of the accepted proposal was public, the wheels of planning swung into action.  Bilal is a very down-to-earth person, but an it-girl with probably the narrowest waistline in the south of France like myself naturally wanted the best!  But sometimes, the best does not come at a great price!  A Frenchwoman who invests the necessary work in knowing local designers (which I do, as a fashion magazine editor and owner), local producers of high-quality food, local beauty spots etc is likely to get a better deal at a crucial time like this!

For the wedding attire, I used my own contacts who I knew were capable of delivering stunning attire not just for me, but for Bilal, since I had never seen him in a suit until our wedding day!  His build is similar to that of Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson, a.k.a. The Mountain from Game of Thrones, meaning that he would look silly in any suit that was not tailor-made.  As traditional Touareg and hip-hop clothing is normally loose-fitting, he does not normally experience this problem, but he needs tailor-made clothes if they are intended to be tight-fitting.  With my unusually narrow waistline, I also needed to ensure the skill of the designer was sufficient to illustrate my wonderful feminine French figure to everyone present!

The food needed to be all-things-to-all-men, though there were limits to my willingness to accommodate.  Some English relatives on my mother's side complained about the exotic nature and the small portions, as if I care: - these silly people wanted daft things, such as bangers 'n' mash, fish 'n' chips, curry etc.  For Bilal's family (who entered the church extremely reluctantly), there was an extremely large container of chicken and jollof rice, but this was the only concession we made.  I would like to educate them and the English relatives about what good food is, but I am a busy woman, so I have to pick my battles!  For everyone else, we had a delectable and divine selection of Provençale cuisine served obviously in dainty portions!  The dishes included that quintessential Marseille dish, bouillabaise, made with the freshest seafood.  Olives harvested that morning also featured prominently.  There was a whole smörgåsbord of local specialities, another one being calissons.  Wedding cakes are a very English tradition which we naturally eschewed, so we opted for the French tradition of croquembouche (gluten-free on Bilal's account of course).

In France, the legal part of the wedding can only be carried out by the mayor, so we went to the mairie and got this part over and done with and then went to our church for the religious part of the ceremony.  The church was packed, unfortunately with many people who don't remotely care about what it does and only viewed the wedding as the place to see and be seen (such people were invited for business expediency, rather than because I truly wanted them there)!  Still, the pastor preached an unashamedly evangelistic sermon, which resulted some return visitors, at least one of whom I know to have now been baptised and taken out church membership.  I say with full sincerity that this makes the presence of all the other superficial people worthwhile.  The hymns were "Comment ai-je pu?" ("And can it be that I should gain"), "Béni soit le lien" ("Blest be the tie that binds"), "Croire obéir" ("Trust and obey") and "Je suis tien, Seigneur" ("I am Thine, O Lord"), all of them favourites of Bilal and myself.

Bilal was a sight for sore eyes in his fitted suit.  He looked extremely uncomfortable, as tight clothes are not his thing, but it was nice to finally see him dressed in a suit for the first time.  My wedding dress was absolutely fabulous, as were the bridesmaid's dresses and the suits of the leading men.  It's a shame I may never see him in a suit again, but obviously, now we are married, I get to see other things.

We opted for an open-air reception at the Calanques, with a reserve order of marquees made in case of severely unseasonal weather.  We chose a lovely secluded beach and were undisturbed the whole time: - it was a case of security by obscurity.  Bilal is a very capable swimmer, but will rarely do so in public, as he doesn't like non-family members seeing any part of his body except his face, hands and feet: - Touareg men tend to cover their heads with a tagelmust.  I wonder if this would enrage the opponents of the burkini?  Tee hee!  Anyway, maybe when our family grows and an apartment proves too small, we could choose a new home away from the city centre with high walls and a swimming pool within the ground, so as to give Bilal the privacy he desires.

For the honeymoon, I wanted a destination that was French-speaking, unfamiliar to both of us, offering unbridled luxury and beautiful.  We chose the Van Horne Suite of the Château Frontenac in Québec City, Canada.  Bilal looked rather strange in his hip-hop clothing when we walked in.  I could see that the staff were trying not to stare, so I insisted that Bilal wear a Touareg outfit for dining.  Having spent a lot of his time in Mali living in tents and often with no shelter in the desert, followed by La Savine, Bilal was not used to such opulence and looked rather lost in the hotel.  He isn't really used to eating non-Touareg food and found himself embarrassed asking if they served jollof rice.  Poor Bilal!

Both of us enjoyed the historic city and its waterfront situation.  When we arrived in the city on a ViaRail service (shamefully slow), we were struck by the beauty of the station.  Unusually for the Americas, the city has a city wall and citadel.  We made various journeys on the ViaRail service: - as the speeds are so low, there is an emphasis on service.  Wi-fi has been standard for a long time and there are cheery stewardesses serving food as if it were an airline.

As mentioned in previous posts, Bilal has always been very good with children.  He was determined to experience fatherhood as soon as possible and he wasted no time on ensuring this would happen as soon as we arrived.  I realised I was expecting part-way into the honeymoon.  When we arrived back, he announced that he had booked a dietician appointment for me: - he had been worried that I was not eating enough to ensure the baby's good health, so he insisted I attend it.  The dietician agreed that there was nothing wrong with my diet: - I knew this all along, but Bilal needed some reassurance.  I continued to eat well during my pregnancy and I gave birth to an entirely healthy baby boy with my weight no higher than what it was when I measured myself on the day of the wedding.

But that is another story.  I am sure I will go into more detailed aspects of the wedding later, but I also expect there will be many posts about motherhood.