Dressing up

I recently attended a concert by Natalie Merchant, an alternative rock singer from my college years, who, with her stunning voice. has experimented with different music platforms over the years. This time, she performed with the Seattle Symphony so her songs had a different sound and beat than her recordings and other performances do.  Perhaps to go along with that more stripped down style, Merchant was dressed simply and elegantly, swirling around in a black form-fitting dress with a lovely wide skirt, accompanied with heeled Mary Janes.  She seemed comfortable and confident in her mid-life body and I was also impressed by her long, now fully gray, smooth, loose hair.  It was as much a part of her act as her exceptional voice.  She looked real, she looked like an adult, she was beautiful.

Celebrities know more than most that outward appearances matter, as it is these that we use to present ourselves to others and manage impressions.  Some of us are more calculating about our appearances, striving to make a statement, or to express ourselves (this is how I interpreted Merchant's style), but for most of us, (those of us with the means to choose what to wear), we are just trying to not stand out too much.  To do this, we first have to know what is normative.  In the Pacific NW, for example, dressing for the symphony or dressing for church, well, these are fairly indistinguishable from dressing for the every day, and all involve a fair amount of earth tones, denims and khakis, flat shoes.  There are no real uniforms for different events, and comfort is the operative word.  The symphony crowd at the Merchant concert was dressed in this typical (in my mind uninspiring and somewhat sloppy) manner. Despite my opinion, this is simply the dressing norm where I now live, the Seattle aesthetic so to speak.  In contrast,  the French style has been described as real, adult, respectful (see two descriptions:  http://www.vogue.com/1648381/lauren-santo-domingo-parisian-style-french-women-make-coffee/ and http://www.parisescapes.com/paris_wear.html )  All this means is that the French have stronger expectations for what is appropriate dress for different settings and they do not consider sweats and running shoes as regular streetwear (see my earlier discussion of this: Les tenues, April 2013).  The French are no more real or adult than Americans, but their social conception of how an adult dresses is simply different.

In the U.S. we might call the French style 'dressing up'.  I hear that often when I have a skirt on in the driving rain, or have worn something other than sneakers to an athletic event.  I don't think of these as dressing up but as normal, or authentic for me.  I prefer styles that imply effort, thought, care, creativity, purpose (is this 'conscious dressing'?).  I also like the new attention placed on the dressing choices of older adults.  Before, it seemed that creative dressing was reserved for the young.  But, creativity and effort and style are ageless: here's a street-style blog I recently discovered that explores the style choices of older people: http://advancedstyle.blogspot.com/ (see below).   Dressing up?  Dressing one's age?  How about a style where one dresses authentically for the real, adult person that one is?
Ps. There is no reason that such authenticity must be maintained when it comes to naturally graying hair. That's the adult prerogative!

The Sociological Observer by Anne Katriina Tuominen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at www.thesociologicalobserver.com.

The beautiful game

For the time being, I think it's fair to say that I'm 'soccered out'.  I've followed more World Cup games in this year's competition than I've ever done, recording almost faithfully the outcomes of each.  This is all on top of the live trainings and games and tournaments in which my own son plays and which I orchestrate as the family's resident soccer mom.  So, while I wished Messi, the magician, had been able to help his fellow Argentines win, I found the goal by the German "Super Mario" yesterday to be a magnificent end, for his team, and for my 2014 World Cup viewing experience.  (An earlier experience, in 1990, culminated in a similar result, except then I found myself in Germany, celebrating that victory in the streets of a small town.  It's hard to believe that this year's hero, Mario Goetze, was not even born then.)

Soccer/football has been widely called the beautiful game.  It's the name of a documentary film on African football, and apparently, the soccer great Pelé has referred to football as such.  It's definitely beautiful because it is so simple, anyone can play, with very little equipment and space.  The game has also been called an illogical one and an anxious one, because it's not often the team with the greatest possession or the best shots at goal that wins, and this World Cup certainly showed us this a few times.  But why do I enjoy it so much?  I've never played it, not even as a child.  I suppose having children who play, especially at an increasingly higher level makes it beautiful because the experience feels very academic to me.  I learn so much from each game; I absolutely enjoy watching a game and then reading analyses or talking with knowledgeable individuals about what I've just seen.  I also learn about how the sport is organized in different societies, like what I learned about le foot in France: Un certain regard May 2013.

Friendships have also come about through this sport and that's a beautiful thing too.  It's not just our son who hangs out with his football buddies; our entire family spends a lot of time with football families.  We travel and socialize with them: we've recently  attended a wedding with our U.S. soccer friends, and in France, we camped several times over tournament weekends.  I even shared a humble bungalow with a French dad and his son.  Not all of the moments were beautiful ones, even in Provence, but the French penchant for proper pique-niques alongside the soccer pitch, complete with wine, (see A table, May 2013) and the many language and cultural lessons learned make for many cherished memories in my book.  (See Allez les gars for what we learned about Provencal cross-town rivalries, Nov. 2012, and Le bonheur, Dec. 2012, for the challenges some French girls face if they love the beautiful game too.)

The ultimate beauty of fútbol for me though is how sociological it is and how well it reflects social life.  David Brooks at the New York Times captures this, yes, beautifully, in his op-ed piece last week: Baseball or Soccer? 10 July 2014, where he argue that soccer is in a sense a mini-sociological platform, and how each of us in our social worlds is playing soccer.  We all have our roles, and these roles may be enacted in different ways depending on all kinds of social factors: who is filling the other roles--the ones with which we are interacting, what are the constantly changing environmental conditions (on the football pitch, in our workplace, or at home...) and so on.  Even when we feel tuckered out, by sometimes overwhelming social demands, by too many football matches, too many hard tackles on the pitch, whatever it is, we may retreat for a short while, but never completely.  Who we are, the game(s) we play, and the life we live are all inherently social.  I'll let Brooks sum this up:  "Most of us spend our days thinking we are playing baseball, but we are really playing soccer. We think we individually choose what career path to take, whom to socialize with, what views to hold. But, in fact, those decisions are shaped by the networks of people around us more than we dare recognize."

Game nights

Instead of those languid summer days we had in Provence the past few summers or that I seem to remember from my own childhood, I've had an exceptionally full June and July.  My teaching schedule is much lighter and my kids are out of school, but those same kids seem to have more activities than ever, plus we had a French exchange student for a few weeks.  So, the food and organizational demands on this household have been much greater than ever before.  That said, over the past weekends, we haven't done anything too much out of the ordinary for a summer spent in the U.S.: some swimming, some shopping, some fishing, a summer solstice festival day in town, a World Cup and birthday party, a day trip to Mt. Rainier, and a 4th of July weekend on Hood Canal.  From our visitor's perspective, several of the activities were probably no different from the ones he and his family would participate in at home, such as the various summer festivals and day trips.

