Midlife wrinkles

Midlife crises have long been the privilege of men in society.  The seemingly impulsive desire for a sports car or the beginning of an extramarital affair or the sudden ending of a marriage have been emblematic markers of, and excuses for, midlife crises for some men.  (I'm not sure that this is applicable to Monsieur le Président Hollande of France whose current philandering was the subject of my previous post--see La trahison, Jan. 2014--but for whom such behavior seems typical rather than tied to his particular age.)  In the sociological literature on the topic of midlife crises, there are plenty of articles exploring men's midlife transitions; one even considers the possibility of male menopause (Isaac 2002, citation below).   Midlife crises though are no longer the exclusive domain of men.  We've heard a bit about midlife crises from the U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama who revealed last year that cutting her hair into bangs was her midlife crisis (Michelle Obama's "midlife crisis" bangs, by Morgan Whitaker, MSNBC 2/19/13), and who, upon turning 50 recently, hinted at her midlife interest in the dermatological wonders of Botox treatments (A First Lady at 50, finding her own path, by Jennifer Steinhauer, The NY Times 1/16/14)  Had my French been better, I probably would have recognized similar attention to women's midlife crises in France, but now I am certainly hearing more about U.S. women who are in that midlife demographic and who are experiencing what sound like crises or turbulent life transitions.  Some of these are on the order of big personal changes such as extramarital affairs and comings-out, or sudden departures from well-established careers, while other manifestations are of the Michelle Obama variety, such as a new or renewed interest in combating facial wrinkles and blemishes and the other physical outcomes of aging or menopause, and the thinking about one's social role and functions as one's children leave childhood.

Obviously, midlife as a human age affects men and women alike, but it does so only as society and its members define and recognize it as a salient time in one's life.  There may be physical and hormonal shifts that affect the human body at midlife, sure, but it is the social construction of this period of life that probably has a more important effect. (We socially construct the meanings of all ages of life: see my postcards of 'little adults' in my post La jeunesse, July 2013 for how we have done this with childhood.)  At the midway point in human life, be it at age 50 or in the range say between 40-60, besides physical changes, people may experience boredom, discontentment, emotional upheavals: work conditions are changing, one's children are reaching early adulthood while other loved ones are becoming ill or dying.  These events will affect how we as individuals understand and experience a particular life stage, and how our society as a whole then constructs the meanings around that stage of life.  Broader social forces, like prevailing economic conditions and political climates, are also going to affect our personal and the social conceptions of midlife, or any other stage.  Previously, midlife was thought about as a mostly male transition but today, the social temporalities have changed, to put it more sociologically (citation below for Kearl and Hoag's seminal piece on midlife crises and this idea of social temporalities, 1984).  Our perceptions of this time of life, they are a' changin. Today, we recognize and accept, as a society, that women may experience midlife transitions as men have, some more or less publicly, dramatically, and radically than others.  Helping to make midlife crises more accessible and acceptable for women is the presence of strong, outspoken, visible women who tell us about theirs.  Certainly, midlife crises are not something we may want to celebrate--think of the potentially disruptive and damaging effects on families and friendships--but the explicit acknowledgement that women can have these too is a small step towards gender parity.  Perhaps we'll really be 'there' when middle aged men begin to publicly consider their wrinkles and the merits of bangs and Botox.

**

Isaac, E.P. 2002. Male menopause and men of African descent.  Journal of African American Men, 6(4), 3-16. 

Kearl , M.C. and L.J. Joag. 1984. The Social Construction of the Midlife Crisis: A Case Study in the Temporalities of Identity. Sociological Inquiry 54(3), 279.

Une porte fermée

This week we had the frustrating experience of losing access to our rental parking spot due to a poorly-publicized changing of the garage door sensors.  The first evening my spouse was caught between two closed garage doors, unable to go forward towards our section of the garage nor to exit (or even to call for help due to weak phone reception).  The next day I watched helplessly through the grating on one side of the center garage door as the new transmitter I had been given failed to open the door immediately in front of me yet worked nicely for the one beyond that leads to the street.  On both occasions, we could see where we wanted to go, the rewards were tantalizingly close, but because of une porte fermée (a closed door), we couldn't quite get there. 

