NEW YORK — In the interest of settling the matter definitively, I called my sisters-in-law in Paris this morning. "Why don't Frenchwomen get fat?" I demanded, routing the phone cord around my cinnamon Danish.
This was not going to be a difficult survey. First of all, French nationality is conferred only on those capable of pontificating. Secondly, I was appealing to the experts. My calls caught none of my svelte sisters-in-law halfway out the door to the gym ("a disgusting pickup place, full of Frenchmen and foreign women," one sniffed) or with her nose in a diet book.
Thirdly, I was not asking why Frenchwomen are thin. I was asking why they are not fat, the implication being that someone else very much is. Diplomacy has its place in Paris; it belongs in the office of foreign affairs. Frenchwomen are renowned for their je ne sais quoi, their savoir-faire, their douceur, ostensibly untranslatable terms for which there is one perfectly good English equivalent: cattiness.
The first Frenchmen on our shores were charmed by the American experiment, puzzled by the American female. She had no wit and less conversation. More to the point, there was in the New World a disconcerting dearth of slim Parisian waists. Equally to the point, American girls had it all backward. They labored under the illusion that they were to be flirtatious until they landed a husband and paragons of virtue thereafter. The self-respecting Frenchwoman subscribed to the opposite approach.
By general consensus, American women were plump, plain and graceless. "They follow fashion," observed one volunteer in our War of Independence, "but do not always use it to the best advantage." Clearly, scarf-tying has never been indigenous to this country.
Boston women, it was noted, were "carefully dressed, but without taste, and do not understand how to arrange their hair." We had no grace, little spirit; the best that could be said of us was that we were uncommonly clean. French fashion simply looked wrong on an American frame, which might explain that wardrobe malfunction I once encountered in my sister-in-law's ball gown, something I had always taken for sabotage.
In the French opinion, too, we went to seed quickly. To 18th century eyes, an American woman was charming and adorable at 15, faded at 23, old at 35 and decrepit at 40, whereas everyone knew a Frenchwoman was 29 until she was 60. Which may explain why I called my eldest sister-in-law first. I had it on good authority that she was resplendent in a bikini as recently as last week.