The big difference though is in the weekday activities this summer, especially the scheduled kids' activities that persist year-round in the U.S. In France, music lessons and sports trainings are on hiatus for the summer so the weekdays are much, much quieter.  Being inner city dwellers the past few summers in France, our only real recreational options on foot during the day were to the neighborhood pools or parks, which weren't that attractive, to be honest.  There wasn't much to do at the parks in the broiling heat, and the pool area wasn't even properly shaded.  (This summer, that same pool in Aix is closed for renovations, which I really find to be strange timing!  See my blogger friend's post on this at Aixcentric.com.)   Here in the U.S., we easily fill each summer weekday and evening with sports camps, trainings, music lessons, games and competitions.  Just this week, I've already driven a carpool to soccer camp, am attending two evening swim meets, and am sending a child off to a five day national soccer tournament in North Carolina. I am hoping to fit in a water aerobics class or two for myself, make some raspberry jam, and get to the grocery store again, before I collapse on the weekend!

Apparently, our U.S. style summer did not overwhelm our exchange student like I thought it might; his father reported that his son arrived home to Marseille this past weekend radiant and 'very pleased' by his visit to the U.S.  I think that our activity level here in the U.S. does appeal to many: we just don't sit still much around here. (I've commented earlier on my quieter and more reflective life in France: En famille Oct.2013, Un été en Provence Aug. 2013 )  Even unscheduled activities seem to be more engaging or involved here: musical jam sessions between the boys (our guest brought his saxophone, one of my sons plays piano and guitar) became recording sessions and mini jazz concerts for the rest of us, casual fishing off a dock became a game of how many can you catch, the lighting of an enormous pile of safe and sane fireworks (the only kind I buy) morphed into a late night teen campfire circle, and the pile of board games in our basement led to a few game nights à la façon Américaine.  The fireworks and the game nights were especially novel to our guest because such fireworks are interdict in France and playing board games en famille is just not a common activity.  Both ended up being great ways for our guest to practice English and for us to share how we spend our time here, in this family, in this community, in this society.  And that is what a cultural exchange is all about.

Longhand reading

Since my family's return to Seattle five months ago, we've noticed all kinds of differences and similarities between our brief French life and our American one.  (See The big (and) easy, 11 Dec. 2013, for some of those initial discoveries.)  More recently, I've noticed how tethered I've become to my smart devices, and how that has affected my concentration and memory.  Because I'm now in the same time zone as my students and colleagues, their emails bombard my various inboxes in real time all day long.  I am jumpier and reactive and spend little time reflecting.  By the next day, if I haven't taken notes about what I did or with whom, I forget some of the more mundane interactions and transactions of the previous days.  Similar effects are now being documented by the scientific community, such as the one about note taking.  UCLA psychologists have found that students who take notes longhand have much better retention and more sophisticated understanding of what they are learning than those that take notes onto their laptops or tablets. The latter mode tends to discourage students from engaging actively with the ideas but promotes instead the tendency to just transcribe word-for-word what is being presented.  (See Barbash, Fred. April 28, 2014. "Why students using laptops learn less in class even when they really are taking notes" Morning Mix. The Washington Post.)

For me, the more laborious, tactile, longhand approach also applies to reading.  In France, I read a lot of books, magazines, newspapers, usually in print, in French, English, Finnish.  Aix-en-Provence is a bookish town, and we were surrounded by bookstores, even a well-stocked English-language one. We bought books in London, in Helsinki, and occasionally, supplemented with orders to Amazon.uk.   A few times during our French sojourn, I used my ipad and the Barnes and Noble nook store to order and read some books for an Anglophone book group I had joined and during our final months in France when I did not want to add any more books to the numbers of boxes we were shipping back.  It is those books that I read electronically that I can scarcely remember.  For example, this past fall I read two such books on the ipad that I remember finding riveting and sociologically relevant but that I did not remember to add to my blog's book list.  I recently found the books again while idly tapping on my device and now I have had to skim them in order to refresh my memory. I believe my forgetfulness is partly due to the lack of my physical engagement with either book.  I saw the covers perhaps once, when I opened the books electronically initially, but the physical books were never lying around on my bedside table or on a chair so I do not have a very strong visual memory of them.  And with e-books, flipping pages and re-reading a passage or section, or skimming is awkward so I don't engage much in these ways.  It's no wonder Appassionata by Hoffman and Ousby's Occupation: The Ordeal of France 1940-44 both slipped out of my mind entirely: I simply had not had a 'longhand' reading experience with them.  Touching the physical book DOES matter to me, sometimes, however quaint this sounds.  (Mireille Silcoff writes about this quaintness amid the death and fetishization of books in this past weekend's New York Times Magazine. The online article is titled and dated: "On Their Death Bed, Physical Books Have Finally Become Sexy." Riff column, Apr. 25, 2014.  The picture on this post shows my color-coordinated but unsexy bookshelf of some of my English language reading over the past few years, and a small piece of the Berlin Wall that I brought home in 1990.)  I certainly read work documents, student work, and journal articles online regularly, but it seems that depending upon what I'm reading, the tangible physical experience may matter.  An academic journal article doesn't come with a great deal of visual 'personality' so reading it online doesn't change my experience much, but reading a book, a popular magazine, and even a newspaper is a much more colorful and lively experience when it's in my hand and I can feel the pages.  If that makes me fusty, then I embrace that characteristic.  Now my challenge is to keep finding those physical books and print media: one unfortunate discovery since my return to Seattle is that the local shopping center no longer has a single bookstore!

Spanish hours

[Spoiler alert: This is not a hoax blog post despite the date. :0]

Our server was a little slow to take our lunch orders yesterday and then to inquire about coffee after our meal, and I found myself irritated until I remembered that I had had the opposite problem a few weeks ago when I went out for dinner with my spouse.  After our time in France, we've become accustomed to longer and later restaurant meals and on a recent Saturday, we wanted to enjoy a full late-night dinner in downtown Seattle after attending a performance of the Seattle Symphony (photo below).  We'd always had problems finding good restaurants in Seattle that would serve full meals until midnight even before our French sojourn, but I was delighted to find a Spanish-themed restaurant (Aragona on Union Street) which recently was nominated for a foodie award (see this article by Britt Thorson in Seattle Refined/KOMO News, Feb. 20, 2014) and which conveniently approximates Spanish dining hours (Spaniards seem to eat even later than the French).  We made a reservation for 10:15 pm and were happy to find the restaurant still well-occupied by Seattleites, even if we were definitely the last ones to order dessert, a lovely flan.  Unfortunately, we had to rush through that last bit because our meal was stretching dangerously close to the time that the parking garage where we had left our car was closing.  It was very disappointing to have our evening curtailed, with the added pressure of paying a sizeable monetary penalty if we missed the midnight garage closure.  This was something we never had to worry about in Aix en Provence; the numerous parking garages circling the city never closed (except for the fermeture exceptionnelle for maintenance once in a very great while).   On the other hand, the shops closed in Aix sometimes in the middle of the day, just like they do in Spain.