That's not so different from the experiences of women that I wrote about last time in regards to salaries (La Politesse, March 2013).  In addition, women can often see the occupational and promotional opportunities above them, through the plafond de verre (the glass ceiling) but they can't quite reach them, at least not in the numbers that we should expect, not in France and not in the U.S.  A similar situation faces immigrants, particularly those from poorer countries-of-origin, for whom the rewards of a better or at least hopefully more comfortable life may be all too visible but not so easily reachable.  This is the theme in the témoignage I am currently reading (which is a kind of memoir, or personal testimony) by an Algerian Muslim immigrant who grew up in the Paris suburb of Val Fourré.  (About 13% of French immigrants come from Algeria.)  In Du côté de chez moi, Salima Senini* (2013) tells of life in the isolated city housing project, and the thrilling glimpses of French mainstream culture she gets, through television, school, and eventually, through her reading of French literature.  For her family and most of her immigrant neighbors, living the comfortable French lifestyle though is beyond their grasp.  Her father works several jobs to pay the rent and feed his large family and to get them to Algeria for summer visits, so for Senini, the desire to celebrate Christmas and receive gifts, to spend holidays skiing or frankly, anywhere outside of the immigrant ghetto, to wear more fashionable clothing, all these have to be satisfied with infrequent discount shopping trips to the city and or through dreams depicted in her made-up answers to school assignments about what gifts she received or to questions about where she spent her holidays.  (The teachers didn't realize that not all of their students celebrate Christmas?!  These same teachers also suggested that the  immigrant kids who spoke French and a tribal language at home were not 'really' bilingual because the other non-world language didn't count as a real language.)

Most of Senini's seven siblings don't complete school, ending up in strictly manual or blue collar jobs, just like all of the other neighbors' kids.  Unfortunately, they and others like them are often among those that suffer disproportionately in times of economic downturns such as we are experiencing in France right now.   This can put to a halt any progress made towards those elusive immigrant dreams.  (We have a family friend in Washington state who no doubt sees this same thing over and over again in her work helping immigrants and refugees learn English and find gainful employment in their new homes.)  Here in France, unemployment is the highest since 1999, at 10%. (See France24, French joblessness climbs to highest rate, March 7, 2013.)  It's over 25% for those under age 25, and some of whom are indeed immigrant youth or youth of immigrant parents, especially here in the south of France.  And, the sectors that continue to see declines in the past few economic quarters are precisely those in heavy blue collar (and immigrant) sectors, such as construction, mechanical work (vehicle repair for example), transportation, manufacturing (see INSEE report, in English, Ongoing decrease in payroll employment March 13, 2013).   Thus, glass ceilings, and open and then suddenly locked doors remain a fact of life for many immigrants, here and elsewhere.

*(Click here for a French language radio interview with Senini on the release of her book.  The English edition of her book from the Arenes publishing house seems to be forthcoming, and is entitled In search of myself.)

Here's another door that is hard to penetrate.  It leads to Le Panthéon national in Paris, that final resting place for illustrious contributors to the glorious French Republic (as decided by the current president of the Republic).  Among the many men's remains, there are remains of two women (next to their spouses) and one person of color.
 

La politesse

Sitting Woman, by Thomas Houseago, Parcours l'art a l'endroite à Aix en Provence Jan-Feb. 2013 Place l'universite

On this International Women's Day, I am reminded of Caitlin Moran's suggestion in her book How to be a woman (2012) that the basic goal of feminism can really be broken down to the pursuit of basic politeness in society.  That we should treat each other with civility, regardless of our gender seems pretty reasonable, and it's even more appealing to me, if that call for politeness extends beyond gender, where we extend civil behavior to all, regardless of age, ethnoracial origin, or other social features.  Treating everyone politely would make it much harder for us to overlook or treat people poorly or less than equally.  After all, that is a basic lesson of humanism.

Regardless of whether we are pursuing politeness in the name of feminism or humanism, la politesse (politeness) does pose some challenges because many aspects of civil behavior are in fact cultural, even if the basic idea of civility is universal.  For example, here in France, politeness is tied up in the French language and discourse as it is in many other languages, which poses challenges for English-speakers.  There is the polite vous form that I have to remember to use when speaking to people that I do not know well or with whom some social distance is appropriate: school teachers, market vendors, shop clerks.  (Its equivalent in Finnish has slipped so much that I never properly learned to use it particularly since I had few opportunities to use it, and in English, well, you is you).  Then there are the polite French phrases that are still used quite regularly; the obligatory bonjours and au revoirs when entering a shop are easy enough, but it is the enchantées (nice to meet you) and the avec plaisirs (with pleasure) that trip me up because they seem so flowery.  On the other hand, I also find the 'you're welcome' confusing here.  Very formally one says je vous en prie, but most people say de rien which to my ear sounds dismissive and ungraceful because its direct translation implies 'it's nothing' even though it is a perfectly acceptable and very popular response to merci.   In American English we have slipped into the usage of  'no problem' as a response to thank you, which a friend and I agreed we didn't like for the same reasons de rien resonates poorly with me.  I want my thank you to be accepted firmly, perhaps even avec plaisir (with pleasure)!

