Plus Petite

Everything is smaller in France. The sidewalks, the drinking glasses, the ceilings in the mall, shampoo bottles, cars, all that jazz.

They have less space in France so it would make sense to have smaller things and be more prone to conservation but I also think it’s representative of the culture of excess in the United States. We have to have things bigger better, more impressive.

I think that this “culture of excess” can be linked to American eating/exercise habits as well. People in France and Poland put butter on their sandwiches, that’s like unheard of in the United States. (Although I’m starting to realize now that I’m here in Krakow that just as many Polish people are chubbin it out as Americans, and I shouldn’t go by my super tall/skinny cousins as a guide to the Polish norm! lol) Americans are carb weary forgoing pasta and bread for lettuce wraps while in France they chow down on baguettes everyday. Milk in France is like half and half! I drink skim milk at home and I’m going to have to take some time to get used to it again because the milk I drink every morning in France for breakfast is creamy and delicious.

I feel like Americans are super health conscious on one end and then really chubby and lazy on the other - there’s like no middle ground. Exercising and going to the gym is much bigger in the U.S. than it is France. I honestly don’t think the concept of moderation exists in the U.S. Thus we are both one of the heaviest populations in the world as well as the ones obsessed with dieting, exercise, and body image. I think I eat healthier in the U.S. but eat more and obviously walk less even on campus than I do here.

Europeans I’ve noticed both in Poland and in France utilize space better in their homes. They make the most of what they have.

My host mom in France considers Tours a small city but to me it’s pretty grand especially compared to a place like Grand Blanc, Michigan.

I went to a bar/café in town called The Guinguette on the banks of the Loire River and it had such a nice ambience with strung lights, completely outdoor tables and chairs, an area for games, a stage for music that I thought I would have loved to have had this place around when I was a teenager.

There are so many cafes, parks, and shops in Tours! In Grand Blanc the main hang out was the Starbucks where I went to too many times. Teenagers hang out along the banks of the Loire at night in circles talking and smoking (tobacco and weed) and it seems like such a nice slow paced sort of lifestyle here that I wonder how my life might have been different had I grown up here.

All this being said, I still feel like the United States is my home and always will be. 

Les Femmes! Fumez!?

My French professor here in Tours, Olivier, was telling us about how the division between the sexes in France is manifested through differing standards on public smoking. He said it was acceptable for men to smoke in public but less acceptable for a woman to do so.

Now surely a lot has changed especially in the past 50 years, but I think he said they were still vestiges of this double standard left in society.

Maybe I could equate it to something like double standard on sleeping around in American society – even though women sleep around as much as guys nowadays it’s still looked down more upon a woman if she sleeps around than it is for a man.

Anyway he gave an interesting explanation as to why it was more unacceptable for a woman to smoke in public. When a woman smokes in public it shows that she is doing something for herself in a very open way and in a patriarchal society women aren’t allowed to do things pleasurable for themselves. However it’s okay for a man to smoke in public because he can partake in pleasurable things while women had to cater to others not themselves.

Disclaimer: this was all explained in French so there’s a possibility I could have missed something. I don’t think I was paying attention but started to when he began explaining this so I could have missed some stuff.

What do you guys think?

(Image from weheartit.com)

La nourriture (Food)

I'm concerned with my diet in France. I eat bread and butter/or/cheese at literally every meal.

When you walk down the streets of Tours during lunchtime you cannot walk one block without seeing at least 3 people eating baguettes or baguette sandwiches.

I talked with my host mom this morning about the diets of Americans and French. I told her that a lot of Americans are carb weary because of the Atkins rhetoric we hear all the time. She cooks a lot of good food, but we eat cheese, butter, and cream sauces often. I wonder how the French stay so skinny!

Her answer was that it's the processed foods that make one fat not the natural stuff like bread, potatoes and butter! She also said that France was catching up with America in terms of weight gain. :P

It also seems as though the French don't drink as much during meals. They'll have a glass of wine during dinner or a glass of water but the glasses here are small compared to those in America and I feel like I look odd pouring myself as many glasses as I do during a meal!

I guess it's part of the culture of excess in the United States... everything does seem to have to be bigger in America. I'm going to talk more about the "culture of excess" in another blog post!

Oh another funny thing - I bought tweezers here that have pictures of French macaroons on them. The macaroons here are different than the American version and I'm excited to try them!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37158245/ns/travel-luxury/?pg=10#TRAVEL_100514_WhatNotToDoParis_Concierge

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Here's a typical sampling of what I eat daily in France:

Breakfast - Baguette with butter, jam, nutella, or honey, pain au lait (small rectangular bread), café au lait, les chouquettes (think of cream puffs without the cream, pictured below)

Lunch - Baguette with cheese, baguette with sliced ham, cheese and butter = classic French sandwich and lunch, various crudités.