The different cultural concepts of time have been well-documented in all kinds of literature.  Recently, a New York Times article reported on some revisited ideas in Spain of adapting to more northerly business hours (see "Spain, land of 10 p.m. dinners, asks if it's time to reset clock" by Tim Yardley, The New York Times, Feb. 17, 2014).  As the article reaffirms, time is clearly a cultural construct, and changing how time is used alters all kinds of cultural meanings and expressions.  That famous siesta in the middle of the afternoon for example continues to be a ritual for many Spaniards, and we thought it made a lot of sense because during the hot Aixois summers we ourselves were forced indoors into our darkened apartment to get through the hottest hours.  But that was possible because I worked at home.  My spouse on the other hand sat in an office all day, like many working adults in Spain and France do, so he didn't and they don't have the option to take such a significant snooze in the afternoon.  Workdays also start early enough these days and continue long into the early evenings that serving dinner to families at 10 pm creates problems in the mornings.  In many ways, parts of southern Europe have been tied to these traditional conceptions of time much longer than I expected, but they can change, because the social and cultural conditions change and warrant other adaptations.  Our family is a case in point; now, in the U.S., we still eat late, even on the weeknights, where 8 pm is a regular dining hour.  We enjoy this custom brought from Europe, but we also eat late because long commutes and evening activities make a 6 pm dinner difficult.  Dining at 10 pm though is something we save for the weekends because even that is a bit of a stretch for our family. (And that's no April fools' joke.)

Potty talk

As human society moves relentlessly forward, things that some of us experienced as luxuries have easily become normative expectations in contemporary society.  For example, my spouse and children were aghast to discover that our rental house (in which we have been biding time as our own home becomes vacant) had a big, old, fat television with only a handful of channels.  Quelle horreur! (How awful!)  The situation had to be fixed immediately, so now our own flat screen television sits atop the antiquated monstrosity. (Or, which is the monstrosity?)

Having an up-to-date television is one thing, but probably the greater hardship for my family in our U.S. rental has been sharing a single bathroom with one toilet.  Our sweet little rental home was built in 1936 and for the time in which it was built, that indoor toilet was probably quite the luxury.  In some parts of the world, indoor toilets still are a luxury and the focus of philanthropic work (see Gates Foundation work on this: "What we do: Water Sanitation Hygiene strategy overview"). Today though indoor plumbing is ubiquitous in the West; the OECD indicates that 97.8% of OECD countries have at at least one indoor toilet (see OECD better life index.). We've gotten to the point where a single toilet has become the minimal standard in private homes.  Most everyone we know in Seattle has at least two bathrooms with a toilet each, and during our sojourn in France, we lived in two different apartments with two toilets in one and four(!) in the other, arranged variously as full bathrooms or water closets (or wc's), with just toilets and sinks.  Occasionally, in France, we'd come across a bidet (not to be confused with a toilet), but these luxurious items seem to be much less common today.

Luxury in toiletry does seem to be reserved primarily for the private home.  Public toilets continue to be much more minimal, even in the West, although here there are variations.  In France, we attended quite a few all-day soccer tournaments with hundreds of attendees at public stadiums where that minimal standard of a single, barely clean toilet was considered sufficient to meet the needs of all the players and their families.  The conditions often required the provision of one's own toilet paper and the same kind of dexterity as the standing Turkish-style toilets at the French aires de repos (rest stops).  Talk about antiquated models! These toilets off the toll highways were really old school (or barbaric, according to one expat friend.)  In our beloved and bourgeois Aix-en-Provence, public money was finally coughed up in our last year there for the installation of several fancy public toilettes (these are always referred to in the plural in French, even when there is only one!).  I had to laugh at the installation of one which was right next to the location of a very popular children's bungee-jumping attraction, making it difficult for tourists to stand in line or to enter the 'facilities' without being jostled.

French tourist offices don't typically offer access to toilets (not in Aix, not in Nice, not in Lyon), but the staff do direct people to private toilet facilities where you can pee for a fee, but these facilities were often a bit scruffy too.  It seems that the French do not put a lot of money or effort into the provision of public facilities, while providing ample access seems to be much more important in the U.S., even if the toilets aren't always flushing models.  I'm thinking of the outhouse style port-a-potties such as the one I noticed two weekends ago, prominently stationed adjacent to a soccer field at my son's tournament in Beaverton, Oregon. Permanent facilities were also available at the sports complex, but since one particular field was a bit farther away, someone had thoughtfully installed a temporary toilet.  I've even been to tournaments where a dozen such port-a-potties were set up, all in a row.  When you gotta go, that's nice to know.
 

La trahison

C'est l'amour....apparently, for the current French president who has been discovered in a romantic liaison (affair) with a woman other than whom we thought was the French first lady.  And that first lady was actually not really his 'first' lady but the one that followed a woman with whom he had a longer intimate relationship and with whom he had four children.  François Hollande has apparently never been married but he has managed to keep alive the French presidential tradition of having mistresses, and the French don't seem overly concerned about his latest escapades. This is in contrast to the probable reaction in the U.S. were the president here to engage in an affair.  Such behavior would likely be characterized as adultery (since all modern U.S. presidents have been married ones), and would likely cast some doubts as to his judgment, political viability, and moral goodness.  As an editorial in today's NY Times suggests, the different outlook and attention is probably rooted in the differences between the U.S. and France in social attitudes about sexuality, morality and privacy.  (See The François Hollande Affair, Jan. 16, 2014, The New York Times.)

Sociologically speaking, the current president's relationships do point to some very modern permutations and understandings of coupling relationships, and invite some thinking about how to interpret relationship betrayals in regards to newer coupling arrangements and how gender might influence our impressions.  In many ways, Monsieur Hollande has been a front runner in terms of coupling modes; in most Western societies today, marriage is no longer the only means by which we couple for the long term.  It remains the most common form of coupling, but increasingly, couples cohabit for long periods, or permanently, while some even couple without living together.  (The newer LATS phenomenon has been sociologically recognized and studied for some time.  Here's a short overview, "Living Apart Together" by Constance Rosenblum, Sept.13, 2013 The New York Times).  In some societies and among some social groups (notably the less educated), cohabitation has become a substitute for marriage, rather than a precursor to it.  In France, civil marriages or PACs (pacte civil de solidarité) are increasingly common too, where couples can form a legal relationship that comes with some legal rights and responsibilities (taxes are jointly filed), but is short of a full-on marriage.  This registered coupling option has been available to same-sex couples as well.  (See "In France, Civil Unions..." by Scott Sayare and Maia de la Baume, Dec. 15, 2010 The New York Times.)

Yet, the more choices we have for coupling, the less consistent we are in our interpretations about situations where unfaithfulness is present.  My impression is that the French see cheating as somewhat expected and less damaging or less of a trahison (betrayal) when one's partner isn't a married one.  Yet, at the same time, they seemed to have considered the president's relationship with his first lady as a legitimate one.  (Maybe they just don't like her, or maybe they see this as no one's business?)  In any case, Americans perhaps have less public experience with all of this, since our leaders are mostly married heterosexual men.  But is there a qualitative difference in the emotional investments made in different kinds of couplings and how are we to understand and talk about cheating as it occurs in registered but legally unmarried couples, or unregistered cohabiting couples?  (Is it adultery?  We can't refer to extramarital affairs; are they extra-relationship affairs? Intimate betrayals?)  And, does the lesser legal commitment in the relationship really mean that intimate betrayals are more tolerated, less significant, less painful?   President Hollande's jilted first lady, has reportedly been hospitalized in emotional shock over the affair.  We have to recognize that marriage no longer has the monopoly on true commitment and love, and that couples in all kinds of relationships are going to have similar, visceral reactions when faced with wandering partners, regardless of the legal basis of their relationships.  And think about the families formed out of coupling relationships: today, the numbers of children born to couples who are not married is growing, and these couples, regardless of the state of their legal relationships, represent 'mom and dad,' or 'dad and dad' or 'mom and stepdad' to these children.  (Monsieur Hollande formed such a family with a former partner.)  So, an affair or couple breakdown is going to affect these kids just as much as an extramarital affair and divorce may affect others. I guess I'm saying that marital and non-marital couplings are increasingly similar today in their functions and meanings to people, and so to are the ways in which such couplings are affected by betrayals.

