I'm off to lunch with a friend I have not seen for more than 20 years. I have been advised that French women are masters of dissimulation. Apparently when you're at a dinner party with them you actually think they're eating as much as you are but they never are. Yes, yes it's the oft-repeated portion control bit and all things in moderation, etc. But what's so amazing is they actually seem to be having a grand time with only one flute of champagne. Go figure. And yet, Credence insists we must never say "non" to pleasure. O.K., works for me.
But surely there's more to being a Frenchwoman than not eating a whole portion of anything and knowing who Simone de Beauvoir is, even if you do not, strictly speaking, know anything she ever said.
This enduring cliché of French womanhood is retrogressive and seem to have halted circa Dangerous Liaisons. They are keen on their underwear; they take time to relax and apply their various creams; they do not need to assert themselves as equals to men because they are already three steps ahead and if he appears to be in charge, that is just because he has been distracted by her underwear and hasn't realised he's been stitched up like a kipper.
Of course, this is all bilge. French women, I'm sure, don't think of themselves like this any more than British women think of themselves as foul-mouthed alcopop-hounds who eat a lot of fried food. But you cannot escape the implications — that here is a land where they never had anything as vulgar as a sexual revolution, where women are still, eternally, women, where they get their own way with their cat-like cunning, not with unattractive shouting. And what do you know? They are exactly the same as you; as successful as you, as educated as you, as well-paid as you; they have come to the same endpoint, only they are thinner.
If I haven't potentially ruined your holidays, may I suggest you treat them the way a Frenchwoman would. Indulge within reason and make up for any disturbing variations on the scale in January. January is a rather down month anyway. You might as well go with the flow Eat, Drink and…
just take a long stroll through beautiful Paris. I think I found the answer to their secret.
