Quelle horreur! What happens when French women do get fat?
Thanks to author Mireille Guiliano, there is a widely-accepted belief that French women don’t get fat. Our Gallic counterparts, she explained in her bestselling book, can eat pains au chocolat for breakfast and still fit into their Isabel Marant skinnies, and enjoy crusty white bread at lunch without falling into a carb-induced food coma at their desk an hour later.
The myth that French women don’t get fat became even further entrenched following the release of Guiliano’s book, but it looks like it may finally be debunked by another French author, who has taken an entirely different tack. You’re Not Born Fat is the real-life story of Gabrielle Deydier, France’s first openly-fat woman — they hide the rest of them in the attic.
Deydier has two degrees, but because she weighs 23st, she is discriminated against in the workplace and verbally abused on the street. A colleague once told her, matter-of-factly, that he didn’t work with fat people. A gynaecologist once remarked: “There’s so much blubber here, I can’t see.”
We have long been told that French women don’t get fat because they have a guilt-free relationship with food. Only now Deydier’s book delves deeper into the country’s cultural mores, and exposes the quiet tyranny of the portion control police and the ostracising effects of what she calls “grossophobia”.
The French are proud of their global reputation as a culture that can enjoy the finer things in life — red wine, white bread, blue cheese — without succumbing to porcine selfabandon. They are not, how you say, le pig.
They don’t, however, like to look behind the façade, and talk about the 50,000 gastricband operations that take place each year, the bewildering array of cellulite creams on the pharmacie shelves or the ever-present fear of being pronounced ‘à la limite’ — the phrase they use to describe the verge of being overweight.
It must be confusing to live in a country where high-fat foods are celebrated, yet fat people are reviled, and it makes you wonder if French people feel under pressure to be, well, French.
Take the idea that French women savour croissants for breakfasts. Sure, they indulge every now and again, but they are also fastidiously aware of their waistlines. In truth, many of them skip breakfast, save for black coffee. Intermittent fasting is the new buzz word in the weight-loss industry, but French women have been doing it for hundreds of years.
The Gallic relationship with food is a little like the schoolmate who insisted she didn’t study before exams, yet got consistently high marks. As with their fashion, French women don’t like looking like they tried too hard, even if it means balancing self-indulgence with selfrestraint on a daily basis.