Finally, what does the Hollande affair suggest about gender?  I'll just end with some provocative questions in this regard: What would the reactions be if the tables were turned?  Would the French shrug their shoulders if it was the first lady who was having an affair, and would it matter if she was the married or unmarried first lady? Would the press be as tolerant?  For that matter, how many women around the world can reach elected public office while in cohabiting relationships or with lovers in tow?! And what kind of public reaction might we get if these women were ever caught cheating?!

The big (and) easy

I discovered this enormous coffee mug in a U.S. hotel room this week.

My post's title has nothing to do with New Orleans (for which The Big Easy is a frequent nickname). Instead, big (and) easy is the most apt characterization I can come up with right now, for my family's impressions of U.S. life after 2 1/2 French years.  Life is BIG and life is EASY here.  U.S streets, freeway lanes, grocery store aisles, ovens, refrigerators, even the toilet paper rolls seem very big.  Driving and riding is easy; I don't stop at toll booths (the new ones in WA state automatically take a picture and deduct my toll) nor is the car slowing and speeding up with the constant shifting at the countless traffic roundabouts on French roads.  I now drive along wide American allées in an extremely comfortable and automatic shift German sedan (in a model redesigned for the U.S. market, yes, to be bigger and wider).  I can steer with one hand, and if I want to make a phone call, I simply say CALL HOME to the steering wheel which connect to the phone in my purse.  My children's first impressions have been less about the big and easy, but more about how easy-friendly everyone seems.  School administrative staff and sports coaches welcomed them with practically open arms, kids they don't even think they know are waving to them from the streets, and grocery clerks chitchat with us and already know we've returned from France. On the other hand, I'm having a hard time getting used to no bises (cheek kisses), particularly from my kids' friends.  In France, I was ALWAYS greeted with two cheek kisses by the boys' friends (not to mention all of their sports' teammates and the teammates' parents), but now I'm not sure I'd get much eye contact with some if I wasn't so insistent on hugging the kids I haven't seen in two years.

Right now, my family has the opportunity to view our society from an almost outsider's perspective. I try to introduce a similar perspective to my students, particularly those who have not had the experience of visiting or living in another society.  It's one way to begin recognizing the ways in which social context affects people's behaviors, beliefs and attitudes.  Like in France, where we discovered the cultural penchant for languid meal times and parties, we learned a lot about French attitudes towards the use of time.  In the U.S. we are seeing lots of bigness and ease and that colors how the people in this society think and behave. Seeing the ways in which context influences society also shows us that no society is perfect and no way of living is the best way.  For example, those leisurely French meals, in restaurants especially, were often very expensive ones with painfully slow and inattentive service.  In the U.S. where we've been in the car a lot in the short time we've been here (it's the first time in my teenagers' lives that they are being driven to school daily), we are noticing that we are using our bodies much less than we had to in France.  I have hardly walked anywhere and definitely not laden with bags.  Baggers/clerks or I wheel my grocery bags out and lift them into my car's trunk and then I drive them home and carry them just a few meters from the driveway to the house.  There has been none of the complicated and physically-demanding routine of dropping grocery bags off on an old, old street, to the ground floor of an old, old apartment building and then circling around to get on the one-way ring road to my tiny parking space into which I had to do some precision car handling before schlepping bags up three flights of stairs and then fitting everything into a narrow refrigerator.  Now, I have to actually create opportunities to get daily exercise instead of getting them as part of my daily routine. One son also recognized that he was slipping into the American all day snacking habit, with all those chips and crackers and other manufactured 'foods' that come in much bigger and more convenient packages than in France.  Luckily for us because of our experience abroad, we can choose from several different behavioral patterns and customs that might better suit us or that we like, even if they don't quite fit the social context in which we now live.  We did this in France after many months of baguettes and croissants, by adding protein to our breakfasts, U.S. style, while here we can try countering the big and easy U.S. tendency to eat all the time with the French pattern of just a single small goûter (a light snack around 16:00 or 17:00, after school) and an entrée (a small appetizer) followed by a late dinner.  And there is that nightly glass of wine....but come to think of it, I enjoyed that even before I went to France.

Le respect

Because I haven't attended French schools myself and parents are not typically invited to be on school grounds during the school day, there are many everyday classroom protocols that I only know about through my children.  For example, when middle school students enter a classroom, they must stand by their desks and wait until the teacher tells them to sit down.  Likewise, if an administrator such as the principal enters the classroom, even unexpectedly, all of the students must instantly scramble onto their feet to stand beside their desks in a sign of respect for him or her.  And, when raising their hand in response to a teacher's question, students raise their index finger, as if gently pointing up to the ceiling (no frantic U.S. style hand waving here!).

These are markers of le respect that are specific to a culture.  Curiously though, they imply strong deference to authority, in a society where many other social conventions seem to be intended to create social exchanges on a more equal footing.  I've noted earlier how the French offer greetings and farewells in stores, and this is in part I think to create a setting of mutual respect between the seller and the consumer for the potential economic exchange that may take place.  Once, when I was so focused on making sure I got my order right in French at the fanciest bakery in town, I forgot to say bonjour.  The bakery clerk repeated his bonjour to me three times, waiting for me to return it before he would help me with my order.  And there is what I sometimes think of as the kiss-fest that occurs whenever we go to football practice or a game.  I easily faire les bises with at least 20 people, parents, coaches, players, siblings of players, grandparents of players, etc.  It doesn't matter what the person's social or coaching rank is, we make these exchanges as a way to imply a kind of respect for each other as persons, where we acknowledge each other's humanity for just a moment even if we go on to sit or chat with someone else.  Finally, there are the opportunities for the French public to respectfully disagree with their political and economic leaders, by striking and bringing the country to a standstill, if for a moment.  This week the air traffic controllers and local train line staffs took their turn in the South of France.  (I also wrote about the strikes of last October in Les manifestations, Oct. 2012.)

