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.
 

Les entrepreneurs

My ados (short for adolescents in French) and their homies are big into skating and longboarding.  Up to a dozen classmates meet in town for skate days, trying out tricks at the local skate park or seeking out new surfaces and skate-able nooks and crannies around town (and trying to avoid getting yelled at in the process by passers-by).  The hallway outside our apartment's door is often a parking lot for the many different kinds of boards, or 'decks', when the skaters need a break.  Skating seems to be a great way for young teenagers to be athletic, social, and inventive.  Thus, it was with mild interest that I caught an article in the New York Times about a skateboarding Finnish carpenter who invented a business niche for himself, selling handmade boards made out of new combinations of materials (Foster, Nick. Nov. 3, 2013. "Taking a Local Approach to the Global Sport of Skateboarding, The New York Times ).  While his creativity and craftmanship are inspirational, I was really taken by the brief mention about the entrepreneurial spirit that has become popular in Finland, making it possible for someone like this carpenter to start a business with a global reach.

The entrepreneurial spirit is something that I see as very American, even if the word comes from old Europe, from France.  Entrepreneurship, as we understand it in the U.S.--the idea that one can start a company with an innovative idea and weather the risks, hopefully with a solid business plan and generous investors, and then propel that into a successful business, locally and perhaps even globally--has been slow to establish itself in Europe.  This feels particularly so in France, where about one-quarter of the French are employed by the state or local governments and where the start-up culture is stymied by complex administrative regulations and sometimes punishing taxation.  I've read elsewhere that French culture just lacks that creative and independent spirit associated with entrepreneurship.  I don't know about that.  The French are definitely creative, and there are all kinds of small businesses here, especially those associated with agriculture and food (think of the many small family-owned wineries, the outdoor food markets in every town).  However, it appears to be true that the growth in the numbers of auto-entrepreneurs in other sectors has only come about very recently.  This may be a Europe-wide trend, given what seems to be happening in Finland as well.  Certainly, the persistently high unemployment in France has likely pushed some to get creative and seek their economic livelihoods by starting small-scale businesses. On our street we have new and old ones, the Persian rug repair shop, the tattoo parlor, the Szechuan Chinese restaurant, and the secondhand clothing store, but it is amazing how many small retail businesses and restaurants, have come and gone in the short two and half years we have been here.  Entrepreneurial efforts based on digital and manufacturing technologies can also be found here, with many such businesses concentrated in an office park area southwest of Aix.  I can't say how many of those are thriving and which ones are surviving, but it is one such start-up that brought my family to France in the first place.  That the office park area itself continues to be expanding and the traffic has gotten heavier, prompting more road construction, suggests some business successes there, or new ideas for new companies. We know that among the EU countries, France has the highest rate of entrepreneurial development right now (Tozzi, John. Aug. 16, 2013. "Europe's Hotbed of Entrepreneurship? France" Bloomberg Business Week). That, along with a new school specializing in entrepreneurship (Mitchell, Adam. Aug. 27, 2013. "France to launch school to teach entrepreneurial skills." France24) indicate a certain momentum.  On the other hand, capital and spending are tight all over Europe, so it might be difficult to launch a true entrepreneurial revolution right now in France, or elsewhere.  It's a bit like attempting a bigspin or another trick on a skateboard; the momentum and the conditions must be just right if the skater hopes to land on his feet with his board and body intact.

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.