"Le Troisième Sexe"

My mother had told me that one of the best parts about being pregnant is how nice everyone suddenly becomes. I still wasn't prepared. For any of it. Parisian bus drivers who overnight began waiting for me with open doors, telling me not to run. Salesmen offering to carry my purchases for me. Fellow shoppers letting me go ahead of them at check-out. My mother-in-law asking me how I am.
The transition would probably have been a lot easier in the States, where people's natural kindness would simply have been super-sized. Here in Paris, it's like being in Invasion of the Bodysnatchers--only the alien duplicates are the ones with feelings. The strange thing is that pregnant women aren't even a rare commodity here. And I think I'm beginning to understand why. What's a little morning sickness and labor compared to nine blissful months of solicitude in a city where the customer notoriously counts for rien? And did I mention my mother-in-law?!

Dianna Agron as Quinn Fabray. [Online image] 2010.

"La Crèche"

In her controversial Le Conflit : la femme et la mère, French philosopher Elisabeth Badinter sings the praises of the French crèche system, which enables mothers to go on with non-mommy business as usual after giving birth. (Of course, they're supposed to wait until baby's two or three months old, or they risk getting as much slack as Rachida Dati did when she showed up for work five days after her C-section.) Badinter explains in Le Conflit how crèches are simply today's version of sending your infant into the country with a wet-nurse--a choice that even middle-class Frenchwomen made in order to focus more time and energy on their social and wifely duties. Of course, instead of spending their days primping and prepping for salons, today's respectable French mothers are supposed to hold down a 9-5 job. So as soon as they've entered their sixth month of pregnancy (or third month in child-laden Versailles), Parisian women sign up their unborn babies for day-care. And as soon as their babies are three months old, they drop them off daily (with formula and bottles--even the French have given up wet-nurses) at the local crèche. The up-side is clear to Badinter. French mothers get to "have it all": a professional life; a feminine (nursing bra-free) identity; and motherhood. But at what price?

Catalina Sandino Moreno as Ana. [Online image] 2006.

Bon Appétit !

The French love saying bon appétit. Just not when everyone's sitting around the table. In fact, it's considered pretty gauche to say anything at all--once the maîtress de maison begins, everyone's just supposed to dig in.
So when do the French say bon appétit? At 10:00 o'clock in the morning when they spy you eating a banana at your desk. "Bon appétit!" they'll chime as they walk past your office, smug at having caught you in the act. Or in the afternoon as you munch hungrily on a baguette sandwich in the park. Elderly couples won't resist acknowledging your newfangled conception of a meal with an amused "Bon appétit!" as they pass by your bench.
If you dare eat in public in France, then you're asking for feedback.

Meryl Streep as Julia Child. [Online image] 2009.