Unfortunately, in some social arenas, authority figures do sometimes use their positions to demand respect from their followers but don't always offer considération (respect) in return.  We see this in politics often, even in democratic societies.  For example, we have the government shut-down in the U.S. brought about by politically powerful people who can't seem to make compromises for the good of everyone (striking is not a privilege for the government, but for its people!), and in France, we have the amazingly sexist behavior of some French MPs (members of parliament) towards their female colleagues ("France's sexist National Assembly", France24blogs, 10/10/2013), and the unfortunate comments by a presidential cabinet member in regards to the Roma population in France (Roms: le Mrap va déposer plainte contre Valls devant le CJR, La Provence, 11 Oct. 2013).  In the educational setting, the rules about respect seem to vary a bit more widely.  In U.S. schools, students are expected to act politely to their teachers and administrators, but standing up in the presence of teachers or shaking their hands is not required, not anymore anyway.  Teachers and administrators themselves must abide carefully by rules governing appropriate personal or physical contact and are expected to be mutually respectful.  In French public schools, the model seems to be be much more authoritarian and the flow of respect is largely from the students towards their teachers.  I hear a lot about verbal berating of students--students are often told what they are doing wrong and very little of what they are doing well--and this week at my sons' school, a teacher reportedly hit a student violently for misbehaving.  Yet, the school year began with the national announcement of a new secular code of conduct for all French students ("School year begins in France with string of reforms," France 24, 4 Sept. 2013).  Codes of conduct are pretty common in U.S. educational institutions, and a few months ago, I reiterated a feminist's call for a broad social code of conduct in everyday life (see La politesse March 2013). Yet, I gather from the cartoon below from a page in my French daily calendar that the question of mutual respect is still a bit of a joke at French schools.  Maybe the new code of conduct should address everyone at school, students and adults alike?

In the Ethics class, on Politeness, a student says to the teacher,
"One stands up when the students enter the classroom!"

Les fumeurs

Last week a friend and I went to a contemporary art exhibit which was being presented to the public by the commissioned artist.  The art was creative, a little inexplicable, and verging on violent, while the artist herself was a beautiful and unusually tall French woman, probably of Algerian background.  She was wearing a patterned pantsuit that few would be able to carry off as successfully as she did, and she seemed fairly poised while speaking about each work, even though she admitted to being nervous at one point.  She certainly didn't miss a beat when my friend and I asked her a few questions in English after her presentation.

A few minutes after the presentation, as my friend and I seated ourselves along a garden wall to enjoy the complimentary wine and snacks offered by the Friends of the Museum, we caught a glimpse of the artist lighting up a cigarette.  Both of us had a similar and instantaneous reaction, as if surprised and then disappointed by the discovery of the artist smoking.  I am never quite sure why the smoking seems initially so shocking or disappointing, especially in this case, where it was a French artist, no less.  Also, I do have a few friends who smoke, and I certainly am not disappointed or shocked by them, nor is smoking something I'm interested in judging people for.  I don't care why people smoke; it's their choice.  (Okay, maybe I don't love it when young children are heavily exposed to cigarette smoke or when people litter their cigarette butts in public spaces.)  Maybe the surprised reactions are rooted in trying to understand the choice of les fumeurs (the smokers)?  I tried to think about this earlier, wondering if smoking might be related to the more relaxed demeanor the French present on the outside; maybe it's a calming device (see Je ne sais quoi, June 2012.)  Certainly in the U.S., the choice to smoke is presented as a bad one, so maybe the surprise comes from wondering why someone would then make a 'bad' choice.  But, smoking isn't all about sophistication and clever ways to suppress one's appetite in France either; the cigarette packets say unequivocally in big letters, Fumer tue (smoking kills) and e-cigarettes are quite popular right now in France among adults trying to quit conventional cigarette smoking (see "E-cigarettes as effective as patches to stop smoking" France24 News, 8 Sept. 2013).  Yet, the French still don't seem to bat an eye when someone in their midst, artist or not, suddenly pulls out a cigarette pack and lights up.  What it really must come down to then is simply a question of social norms.

Candy cigarettes

Those of us who still find ourselves surprised by les fumeurs in France are in fact reacting to our own normative expectations.  Smoking is simply not as normative in the U.S. as it is France (or even probably in England), and this is true as well when we look at the age, gender or educational levels of smokers in both societies. Here's what I know: both French men and women smoke more than their American counterparts--about 1/3 of French men smoked in 2007 to 21% of U.S. men in 2011, and 21% of French women to 16.5% of U.S. women  (see International Smoking Statistics France, web version 2011, by Forey et al., and "Adult smoking in the U.S. " CDC reports 2011)  Smoking also seems to begin earlier in France, even though in both countries, the heaviest smokers seem to be in the 20-44 years age groups.  (Is it glorified by candy cigarettes such as those bought by my kids and their friends one day last year?)  Smoking also has similar associations with educational level in both the U.S. and in France; it is negatively associated with educational level.  This means that the highest rates of smokers are found among the less educated, and vice versa.  One-third of French adults with less than a baccalauréat or bac (h.s. diploma equivalent) and about as many U.S. adults with less than a high school diploma smoke (30-34% for French with no diploma or less than bac, and 34.6% of U.S. equivalents).  But the differences in ratios begin to be especially pronounced when we look at the rates of smokers with high school diplomas and up.  Again, cigarette use declines as educational level increases in both countries, but the percentages begin to diverge, significantly, and this is probably the telling difference.  In France, 29.7% of bac holders smoke, compared to just 23.6% of U.S. high school diploma holders, while for college degree holders, 22% of  French bac +3/4 smoke and just 9% of U.S. undergraduate degree holders smoke.  Finally, in the most educated category, bac +5, 19% of these French smoke, but only 5% of American post-graduate degree holders do. (See CDC report above, and for French results, see Premiers résultats du baromètre santé 2010 Evolutions récentes du tabagism en France, Beck et al. 2010).  (I would have to do a similar survey of the data to see where England fits.)

Thus, my reaction to smoking in France is likely a result of spending my early adulthood years in the U.S. where my social circle, as it is associated with my income level, residential location, educational level, and occupational status, etc., was overwhelmingly non-smoking.  Perhaps 1 or 2 in 20 of my friends, acquaintances and family members might be smokers (if I apply the CDC estimates of 5-9%, for the rate of undergrad degree and post-grad degree holders who smoke), but I am hard-pressed to count that many. (There will be regional variation in the U.S., as the CDC report shows that Washington state is a relatively low smoking state, and it's a very good guess that health-conscious Seattle's rate is also quite low).  In contrast, had I been in France from ages 25 to my mid-40s, and holding the social factors above constant, that is, not changing any features of my social status, 1 in 5 of the people in my social circle would have been smokers (using the estimated 19% of bac +5 that smoke to the 22% of bac +3/4).  Smoking is simply much more normative here, even by educational level, and it is much less so in the U.S.  Normative expectations are informed by our experiences with social norms over time.  I've been in France a relatively short time, and so my expectations about smoking and when and where I will encounter smokers are still heavily influenced by my experiences elsewhere.  In that respect, my surprise each time is not at all that surprising.

Les chemins

One thing that can make me anxious in less than five minutes in the South of France is to get an address to someone's home that begins "Chemin de la...."   I usually think of a chemin as a country road, as a route leading to a farm or something.  For example, I took a chemin today with a friend to pick up her produce box (look how beautiful these are right now with the new grapes and peppers and tomatoes), and for once, I got just what I expected. Yet, I can't even count anymore how many times I've gone off confidently to visit a new acquaintance or take my kids to a birthday party in our car only to find myself essentially still within city limits, turning off the route departementale or nationale and suddenly bouncing along on a pot-holed, gravelly, ever-narrow, what-I-would-call logging road (I grew up in a logging town in the Pacific NW so I know what these are), wondering if I made a wrong turn and if I will have room to let an oncoming car by me.  Often, my navigator app on my phone urges me to continue on this seemingly remote road, and sometimes I do, despite having to reverse or somehow squeeze by an occasional car coming towards me.  Other times, I stop and phone my host to double-check, like last week when my son said, 'Mom, no way, this CAN'T be right!'.  Yet EVERY time, I am surprised to find myself eventually at a tall, often forbidding gate that when opened remotely, takes me down a rough driveway that ends up at......a gorgeous French home.  And all the other gates along the crazy road I've just driven down lead to similar homes.  I've never seen anything like this anywhere!  A French friend tells me that this may be a bit particular to the south.  I don't know yet what to call the phenomenon, but I still find it so surprising.