Certainly, my understanding of Moran is that she is referring to much more than just how we greet people on the street (and we know that the actions accompanying the language we use also vary significantly, from the bisous that French give each other on their cheeks, to the handshakes or head nods or bows that others do).  Moran is advocating politeness in all aspects of our lives and in all societies.  For example, are we being polite in how we treat people at work or at home?  Are we being polite about how we hire people, pay them, evaluate them, promote or move them, and even let them go?  Are we being polite in our exchanges with people in our daily routines, at school, at home, in our shopping?  Are we sharing, are we taking turns, are we being mindful of each other?  Unfortunately, we still have much work to do in this regard.  My SOC 101 students got a look at some impolite wage gaps in the U.S. in class this week (click here and see if you feel as outraged as several of my SOC 101 students: Why is her paycheck smaller, May 18, 2010. The New York Times), and similar wage gaps exist in France too. (Le salaire des femmes dans le privé inférieur de 28% à celui des hommes, March 8, 2013, Le Monde)  Politeness is more than just saying the polite words; it is also in doing the polite, or by extension, the fair, or equal thing.

Le bonheur

While I am a somewhat lapsed knitter (but one who now lives a simpler, French life with more time for little pleasures like needlecrafts), I was initially puzzled by the dearth of handicraft shops in Aix.  Within our first month here, a friend introduced me to a lovely but pricey shop called Au bonheur de dames (ladies' true happiness), where I have spent plenty of  Euros on yarn for the same flouncy scarves I've seen on many women here (see me wearing one creation on Le temps, Nov. 30, 2011) and on some beautiful but expensive needlework kits (my photo shows a little needle case that I completed earlier this year).  Yet, when I went looking for more shopping options, I was surprised by how few there were and how limited.

It didn't take long for me to realize why Aix has so few textile crafts shops.  On EACH occasion that I have brought out my knitting or other needlework in public or among French friends, I have been teased for being an old woman knitting on the football or rugby sideline or in the living room armchair.  Le tricot, la broderie, la couture, ils ne sont pas à la mode!  (Knitting, embroidery, sewing, they are not 'in'!)   This is in direct contrast to my experience in the United States where knitting and other crafts continue to be very popular.  Yet, the young sisters of the French soccer players have been absolutely mesmerized by my projects, asking me questions about the embroidery tension rings and needles, admiring the changing colors on the variegated yarn on my fingerless glove project shown here, and checking on my crafting progress throughout the games.  Surely these pleasures are not reserved for just les vieilles dames (the old ladies)?

I've come to think that young girls in this society, and particularly in the south have limited leisure time opportunities, with Barbies, then shopping and cosmetics, and then experimenting with cigarettes among them.  Clearly, textile handcrafts are largely out, yet other options like physical activities continue to be fairly segregated by gender.  Girls swim, do gymnastics or dance, play tennis, or might ride horses if they have the money.  There are a few exceptions, and perhaps my eagle-eyed readers discovered two of them in my last post (the one with the masculine title Allez les gars, Nov. 26, 2012): in the accompanying photo of my son's football team, there are two girls who play soccer alongside the boys.  They have to, if they want to play soccer here.  While France has a national women's team, the infrastructure for a girls' youth league is not as well-developed as it is in the United States where young girls have many opportunities to play, and so they do.  I have yet to see an all-girls soccer team or league here in the football-crazy south, and it's probably right to say that France does not yet have a functioning equivalent of Title IX (the U.S. law that ensures equal funding for women's athletic and other programs in federally supported institutions).  That means that French girls have to be incredibly determined, tough, and focused, if they want to play le foot, just like the two girls at my son's club as well as the courageous girl I saw yesterday, at a match in Marseille.  She waited stoically with her parents for warm-ups to begin, standing just beyond her all-boy team that was horsing around (and excluding her).  I watched her maintain her poker-face and her rigid posture as she stepped onto the field at the start of both halves.  Clearly, le foot means a lot to her, yet she cannot comfortably express the joy and pleasure she has for the game while playing among and against adolescent boys.  (Blog update: I have discovered a New York Times essay about this same topic, Sciolino, Sept. 16, 2002. "Paris Journal; For French Girls, Soccer is a tough goal", suggesting that not much has changed in a decade.)

