Men are from Mars, Frenchmen Are From Venus? Gender Stereotyping in France vs. Australia

Last night, at a dinner with French expat women put on by Melbourne Accueil, one of the women commented that, 'In Australia, the men are super macho, like Italians. Men never want to speak to me. They don’t flirt with me, like men in the workplace in France would.' This got me thinking about gender in France and Oz. How does my French husband Maxime come across in Australia, for instance? For a start, his name doesn't help him pretend to be a 'super macho' Aussie:


‘Hello, is Max there please?’ a voice on the phone asked me one day.

‘Who?’ I said.

‘Max,’ the voice said.

‘I’m sorry, there’s no one here by that name,’ I said. ‘Oh, wait a minute! That’s my husband!’

I’m glad to say this embarrassing exchange only happened the once, although I still do a double take when anyone calls Maxime ‘Max’. Maxime has introduced himself to some people as Max because he has gotten sick of being called a girl – he’d receive letters addressed to Maxine with the title ‘Mrs.’ And I don’t know how many times I’ve had to say, ‘It’s not MaxiNe, it’s MaxiMe. I know it has an ‘e’ on the end but he’s still not a girl.’ Which is why Maxime sometimes finds it simpler to tell people his name is Max.

But some might think the girly charge justified. I mean, what self-respecting, appropriately hirsute bloke goes to the footy and drinks pear cider? (See The Frog and the Footy) What kind of man likes going to the ballet, is happy to eat quiche and goes into a pub and orders a glass of pink moscato? A Frenchman. Or, more specifically, my Frenchman. I should point out, though, that I have not the smallest issue with the above, and neither does he.

But since we’ve moved to Australia, I’ve become aware of male stereotypes again, having completely forgotten them in France. The blokey and jokey stereotype of the Aussie male. And it’s made me realise that the taboos on men here are really quite broad. Like the taboos on women in France. Allow me to digress:

In France, it seemed to me that beauty was a woman’s highest attribute. I got this impression from the way French women starved themselves to be thin (literally. Frenchwomen don’t get fat because they don’t eat, I don’t care what that French Women Don’t Get Fat book says. I've watched countless gaunt, hollow-cheeked hostesses not eat their own meals, on the pretext of being too busy serving them.) And there's the way Frenchwomen dress – immaculate; feminine; lots of makeup. There were other little things like the fact that at dinner, only men were allowed to pour wine and women had strictly no interest in sport. But what brought home the narrowness of the stereotype and the central importance of beauty was what happened to me during pregnancy: 

Maxime thought my gyny was great because she was French (my previous one had been Swiss). I thought she was less great because she said I had put on too much weight during my pregnancy. I was scolded until I wondered whether we had mistakenly gone to an obesity clinic. How fitting that I originally took the French word ‘grossesse’ to mean fatness instead of pregnancy. Then the doctor gave me a pregnancy pack which told me all about how to keep myself as beautiful as possible with the application of a battalion of creams. All of this was a bit unsettling. Wasn’t it meant to be about having a baby, somewhere along the line? I didn’t really consider my appearance to be of much importance at this juncture. All this relates, I later read, to the French female’s lack of self-confidence. Her sense of self-worth plummets if not propped up with a few creams and slimming teas ‘minceur’.

‘Frenchwomen are not comfortable with their bodies,’ had been Maxime’s analysis.

(I decided I wouldn’t question him too deeply on his experience in this area.)

French men, on the other hand, seemed to be free to behave as they liked. They could eat and drink what they liked and lots of it, and could dance and hate sport with impunity. And at parties, men and women mixed, whereas in Oz – something I’d also forgotten in the years away – men tend to seek out other blokes and women talk to women. Maxime doesn't want to hang with the blokes - he says he often prefers to talk to women. No wonder Frenchmen have a certain reputation with us Anglo Saxons!

Happily, the stereotypes have posed no real problem to us. Maxime blithely tramples Aussie male taboos here, and I steadfastly ignored female French taboos in France (i.e., continued to stuff my face when pregnant). And it was fine … except that my in-laws thought I was some sort of barbarian. Maxime hasn't suffered here either so far, despite his girly drinking habits. The only issue is that my brother-in-law is terrified Maxime will kiss him. Maxime gives my father a kiss on each cheek to say hello each time he sees him, after which he loves to walk up to the brother-in-law with a big grin on his face.

‘Don’t you want to give Maxime a kiss?’ I'll ask my brother-in-law with a smile.

The brother-in-law will then put up his hands and back away, saying, ‘No no no! I’m good, thanks, Max.’

Ah well. In Australia, maybe Maxime will have to stick to kissing women. I don’t think he’ll really mind.
IF YOU LIKE THIS POST, SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE (see email subscription box in the sidebar)

The Frog and the 2014 Budget: Can Your Kids Still Afford Uni if They Speak French?

In order to persuade my French husband Maxime to move to Australia, I plugged Australia incessantly when we lived in France. But before agreeing to move, Maxime told me I had to make a ‘business case’ for it (he tends to use corporate-speak in everyday conversation).