What is it about the forbidding routes to residential homes?  I've decided these are the result of shrewd calculations about impression management, coupled with perhaps a greater French tolerance for discomfort.  Or, maybe there is some stinginess too?  First impressions and packaging are very important to the French, when it comes to public encounters and outward appearances.  People dress well here, especially in town like the woman I saw in Aix today walking her dog in the highest, spikiest heels I could imagine for the job.  Gifts and pastries all arrive pretty in boxes, with even single pastries laboriously packaged, such as l'opéra that I enjoyed myself one night recently.  But, family homes are much more private here than in many other places; they hide behind high walls and gated driveways.  Earlier, I suggested that this is in part  for reasons of privacy and concerns about security (see Maisons and chateaux, November 2012).  Popping over to borrow a cup of sugar from a neighbor might not be that common here, because popping over would mean exiting one's gate, ringing the buzzer on the neighbor's, and that puts pressure on the neighbors to keep up appearances and manage impressions.  Perhaps because family and home lives seem to be more private here, people may be less compelled to make the effort to create a beautiful, comfortable entry road to one's home.  It also seems to be true that the French tolerate personal discomforts to a degree that many others might not (eg. bathroom facilities, indoor heating...), even tolerating unhappiness more than most (see Contentement, May 2013).   Bouncing along on a ungroomed, unpaved, uneven, tiny road to get to and from work or school each day may just not be a big deal to many people here.  Or, maybe some are simply not willing to fork out the money to improve the roads to their homes?  Is this another one of those instances where if the public interest isn't there, no one will take care of a bumpy situation?

Une canicule

The French call a heat wave une canicule, and the central part of France is suffering from one at the moment.  Météo France has the yellow alert showing on its map, while NE France is on orange alert for severe thunderstorms, and we in the southeast, where it is hot, hot, hot, (34-36 degrees, or mid to high 90s Fahrenheit), do not have any particular weather warning. My body tells me though that if we are not quite at a canicule we must be close, as I seem to have contracted an often heat-related illness, a kidney or urinal tract infection.   Unbeknownst to me, these are more common in hotter climates due to the dangers presented by dehydration, and some even predict we may see an upswing in such illnesses with global warning.  (Here's one article about this, "Could Global Warming...." Scientific American 2008).  I wonder how the French avoid dehydration because it seems like all they drink are small coffees, glasses of wine, and water just at mealtimes.  (And I won't go into the paltry and often archaic public toilets.)  As for me, I'm back to the American habit of lugging a water bottle around with me (something the French just don't do), and then there is the small matter of avoiding the sun (in Aix?) and sports while on medication.

The reason we do not have a heat wave warning here despite many days above 30 degrees is that the definitions of a heat wave are subjective, and are often geographically and culturally distinct.  According to the French definition of a heatwave, the temperatures for day times must be above 30-35 degrees and the night time temperatures must exceed 18-20 degrees, for more than 3 days.  This definition is presented in terms of health, as the French look to the nighttime temperatures to see if these get cool enough to bring relief to bring down body temperatures, whereas definitions elsewhere seem to focus on a consistently high daytime temperature.  (See this discussion in French, in Futura Science magazine.)  I presume that the nighttime lows have been low enough here in Provence to avoid the designation of canicule, and that we must need to reach a higher temperature reading than say Cherbourg, in the north of France, before we qualify for the designation. Otherwise, I supposed we'd be in heat wave range every week here.  In any case, the national weather service points out that heat wave designations are rarely made (Phénomènes Météo, Les Canicules, Météo France).  Wikipedia offers some interesting examples of the subjectivity associated with heat wave definitions, showing that high temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit qualify for a heat storm in California, for example.  I particularly like the Swedish definition, of 5 or more days above 25 degrees (77 degrees Fahrenheit).  That just about matches my personal threshold for heat, yet it would be very funny to the Aixois to think that such a low temperature could qualify for a heat wave.  Heat wave or no, we are surviving the current heat with fans blowing throughout our apartment, and by drinking copious amounts of homemade granitas with our cute Magic Freez' mugs.  (Congelez, pressez, dégustez! Freeze, press, and enjoy!).  And this weekend we escape to the north ourselves, where we will gladly take a Finnish heat wave or something less dramatic, just to cool off for a few days.

La jeunesse

Two paintings by Agnolo di Cosimo, Firenze, Uffizi, 1540's

One of my favorite lessons in my sociology of family course is on the changing meanings of childhood.  Some argue that children in the past centuries were essentially treated as little adults, contributing to household economies and serving as means by which to solidify family alliances.  Only later when the industrial revolution altered familial functions and roles do we see the emergence of childhood as a special stage of life. Children's ages and feelings may not have changed, but how they are viewed and presented in society has, which is another way of saying that while age may be reflected physically and psychologically, it is also social.  (The images above portray children of the Medici family as small adults.  From our contemporary view, we might guess that these children were chafing in those adult-like outfits and poses.) We also have cultural and class-based variations in our understandings of childhood;  I have learned this week that the French often call adolescence l'âge bête, which conveys the idea that humans are born uncivilized.  It is through childhood and adolescence that they are taught to curb their animal-like natures in order to become productive and upstanding members of society.  In the U.S. we currently have multiple trends, where children are pushed to become little adults and over-achievers, or are seen as capable decision-makers with whom we can reason, or are left to their own devices.  The social understandings of age continue to evolve, as meanings of childhood, of la jeunesse (youth), of young adulthood, and even middle age and old age change, due to economic conditions and changing perceptions of marriage, non-marital sexual activity, parenthood, and longer life spans.

This week I have had further affirmation of how age is a social feature but also an inner state of mind that may not always correspond to the social meaning.  For the past three weeks, I have been part of the first cours intensif de francais (French intensive language course) at the shiny new Alliance Française language school in Aix.  Alongside my Chinese, English, and Spanish classmates, I have been eagerly and diligently working my way through French subjunctives, gerunds, and transitional phrases, just like an eager-to-please first grader in the front row of her classroom.  As a small class, we are all struggling, laughing, and succeeding together, deciphering oral dialogues and correcting the order of double pronouns, pronouncing difficult words so they don't sound like vulgarities (pourtant: pronounce the r, otherwise you get a bad word), learning useful phrases for phone texting, like à + (à plus, which is short for à plus tard, see you later), and ways to describe, or envisager, our dreams for our future.  We take our coffee or tea breaks together and bavarder (chat) a bit.  It seems like we are in the same boat.