Dinner - Lettuce with vinaigrette dressing, wine, baguette & cheese, some type of meat, vegetables (vegetables and meat are prepared with only a little spicing), and a speciality dish from different regions in France particularly Lyon because that's where my host mom was born.

Dessert - French desserts are reaaaalllllyyyy good, crème chocolat, tarte aux fruits, or simply fruit after dinner.

*My host family doesn't do courses, but a lot people who I've talked to their families do.

à la messe

I went to church this past Sunday in grand ornate cathedral dating back from the Middle Ages. As the small compact car my host mom owns pulled up in front of the cathédrale de Saint-Gatien, I was taken aback - the sheer intricacy and grandeur of the place is unbelievable.

To be sure there are very few churches in the United States that are built in a gothic style... I told my host mom, Monique, that Saint-Gatien was reminiscent of St. Patrick's in New York.

As I stood outside looking up at it in awe this French man around my dad's age walks past me and says "oooooh mignonne." I've heard that European men do express themselves in such an outward manner (or should I say creepy?) but here's to hoping he's a creepy outlier and not the norm.

During the service I encountered a bit of cultural misunderstanding. During one part of Catholic mass in America one shakes the people's hands who are by you and says "Peace be with you". In French mass you say something like "La paix de Christ" and in addition to shaking hands, "kiss the air" around the people's cheeks. I didn't know this and I felt bad for the boy in front of me who leaned in as I awkwardly paused and said nothing (because I wasn't sure what was being said - I was thinking they were saying "le corps de Christ"). I wonder what he thought about me! lol

The most interesting thing though was that my host mom told me that she doesn't go to this church like at all because most of the parishioners are the bourgeoisie. In French class professors always told us that the bourgeoisie was akin to America's middle class. However I'm confused because my host mom appears to fall within the scope of the middle class, according to American standards anyway.

She reads extensively, from what I can tell. The books that pack the shelves in her living room consist of books about Chopin's time in France and one entitled "Sexe et l'identité feminine". The poor classes in America are known to be less educated than other classes, so this also poses another question in terms of correlation between education and class in France.

Burgeoning Cultural Theorist Gets Ready to Learn

I'm going to France for the first time in less than a week and I hope to not only gain a better understanding of French language but the culture as well.

My blog's going to change to reflect this as I explore topics in French culture and compare American culture to that of French.

Topics I want to cover include:

• Race
• Dating
• Sarkozy
• Immigration
• The Colonial Past
• Materialism & Money
• Gender and the role of women 
• American Dream vs European Dream
• Misc. differences between French and American society

I would really like to film my adventures in Europe but I don't have enough money to buy a camera worth purchasing, nor do I believe that the school that I will be studying at has any A/V equipment. So I'm going to rely on photos and possibly transcribe interviews from a tape-recorder (oy).

Excited to see what the next 8 weeks hold for me!

Post-Colonial Theory and Indie Rock

I brushed off Vampire Weekend as a so-so, preppy band composed of Ivy-League kids of privilege devoid of depth. And I mean if you listen to a lot the lyrics on their debut, the constant references to designer clothes and elite travel spots can become a bit of an overload. However, I recently picked up a copy of Rolling Stone out of a pile that my sister leaves for me to read when I come back from school and I read a really interesting article about them that made me rethink all my previous assumptions.

"To some, the band members were indie-rock colonialists, plundering Third World styles for their own gain. But for Koenig, who studied the semiotics of post-colonial literature, concepts like purism and authenticity are as outdated as a land line. Everything is intertwined, he says, and "polar opposites don't exist." Start seeing the connections, and "the idea of fusion - of mixing things - seems less and less like a novelty, and more just the way the world works." (From R.S. mag, Feb 2010)

Ezra Koenig (the one in the yellow sweater):

"But around the time the band started, I became very interested in the connection between preppy American fashion and Victorian imperialism. For instance: Where does the word 'khaki' come from? It's Urdu. Where does 'seersucker' come from? Hindi-slash-Persian. Madras prints? They're from India. Blazers? They were a British naval uniform.

"Now obviously that's a very fucked up period," he continues. But there's something exciting about realizing that these clothes have come to represent WASPy Americans, the pinnacle of whiteness, actually have their roots in India or the non-Western world. They have this fascinating history flowing through them. Preppiness is this wide open thing."

I never knew about such a link between fashions and being a student of cultural theory, his words impressed me. It was also a mini-lesson that one shouldn't always take things at face value. I hope Ezra and the rest of the band members can talk more about their music and opinions like this, because it's fascinating!