How do we find notre bonheur (that which makes us happy)?  As I continue to observe the gender inequality around me and look for evolutions towards a literally and figuratively more equalized playing field for French girls, (and wait for knitting to become hip among the younger French, male and female alike), I am hugely disappointed by France's former First Lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy's comments in a recent interview with the Parisian Vogue.  She says that women of her generation ....“don’t need to be a feminist....There were pioneers who opened the breach....I’m not at all an active feminist. On the contrary I’m bourgeois, I love family life, I love doing the same thing every day.” (as transcribed in "Carla supports gay marriage." La Connexion, Nov. 26, 2012) Apparently, this privileged and 'bourgeois' mother (whose voice could make a difference) seems to believe that her young daughter and other French girls will have no problem at all in finding equal and full access to life's pleasures and opportunities.

La journée de la femme

There I am, in Lyon, under the sign marking Auguste Comte street in Lyon.  Comte is often described as one of the fathers of sociology because his philosophy of positivism informed the developing field of sociology, by suggesting that social reality could and should be explained based on systematic analyses of empirical data, rather than by traditional beliefs and personal experiences.  Perhaps you notice in the photo also the red light and do-not-enter sign behind me.  I usually think of Comte as a green light kind of guy, you know, because he was a positivist, but the red light near his name can serve as a reminder to proceed with caution when we make generalizations about social life, to make sure that these are indeed grounded in empirical findings.  The red light and the do-not-enter sign could also be emblematic of something else, because when sociology was evolving as a scientific discipline, it was largely closed to women.  We have several 'fathers' in the field (Emile Durkheim is often named as the other one), but it is many decades before we can recognize any prominent women in the field.

Today, the light is no longer red, but it seems to be stuck on yellow, as women's positions still lag behind men's, on all kinds of markers.  We have empirical evidence that affirms this for us.  Just last week, my SOC 101 students looked at the gender gap in pay for U.S. adults as reflected in the New York Times, and many of them, men and women alike, were dismayed by the gender gaps in virtually all fields, up to 40% in some.  (See http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/01/business/20090301_WageGap.html) The story is very similar here in France.  Today is la journée de la femme, (international woman's day), a day that has official status in France in fact.  I saw signs on the street in Lyon encouraging the cultivation of gender equality and women's rights, (as shown on the pink poster), and the Olympique Lyonnais soccer club shop offered women a discount today on women's fan wear (alas, I don't wear much soccer fanware so the discount was not useful to me).  And the papers also noted the day.  Le Figaro, one of the national papers, offered two articles, one asking various people if such a day is still necessary and if it really advances the cause of women's equality (non seems to have been the general response).  Another article on the same page presents the latest findings on gender equality in France, and the title says it all, Les lents progrès de la parité (by Agnes Leclair, 8 March 2012, The slow progress towards equality).  The article presents a study from Insee, the institute for national statistics, that shows that French women earn 25% less than French men.  The income gap is similar to that in the U.S. if we refer to the data in the May 2010 New York Times interactive data noted above.  Family work comparisons on the other hand, show some interesting differences between the French and Americans, while also affirming some critical similarities.

For example, it seems that the French do more family work on a daily basis.  We can't compare different studies definitively as the measurements and the categories will vary between them, but the French study suggests that French women do close to 4 hours a day of family work, while U.S. women did about 17 hours a week in 2005, which would translate to about 2.5 hours a day.  That seems a little low for the U.S. while the French estimate is perhaps a little high (for U.S. data, see http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_images.jsp?cntn_id=111458&org=nsf ), but it does seem that French women do more family work than U.S. women do.  Another big national difference is that French men seem to not have progressed as quickly as American men have, in terms of their family work participation.  Since 1986, according to the L'Insee study, French men have added all of  6 minutes to the amount of family work they do, the daily rate today being about 2 hours 13 minutes.  U.S. studies suggest that U.S. men seem to have moved much more quickly, doubling their weekly hours of family work from 6 to 12.5 between 1976 and 2005.