But in fact, we are not.  One young classmate has a musical career with a traveling orchestra, while the other two are still students, embarking on post-undergraduate studies in Paris this fall and are in the midst of finding affordable apartments and figuring out bank accounts and cell phones.  I am twice the age of these students, okay...over twice the age, and I am in a completely different life stage.  Just the other day, we took turns selecting discussion questions, and I realized that I chose ones that clearly reflected my current situation as the mother of adolescents, while the students are in intimate relationships.  Learning French, and moving to a new country, yes, we have those things in common, but it is so interesting to realize that one can feel so youthful and so old en même temps!  (at the same time!)   It's not a feeling I often have, as a university and college instructor where I instruct many students the age of my current classmates.  As a temporary student myself though, I guess I feel 21 again, despite my outward appearance and my life stage.   That's what is so confounding, that one can feel much younger (or older) than one's social age.  Fortunately, my classmates don't see my social age as too much of a barrier; we might even go out for drinks next week.

Avec mention assez bien

Big day in France today as the results of the nation-wide scholastic tests have just been published...publicly.  In June, virtually all middle students, upon completion of troisième (3rd grade, equivalent to U.S. 9th grade), take an exam called le brevet, while the graduating class at lycée (high school) take the baccalauréat, or le bac.  Now all of the results are in, and they are publicly available.  Anyone can see who 'has' his or her brevet or bac, as one says in French, and whether they attained mentions (distinctions) such as assez bien (well-done), in a particular subject.  You can walk up to the school and see the posted list, or apparently you can call the school, or go on the Education Ministry's site, or you can pay to see online, http://www.resultat-exam.fr/examen/resultat-brevet-des-colleges-dnb-professionnel-2013?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=newsfeed&utm_campaign=mmr



All of this is reflective of the distinctions between what is public and private in a given society, a subject I have thought about earlier (see Transparence, April 2013).  In regards to scholastic outcomes, the French are relatively public about whether or not students succeed, even in the classroom where teachers announce grades out loud, whereas in the U.S. the trend has been towards greater privacy.  Today, the old practice of posting university course grades outside one's office door, perhaps by student number rather than name is no longer allowed at most U.S. institutions, nor does one leave final exams lying in a box for students to rife through to find their own.  It may be that we see test outcomes somewhat differently, or that we place different importance on them.  In the U.S., school test results at any level, elementary, secondary, higher education, are largely seen as personal, or individual ones, reflecting a person's intelligence, test-taking ability, successful learning.  Any results that are publicicized are only done so in aggregate form.  And many, if not most, states do not require an exam before one can graduate.  Perhaps in France the terminal exams and the publicizing of the exam results are important because maybe these are a way of publicly accounting for the national educational system's efforts?  After all, everyone takes the same exams on the same days, and the results come out all at once, giving a quick result that the country-at-large can see.  How well are French students doing, how well is the school system doing?  In the U.S. on the other hand, each state has its own version of scholastic tests and its own standards, with few requiring school completion exams, so there is virtually no coordination across states.  While the public may have a loose sense of how well the state educational systems are accomplishing their goals, they have an even vaguer sense of how we are doing on a national level.  For that kind of accounting, we have to look for international comparisons of national educational systems, which is complex on its own for various reasons, and in addition, for the U.S., we have to somehow interpret results for a country with essentially 50 separate educational systems.  In any case, I am certain that there are many personal celebrations going on among the 14/15 year olds, and more so among the 18 year olds in France today, just like there were a few weeks ago among U.S. high school graduates.  For the French who are not celebrating, luckily there are second chances, as one can retake part of the exams in hopes of gaining enough points to attain le bac.

La phonétique française

In recent months, an English friend and I have been exchanging examples of what we find to be amusingly vague artistic descriptions of French cultural events and performances, particularly as we've come across them in regards to the Marseille Year of Culture.  (You can find out more about this Year of Culture's happenings at www.aixcentric.com.)  My latest find is from the website of the French performance company that put on a huge spectacle (performance or show) in Aix last Saturday night.  The professional company Transe Express describes itself as inventors of imagination:

Transe Express play in open spaces to provoke the meeting of a public. Without limitation, the artistic mediums and modes of expression are the ingredients for our creators. Music, visual arts, prouesses, circus skills, fire, literature, metallurgy, opera, rock, dance, with a preference for theatre, found at the corner of each of our philosophical stones. Shock creations which at times invest a stage, non-conventional spaces but principally the streets ; Intriguing the public in their everyday lives ; Unique adventures to transform a city, to «dress» a strong moment of an era. The team is constituted of a hundred actors, aerobats, acrobats, bell ringers, dancers, percussionists, singers, string quartets, welders, technicians, forgers and others that make up the motley crew who regularly realises the project of the Company : Ephemeral creations or repertoire shows, close proximity, aerial or ambulating spectacles.

( see more, http://www.transe-express.com/en/company)

No, this isn't a bungled translation from French; it's meant to sound like this, and I've read many equally and strangely vague descriptions in French.  In a way, the language reflected the show we saw, which was really amazing, but also really hard to describe precisely.  (We've had other similar experiences last summer, see Les spectacles, July 2012).  This time, along the main boulevards in town, we saw floats of giant human dolls singing in opera-rock falsettos, acrobats playing the drums with their bodies, and giant mobiles of human musicians swaying under construction cranes in the night sky.

All of this floatiness, in how some French express themselves in words and actions is perhaps related to something else I only just realized concretely about the French language, and that is that French is not a phonetic language.  The precise sounds and pronunciations (and sometimes spellings) that I use as my guides, especially as these come from Finnish and even from German, should really be forgotten when it comes to pronouncing and trying to understand spoken French.  I took an illuminating course on la phonétique française (French phonetics) this year in which I learned rules about the sounds French words make.  One learns about the sounds themselves by learning how to use the lip and tongue in slightly different combinations, and then these sounds correspond to so many different spellings that it's hard to keep everything straight.  I don't have them down well yet, but I do better understand that I can swallow quite a number of letters in many words.  For example, for non, nom, n'ont (no, name, don't have), I can just drop the last letters when speaking, or I should listen really, really carefully to the context because these are all pronounced exactly the same (approximately: noh).  It all feels very loose and imprecise.  I even get tripped up on phrases that aren't homophones as there are plenty of rhyming sounds in French that can also trick unsuspecting listeners.  How about the radio story last week about the anti-gay marriage protests which were led by what sounded like Brigitte Bardot?  I thought her thing was animal rights?  In fact, yes, she is the former French hottie-turned animal rights activist, and it's a woman named Frigide Barjot, who is involved in the anti-gay rights protests...who has taken on this name as a pun on Mme Bardot's name, amusing herself and also obviously confusing foreigners trying to get a handle on French!  Here's what I think: maybe the lack of phonetics in French, all the many different spellings that come with the same sounds or almost similar sounds that change just a bit with little changes in one's lip and tongue positions, maybe all this looseness is somehow related to the floaty, ephemeral, gauzy, non-conventional, limitless fashions in which the French language mirrors and paints pictures in the sky, of adventures and breathtaking spectacles which capture our collective philosophical imaginations...?

