Doris Day could never make me cheer up, quite the way those French girls always could*

My good friend at un.slaked notes the back-and-forth tiff in the Times of London’s op-ed columns over The State Of The British Woman.

In round one, expat American Tad Safran calls Britwomen unkempt, lazy and parsimonious about their appearance, level of fitness and beauty spending, respectively, administering what I’m sure he thinks is “tough love” in rather appallingly frank, bordering on sexist terms:

The girls I was surrounded by when I was a teenager were sublime [English] roses with lustrous hair, flawless skin, bright eyes and lithe, athletic bodies. They dressed as if there would be a prize at the end of the night for the girl wearing the least. I then went away to Philadelphia for university. Four years later, I came back and wondered: “What the hell happened to all the beautiful girls I knew?” My first assumption was that one half of them had eaten the other half and washed them down with a crate of lager.

In round two, Carol Midgely retorts that the unplucked, unwaxed, low-maintenance British woman is

…exactly the type of woman I’d like to be friends with: unmanicured nails, an aversion to gyms, crap skin caused by alcoholic late nights, non-Cowellesque teeth, a belief that only lap dancers should bother with intimate waxing; women who would rather spend £500 having a laugh in Torremolinos than a week in a “bikini boot camp” having a fanny buff (don’t worry, that means “bottom” in America, but give it time and I’m sure they’ll come up with the other sort).

After which, she invokes the cast-the-first-stone edict by pointing out the sweatsuit-draped, vaguely human-shaped lard packets populating The Mall of America and the Jerry Springer Show.

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In Montreal summertime, a stroll down a city block will turn a man’s head so often, that neck braces are now available at better dépanneurs (next to the 3-in-1 oil and those odd bits of hardware). I believe we know something the Brits and Americans don’t: we’ve chosen to opt out of a typically Protestant, black-and-white, monodimensional view of attraction and desire.

Both extremes sound repellent to me — Hyper-stressing about one’s abs and trying to become as plastic as possible is its own punishment — but to decide that the alternative is to make no effort whatsoever is equally uncompelling. Besides, what about all those other dimensions to attractiveness, like intelligence, humour, experience, and self-regard?

Consider instead nos cousines françaises de France. I’ve known a few, expats living here in Montreal, and I was enthralled by them. They typically arrived with a tiny, but absolutely perfect mix-and-match wardrobe that suited all occasions. They ate well, never starving or calorie-counting, but never to excess. Without makeup, they boasted a sun-kissed glow, and with a tiny bit of makeup, could stop a tank with blown kisses. They smiled a lot. They seemed happy, sure of themselves. I’d marvel at how their hair - simultaneously glossy and tangled, a cross between coif and bedhead– even seemed happy and sure of itself. All gently eccentric — like Audrey Tautou.

Writer Debra Ollivier, in a series of Continental dispatches for Salon written way back in ought-four, noted the sensibleness not only of the French diet, but also their culture’s entire attitude to food; compare this to the “20 minute lunch at your desk” nonsense that Americans put up with, that probably shortens their lifespan.

More to the point, Ollivier wrote admiringly of French women’s attitude to life and love, discovering the truth of what Edith Wharton had written in 1919: that French women are simply more grown-up than their American counterparts:

I hear Natalie sigh over 6,000 miles of fiber optic cable. “Only in America could you get away with this type of lunacy. There is so much pressure on American women to be happy. To sweep away all traces of loneliness, to forget who you are in your search for a lover or a spouse. In France young girls learn that happiness is elusive; we learn that happiness is less important than passion.”

Natalie’s comments remind me of a salient little metaphor: As girls we Americans sit in our field of daisies and pull off petals with, “He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not.” Meanwhile French girls sit in their meadows with their marguerites and pull off petals with: “He loves me a little. A lot. Passionately. Madly. Not at all.” Why does the little French girl innately think in nuances and increasing levels of passion while we’re mired in the black-and-white of total love or utter rejection?

Ollivier would go on to update Wharton in her own book Entre Nous: A Woman’s Guide To Finding Her Inner French Girl, a compendium of observations and advice on diet, fashion and relationships based on her decade of living in France. (On clothes: Throw out everything except those things you really love, and build a capsule wardrobe of high-quality classics.) There’s a longer excerpt at Amazon that’s well worth reading here.

Most of what Ollivier reports about French women is true here as well. As North Americanized as we are here, even today, out-of-town friends are still struck by Montreal women’s stylishness and self-possession. What is valued also seems to be at odds with the Protestant work ethic: Unlike, say, Toronto or LA, what car you drive or how much money you make isn’t a valid icebreaker. Try architects, favourite films, travel and the last great meal you ate.

Of course, there’s still the issue of what to do with the North American man — but I’ll leave it to the commentariat to decide what to do there. (find your inner Bond? or your inner Thomas Keller?)

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