Despite the national differences, French and U.S. women are very similar.  We see that French women and U.S. women do more than their national male counterparts, and we see that the most significant changes over time have been in terms of women's participation in family work, not in men's.  That is, the notable change is that French and U.S. women are simply doing less family work (and not that men are doing more).  Instead, women have given themselves a green light, to pursue other activities and other means for satisfying family responsibilities.  French and U.S. families today outsource more and more of the work, women are hiring childcare help (French women can use state-provided childcare services of course), gardeners, housecleaners, and they are shopping for prepared foods and other products designed to be simplify household work (robot vacuum cleaners, perhaps?).  Or, they are readjusting their standards, in childcare and in household cleanliness and in the quality of the food they prepare.  This is likely the direction we will continue in, in both France and the U.S.: women will do less, outsiders will do more, and men will slowly do a little more over time.  In that fashion, we may eventually reach gender parity, in family work contributions, and hopefully also in terms of pay. 

Adieu mademoiselle

In sociology we speak a great deal about the symbolism tied to our social roles and to our interactions with others.  How we name things and refer to them is also symbolic, as language signifies all kinds of social meanings, for the people, objects, or actions to which we are referring.  The names we give our social roles--mother, father, daughter--have symbolic meanings tied up with them as do the names we give ourselves.  I can use myself easily here as I have not only firmly held on to my name upon marriage, but I have also maintained its Finnish pronunciation for much of my life.  Both the name and the pronunciation are symbols for me, of both my ethnolinguistic identity and my feminist orientation, that I affirm to myself and project to others.  I've already talked about my surprise and frustration with the challenges in using my legal nom (last name) here (see Une féministe, October 9, 2011).  By now, it's on the bank account and checkbook, and on one utility bill (thanks to a clever French friend who suggested I open one utility in my name and the other in my spouse's).  I am still the good wife with her spouse's last name on the rental agreement, and the spouse receives all school correspondence, even though I am the parent who signs every single absence or late attendance/early arrival slip and who attends the school meetings and conferences and corresponds with the school staff.  His name is also on my cell phone bill (because I did not have a utility in my name at the time we set it up).  As for my first name  I have generally always introduced myself by pronouncing my first name as it is pronounced in Finnish (on'-neh), but strangely enough, in France, this works about as well as it does in the U.S.  The French consistently refer to me as 'Ann' because that's also how they pronounce a name spelled as mine.

Despite these little challenges, in one significant way, the French have made a big change just this week in how it names its people.  The use of Mademoiselle (Miss) on any government documents will no longer be permitted; French women will no longer have to signify their marital status by selecting Madame or Mademoiselle on government forms.  Instead, all are Madame, like men are all Monsieur.  This is akin to the U.S. convention, of using Ms. as the honorific for all women.  All of the teachers in our boys' elementary school were called Ms. unless they expressly indicated a preference for Mrs.  To be fair, in France despite what we learned in our French 101 classes back home, Mlle (the abbreviation for Miss) has not been widely or practically used in some time.  In the fall, I made the mistake of addressing an unmarried school official as Mlle So-and-So in an email (because I heard someone referring to her as such), but she swiftly and professionally corrected me, and I've come to notice that any women from their 20's on are generally called Madame.  As the New York Times calls Madame the 'senior' honorific, it is a little jarring to me to hear a young college student being called Madame, but that is the moniker here and apparently also in Quebec for unmarried and married women alike. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/world/europe/france-drops-mademoiselle-from-official-use.html 

The French government though apparently will not be rushing to make new forms.  The New York Times article linked here notes that in not wanting to waste the old forms, the government will create new ones after the old ones run out.  On the one hand, that makes sense during this challenging economic time in Europe where the French government along with its neighbors is trying to save the Euro currency by limiting public sector spending, but there is something symbolic, from the perspective of gender equality, in making the change immediately apparent.  I will have a good opportunity in the next few months to see if the government recognizes this symbolic opportunity, as the spouse and I will need to see about getting our permis de conduire (driver's licenses).  (We have just one year in which we can use our American ones here.)  One rendition of the current application asks one to indicate one's status as M., Mme or Mlle, which will obviously change with the new forms.  The current form then asks for one's last name at birth, one's first name and nom d'époux (s'il ya lieu) (married name or literally, husband's name, if applicable).  Apparently, this literal reference to one's spouse will also be removed, from this line, and one will simply be asked to indicate the last name being used now.  From my perspective, this latter change may be the more significant one!