À table

As we move through le printemps (spring) into summer, we have more and more opportunities to participate in the French version of le pique-nique (picnic), and boy, do the French know how to picnic.  My spouse discovered this in his first summer consulting in France, when he was invited to the beach on a warm Friday evening after work by some co-workers.  He was awestruck by the blankets, the candles in the sand, and the elegant foods and drinks brought by everyone.  We've since picnicked many times along the Mediterranean beaches, particularly at dinner time, surreptitiously watching the French families around us.  Our more revealing picnicking experiences have come through the many sports tournaments we've attended with our sons and their teammates' families during the past two springs.  By now we know to expect the ubiquitous baguettes and wine, even at youth sports' events, (I first recount this discovery in Rouge ou rosé, June 2012), and we've even had the novel opportunity of introducing a favorite Bordeaux sausage to our French picnicking friends!

In thinking about how French picnics feel different from the American barbecue or the tailgate party, I think it is partly in the scale but also in the intention.  The many pique-niques in which we've participated seem pretty simple.  Everyone brings a bag or two, or a cooler, with their food, but we don't see the hauling of grills or the schlepping of piles of paper plates and huge quantities of food.  Among our two groups of sports families, salads and bread with some protein are the normal fare, while the supplies often include cute folding camping tables brought by a family or two, a roll of paper towels and a garbage bag, and of course, a corkscrew and plastic cups.  Simple sandwiches are often assembled on the spot, as our rugby-playing son's coach did last weekend, with a baguette, some ham, and a jar of moutarde de Dijon (Dijon mustard) that he pulled out of his bag, along with a bottle of wine to share.  Families may also share olives, cut-up watermelon, and cake or chocolates.  Each stadium or venue has a buvette (a bar, or a concessions stand) hosted by the sponsoring club, for those needing to supplement their picnics.  The limited offerings seem to be fairly standard and inexpensive, along the lines of one type of grilled sausage, french fries, candy, ice pops, crêpes, espressos, soda and beer.

photo courtesy of Bernard Guigues, AUC Rugby, 1 May 2013 (Tournament at Les Cadeneux)

The bigger difference between U.S. and French picnics seems to be in the intentionality of the dining experience.  At French youth rugby and football tournaments, there is actually une pause (a break), where matches stop and everyone attending eats at the same time, even at the huge rugby regional tournament last weekend in Avignon, with its hundreds of players and their families.  The research institute Insee notes that the French are much more likely than Americans to eat meals at the same times across the entire country, suggesting that well-established mealtime traditions continue to be important here.  Lunch is one of those meals that is particularly sacrosanct; at 13h (1 pm), Insee estimates that half of the French are engaged in eating their lunches (see de SaintPol et Ricroche, Insee, Le temps de l'alimentation en France, no. 1417, Oct. 2012).  At tournaments, this break in the action is notable; the little camping tables are quickly set up, food containers emerge, and the wine bottles are uncorked.  You don't just attend tournaments with some money in your pocket, hoping for a gap between matches that will allow your family to eat a greasy burger or something.  French picnic meals are planned, even if simple, and they will be eaten as properly as possible, à table (at the table).  I am often surprised by the unexpectedly lovely salads, olives, cheeses, and fruits that emerge from coolers, that reveal the clear effort and intent associated with mealtime.  Interestingly, I rarely see potato chips or crisps as part of the tournament meal (these often emerge as a snack, later), but we do see a lot more sweets than we might in the U.S.--chocolates, candy, and soda.  The French seem to gravitate towards sweets while Americans like their salt, but some of this difference may also be related to the importance of dessert as a traditional end to most French meals, and to the tendency for afternoon gôuters (snacks) to be on the sweet side.  My family isn't as consumed by the sweet habit (although we do eat dessert here, without guilt; see Les Desserts, Sept. 2011), but we appreciate the time taken to eat meals, even at tournaments.  The French savor their meals; despite all kinds of modern distractions, the hours spent eating by the French have actually increased lightly in the past years.  (See Insee source above.)  My family is becoming so acclimated to this aspect that I think we may have to acquire our own little French folding camping table to bring back to a U.S. soccer tournament someday.

photo: Decathlon http://www.decathlon.fr/media/803/8030285/zoom_400PX_asset_11984223.jpg

Contentement

In a talk that I gave at the local Institute for American Universities earlier this afternoon about how the French spend their time, I also summarized French economist Claudia Senik's argument about why the French seem to be less happy or satisfied with their lives compared to others.  She blames in part the authoritarian and rigid French school system for creating citizens who lack the self-confidence and the contentement (contentment or satisfaction) that one might expect in a country with so many wonderful attributes.  (See Claudia Senik's homepage here, or click here for a direct link to her paper The French Unhappiness Puzzle, Working Paper, 2012.)  My family's limited experience with the school system, at its middle school level, suggests that the system is firmly focused on staying within the lines and structure of the nationally established curriculum (this feels especially true in the maths and sciences), and that the teaching and learning within the system is generally not very creative or active or nurturing.  At first glance, it's hard to say if such schooling could lead to broadly-experienced passivity and pessimism among adults.  

I can say that I see more and more how a centrally-organized society uses its national school system to impart broader social values and practices to its emerging young adults.  This process begins early, at the crèches and maternelles (nursery and preschools) where very young French children, from ages 2 and 3, spend hours away from home in the care of others, learning how to sit patiently and how to eat meals like little grown-ups.  It is the recounting of this by some expatriate foreign mothers that has caught the attention especially of the American and English reading public. (See my discussion of one such book in Encadrement February 2012.) 

This week I had another revelation of how the school system may pass on social values and skills.  Faithful readers may recall that just over a year ago I embarked on the painful and expensive process of acquiring a French driver's license (See A is for Autoecole, April 2012).  For weeks, I grumbled about the ridiculously tricky theory questions that had more than one answer and the authoritarian teaching styles of the driving instructors.  Now I have learned that as 2nd year middle schoolers (French 5th graders), my twin sons will be taking the ASSR1 test this month, while students two years ahead of them will take the ASSR2.  The ASSR's are exams offered by the Education Sécurité Routière (Road Safety Education) arm of the National Ministry of Education to middle school-aged French kids to test them about their knowledge of the appropriate behaviors in shared traffic situations.  The parent representative of our boys' class suggested that these exams will be beneficial for the kids when they begin riding motor scooters and eventually prepare for their automobile driver's licenses.  Learning the rules of the road at age 13 is not a bad idea, particularly given the new interest among my boys and their classmates in skating around the busy streets in town on skateboards and longboards.  However, I was amazed to discover after one son took some practice exams on the traffic safety education website, that these were really quite similar to the practice driving theory exams I had taken last spring, right down to the tricky questioning.  So, I think I now understand better why I felt out of my element in driving school; it wasn't just the language.  By the time most French turn 18 or start driving school in earnest, they have the French-style examination drill down, from years of practice: they know what to expect in terms of testing methodologies and teaching styles, they know that it won't be easy to pass the exams the first time, and they know if they don't pass, everyone else is going to know about it.  These students were simply better prepared for the process and its potential outcomes.  And, it might not be such a big leap to consider the possibility that these same students may feel less satisfied or less sure of themselves later in life, when social scientists come along asking them to assess their personal happiness.  Social institutions, such as political and school systems, do have that kind of influence; some may empower their members, with the right to vote, for example, while other institutions may limit their members, say by stifling their intellectual creativity.  Senik's thinking about the French school system may be on the right track after all.

Various wheeled modes of transportation parked on the landing below our apartment