Sharon Harrigan

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Lost in Translation: Preservatives

 

The male form of the word, preservatifs, means condoms. They are available in parks and metro stations in Paris, so ubiquitous I forget they’re there except on days like today, when I pause at the turnstile to close my umbrella and find my fare. The way the dispenser is placed, right at the entrace, it appears to be related to my ride, a necessary travel item, like luggage. It makes me think of crowded rush-hour trains, commuters pressed leather jacket to leather jacket.

The female form, preservatives, is a bad word, with the same meaning as in English. My boulangerie promises that their all-natural produits contain none of these.

Then there are the other chemicals, the ones in the public service announcements for women. Yesterday, we saw one before the children’s film, Kirikou et Les Hommes et Les Femmes (Kirikou and Men and Women). It’s a sweet little-kid movie, and my fourth-grader was the oldest child in the theater. The ad showed a hold-up at a bank, with a hostage inching slowly, carefully toward her purse. We think she is going to reach for her phone and call the police, but instead she pops a pill. I thought it was a Valium, at first. But no, the punch line is: Nothing should ever get in the way of remembering to take contraceptives. Looking around the theater, I wondered who the intended audience for this message was. All the adults there, almost by definition, already had kids. Maybe it was aimed at the elementary-school set, to indoctrinate them early. My daughter’s school agenda includes helpful tips like “Going out for the weekend? Don’t forget your preservatif,” alongside others, such as “Why not have an apple for dessert today, instead of a sweet?” The French holistic approach to education. It’s only natural.

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Paris Journal: What Do French Bureaucrats and Jane Austen Characters Have in Common?

Yesterday we got an e-mail from our banker saying he needs proof of my maiden name. Even though I have no incentive to lie about it and it has no bearing on my bank-worthiness, I complied. His previous request was for a copy of our landlord’s passport. What’s next: proof of our landlord’s maiden name?

Meanwhile, the person handling our carte de sejour application (which will allow us to leave the country and return after our three-month visa expires) needs an electric bill in our name. A letter from our landlord stating that we pay the electric bills in his name is insufficient. That was yesterday. We’ll see what new request surfaces today.

Our experience seems typical. One of our friends, who lived last year in the apartment we’re renting now, explained, “As many people told us, French bureaucrats usually start any discussion with ‘Non, pas possible.’ But after some suitable persuading, they eventually change their tune.”

Which brings me to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, a remarkably relevant satire, which I am in the middle of reading to Ella. When Elizabeth Bennet refuses the marriage proposal proferred by Mr. Collins, he replies, “It is usual with elegant young ladies to reject the addresses of the man whom they secretly mean to accept, when he first applies for their favour; and sometimes the refusal is repeated a second or even a third time. I am therefore by no means discouraged by what you have just said, and shall hope to lead you to the altar ere long.”

So the French will keep saying no, but we’ll realize they mean yes? We will probably first be turned down a second or even a third time. But we will get that carte de sejour.

I like to imagine the French bureaucrats in the guise of Marianne, the woman who, in paintings and sculptures, represents France itself. Marianne, you coquette! We will lead you to the altar, ere long.

 

 

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Paris Journal: “That’s the Way the French Do It”

 

As we huddled on the street, waiting to be let in the school for a meeting with new families, I found several parents from my daughter Ella’s class chatting about how difficult their children’s workload is and how public the humiliation is if they don’t do well. For instance, each day the children have to recite a French sentence they learned the day before. When each child is finished, the teacher grades him or her aloud: tres bien (very good), bon (good), ca va (OK), or horrible. I don’t tell them that Ella doesn’t complain, that instead, she’s grateful to be challenged. (It would sound unsympathetic.) She is not the best French speaker in the class. Some children speak perfectly but just need to work on their writing. “I love being average!” she said, the other day, which made me laugh. “School is designed for the kids in the middle,” she explained, “and for once I’m the target audience.”

Leave it to me, American provocateur that I am, to steer the conversation from homework to sex. “Did your kids tell you about the movie?” I asked. They hadn’t. I said Ella was excited to tell me yesterday that the teacher had shown a movie with naked children in it and that they could see their “private parts.” The teacher had explained, matter-of-factly: “That’s the way the French do it.”

Every Monday the class watches a little movie, then they use it as a springboard for vocabulary, spelling, and acting out scenes. This week the movie was “Bath Time.”

