Unfortunately, it wasn’t me.

Sitting at my office desk this morning drinking strong black espresso, eating a highly-calorific chocolate brioche and reading The Guardian online, I yelped then choked on a chocolate chip while reading this excellent article entitled “The thin white lie: challenging the French women stereotype”.

Finally! Boy, this has been a long time coming. There’s only one problem: the book is written by an American and it’s in English. It needs to be translated into French. Don’t tell us the problem, tell them.

Who is “them”, anyway? It’s all explained in the book.

The seductive Parisienne has become a symbol of national identity and inspired countless books – but some writers are speaking out against a harmful, exclusive myth.

 

Written by Lindsey Tramuta who lives in Paris and hails from Philadelphia, the book in question is titled “The New Parisienne: The Women and Ideas Shaping Paris”.

It counterpoints numerous books that have perpetrated the ridiculous ‘perfect Parisienne’ myth, specifically Mireille Giuliano’s best-selling ‘French women don’t get fat‘ and ‘French women don’t get facelifts‘. Way back in January 2014, while stuffing my face with a caramel chocolate bar, I wrote a blog post challenging Giuliano.

https://julietinparis.net/2014/01/21/french-women-do-get-fat/

Here are someone’s eloquent words on the topic of Mireille Guiliano –

She has become a very wealthy woman by peddling a whole series of these dubious, aspirational books, which promote the myth of the ultra-chic, ultra-slim French woman, and the general superiority of all-things-Gallic. The members’ forum of her French Women Don’t Get Fat website is very revealing. It’s peopled by a brigade of (largely) North American women who imagine that all their emotional problems will be solved if only they can save up for the longed-for trip to Paris!! It’s all rather pathetic, and shame on Ms Guiliano for exploiting this.

 

Here’s The Guardian article. On the heels of the #MeToo movement, it and Tramuta’s book is totally zeitgeist.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/02/myth-white-parisienne-is-being-challenged-lindsey-tramuta-alice-pfeiffer-and-aissa-maiga