Read Online French Toast by Harriet Welty Rochefort - Free Book Online Page B

“special” relationship between men and women in France is based on the premise that if you don’t rock my boat, I won’t rock yours (my opinion).
    In her book
XY: De l’identité masculine (XY: Of Masculine Identity)
French author and sociologist Elisabeth Badinter maintains that the uniqueness of male-female relationships in France comes in part from the fact that Frenchmen acknowledge their feminine side. A case in point: Frenchmen don’t see buying lingerie for their girlfriends as a threat to their manliness,
au contraire
. Badinter says the Scandinavian man is “soft” and the American man is “tough,” whereas the Frenchman is the perfect combination.
    â€œThe American type of tough guy has no equivalent in France,” she writes. “Of course, we have the patriarch, the ordinary macho, but not the extraordinary supermacho.” Rambo and the Terminator, she says, are definitely American specialties.
    Ah, so that “feminine side” explains why I have a soft spot for Frenchmen, thought I, after reading Badinter’s theory. They do have an endearing side. I exclude, of course, all those macho dudes behind the wheels of their teeny-weeny R5s or Peugeot 305s or the guys who yell “
Connasse
” (translation unprintable) out their car window: They don’t look to me like they’re “acknowledging their feminine side” one bit.
    â€œWhat,” asked an American man one day, upon learning that a mutual friend was going to marry a Frenchman, “do these Frogs have that we don’t?” To be sure, not every Frenchman is Gérard Depardieu or Jean Reno—but still, there are a few things that Frenchmen have in common that make them so . . . French.
    For one thing, a sense of seduction. As a journalist friend of mine remarked, a Frenchman is capable of flirting with you over the phone, sight unseen. She recounts a phone interview with the late Yves Montand in which he was positively seducing her with his charm. What did he care if she was sixty-five or twenty-two? He had never seen her and probably never would—but why not be agreeable just in case? The point is that, as any self-respecting French male would, he wanted to win herover. The sexual tension, the recognition that one person is a man and that the other is a woman, permeates life in France. There is none of this “Oh, we’re doing business; we’re all neuter” stuff. No one, thank God, forgets what sex he or she is.

    France has not succumbed to the politically correct movement in the area of sex (thank goodness). Thus, a woman is delighted, not shocked, when a man notices her new dress, and the man is not afraid that an innocent compliment will lead to a complaint of sexual harassment. Hey! But then no self-respecting Frenchwoman would consider herself “victimized” by a man’s paying attention to her.
Au contraire!
    Many Frenchmen have a wonderful sense of humor about the whole game of flirting. France is probably the one country an attractive single woman can live in peacefully, because a woman is allowed to take or leave the attentions men lavish on her. To be more explicit: If you tell a man to bug off, he will. He was just trying, and if he succeeds in getting your attention or making you laugh, well, it was worth the attempt. One American woman who lived with a Frenchman for many years told me, “As far as making you feel like a woman, the Frenchman wins hands down.” And she added, “The French are the only men I’ve ever known who can makelove with their shoes and socks on in the heat of the moment, because they’re not concerned about whether they look ridiculous or not.” For this woman, the American male, on the other hand, might get a better score both on treating women as equals and the use of soap, two points on which not all Frenchmen would get a passing grade.
    In a general sense, soap or no soap,