“Maybe it’s only in America that teachers wouldn’t show a scene like that,” I said to two mothers, one Dutch, one British. The Dutch mother shrugged her shoulders. I thought of Amsterdam’s legal prostitution and wondered if anything shocked her kids. The British  mother said, “They wouldn’t show that kind of movie in England because of recent scandals with priests and coaches.”

Today the children will choose roles, and on Friday they will act out the scene. I wonder if it will be in authentic (un)dress! At the end, I hope the teacher says “tres bien.”

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Paris Journal: Fashion Update

This is what I see on the street, now that the locals have returned:

1. Red pants. For men, women, and children. Not always blue-jean material, but always blue-jean cut. Paired with anything from a button-down shirt and blazer to a t-shirt. (Confirmation, perhaps of what Rosecrans Baldwin says in Paris I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down: that in Paris Frenchmen dress the way gay men do in America.)

2. Scarves. The ends thrown over your shoulders like windswept hair, wrapped around your neck like a muffler, or hanging loose. Almost a requirement for women, but men and some children wear them, too. A $10 blue cotton foulard is the one item I’ve bought so far, and it’s worked so well to disguise me as a native that I’ve had people ask me for directions in French. It’s also one-size-fits-all, which will come in handy, given my new Camembert-with-every-meal habit.

3. Skinny jeans. For men, women, and children. In all colors, many of them bright.

4. Pointy leather shoes for men. Converse sneakers in all colors for boys and girls. (But never clunky running shoes. Only “les baskets.”) Ballet flats with no socks for girls and women. Short, sleek boots if it’s too cold to go sockless. Heels, high and low, even with (or especially with) jeans, for women and older girls.

5. Button-up dress shirts and jackets without a tie for men.

6. Flowered underwear. Even for men (including in the e-mail I just received from my supermarket). In Charlottesville, my supermarket didn’t send me e-mails with lingerie promotions, but in Paris, underwear is everywhere.

7. Speedos and other racing swimsuits. Men and boys are not allowed in pools with baggy suits.

8. Tailored everything. All the peasant skirts and flouncy dresses my nine-year-old daughter packed were charming in Charlottesville but seem rather frumpy here. So she bought three pairs of skinny jeans, her first ever.

9. Tailored shorts with stockings. For twenty-somethings.

10. For older-than-twenty-somethings (like me): Dark skinny jeans; a short, boxy, tailored suit-type jacket; and impeccable shoes. You can substitute a jean jacket, if you have a beautiful scarf. Studied casual is the look. The desired effect is elegant but not too formal or fussy.

11. Even elderly women wear jeans, though not skinny jeans. They may wear loafers instead of ballet flats or heels.

Maybe I’ll buy something today. Or maybe I’ll wait, so I can get even-more-skinny jeans. Because, paradoxically, I’m losing weight, even though for a month I didn’t go to the gym and ate butter and cheese with every meal.

It’s the French paradox, right? Is it something in the air? The red wine? The walking? The frisson of sex everywhere you look? I say it’s all the lingerie ads. You can fill in the rest.

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Paris Journal: Taking Our Clothes Off

On gym day this week at my daughter’s school in Paris, the girls were changing in the locker room while a group of children, boys and girls, walked through. The boys didn’t pay much attention to the disrobed girls; they were just trying to get to class, and this was a convenient route. But my daughter turned red when she told me. “I was so embarrassed,” she said.  When I told another parent about the experience the next morning after drop-off, she said, “The French don’t mind taking their clothes off in front of other people.” Her own children, girls and boys, routinely dress in front of each other.

I’ve always known that physical modesty—the willingness to show one’s flesh in public—is a cultural notion. When I lived in New York City, among Orthodox Jewish women in wigs and skirts down to their ankles and among Muslim women in veils, I’d imagined that native-born Americans were on the immodest end of the spectrum. Now I know better.

What’s interesting is that the boys were so matter-of-fact about the lockerroom encounter. I can picture American boys hooting and teasing, instead. Perhaps there’s an analogy here to the way the French deal with alcohol: Everyone is exposed to it, beginning at a young age, in moderation, so they are less likely to abuse it. Children are used to seeing naked bodies—in advertisements on the metro and in their own homes—so there’s no reason to gawk.