‘I don’t want to be worse off for moving,’ he’d said. 

Oops.

Up the top of my highly sophisticated and thorough ‘business case’ (i.e., excel spreadsheet with two columns: ‘cost in France’ and ‘cost in Oz’), was a comparison in the price of petrol, quickly and persuasively followed by the price of meat. I sneakily left out the price of cheese.

‘What about tax?’ Maxime had asked.

‘Well … we won’t get to divide our taxable income by the number of kids we have, but there is no compulsory social contribution to pay, so tax-wise, maybe we’ll be even?’ I said hopefully. (Except that the social contribution means you get paid 70% of your last salary when you're unemployed. Fingers crossed Maxime's company hangs in there and he never finds out what you get if you're unemployed in Oz!) ‘And health and education are (almost) free, just like in France!’ (I chose to gloss over the Medicare levy and the curiously named ‘HELP’.)

Maxime’d been afraid Australia was like the US, with its shambolic healthcare and education system where you have to take out a mortgage in order to pay for a university degree, starting adult life behind the eight ball.

‘And how about the standard of Australian education?’ Maxime wondered.

‘No worries, we have a great education system!’ I assured him. (I based this opinion on a sample size of one. Me.)

But now everything I said back then has just been turned on its head by the new budget. We are going the way of the US. This means that down the track, the kids may well end up going to uni back in Europe. Which they can do, if they do an International Baccalaureate in year 12. And if they can keep up their French. 

But that’s another issue. Having taken wage cuts to move to Australia, we've had to do our own austere budget and French lessons for the kids were on the block! I hope Maxime makes a good homeschool teacher ...

The Frog Does a Diet: The Amazing Ciderman

Fourteen course degustation menus, brie with truffles, potato gratins and mousses au chocolat are things of the past for my French husband Maxime. Mostly. Along with his new fitness regime, there is Maxime’s new diet, which I alluded to last time (The Frog Becomes a Fitness Freak), and his entourage have been most impressed at how he’s persisted with it.

This has been possible, says the thinning one, because of the move to Australia. He’s a hemisphere away from the old triggers and the old enablers/fellow bon vivants. In France, even the tradies were trouble: like the time a bloke came over  one night after work to discuss renovating our bathroom. I’d let Maxime handle it, due to my lack of French vocab concerning tiling and towel rails. I’m not sure how much bathroom discussing went on, but apparently, it was thirsty work.

‘Maxime!' I said the next morning. ‘You drank FOUR bottles of wine with the bathroom bloke?’

‘How did you know?’ said Maxime, all round-eyed.

‘Er, let’s just say the four empty bottles on the dining room table were a bit of a clue.’

Now, following the dictates of his PT, Maxime has been transformed – he hardly drinks any wine at all. This has had unexpected consequences: when we went out the other night, Maxime shunned red wine and ordered a pear cider, followed by an apple cider and then – OMG! – sparkling moscato.

‘Maxime!’ I said, ‘You’re drinking like a teenage girl! You must be out of practice - you’ve forgotten how to drink like an adult.’

‘Oh. Yes, I suppose so,’ he said, a little embarrassed.

Now, instead of calling him the Wine Lord, I call him the Amazing Ciderman.

Maxime can stick to his new low carb, low fat, low sugar diet, he tells people, because he finds something yummy to eat that’s healthy. Surely, I think to myself, he can’t be referring to his hand-squashed chia seed and cayenne pepper smoothies/lumpies? (‘Muddy puddles’, as two year old Julien calls them in a homage to Peppa Pig.) Or does Maxime mean yummy and healthy like his cupboard full of assorted birdseed and various denominations of chaff? What’s more, despite all those pepper smoothies and delicious psyllium husks, occasionally, Maxime will be tempted by the Dark Side. His parents send him chocolate from France, for instance. He defends this by saying he ‘needs’ a supply of good quality chocolate (i.e., French chocolate. (Michel Cluizel and Bonnat, for example)).

‘Why?’ I ask him.

 ‘Because if I buy Cadburys I have to eat the whole block,’ says Maxime.

‘Huh? Why?’

‘It’s because it’s bad quality.’

I’m still struggling with Maxime’s logic.

‘With good quality chocolate I only need a couple of squares.’

I think hard about this and decide that I think he means that because the chocolateness is so dilute in ‘bad’ chocolate, he needs to eat much more to get a hit.

How many treats does a frog need?

Mystery packs of Tim Tams also appear in the pantry from time to time. And then disappear. But Maxime doesn’t berate himself, knowing that guilt is counterproductive (and not much fun). He thinks the odd blowout is necessary to maintain discipline and thinness the rest of the time. For instance, Maxime announced this morning that he has to be good:

‘I got a bit out of control on the weekend,’ he said. ‘There was a packet of chocolate biscuits at your Dad’s place. And I could see it was from ALDI too, but I couldn’t resist - it was at my hand reach, so I ate the whole packet.’

‘Oh dear,’ I said sympathetically. (Although I think those biscuits were meant for the kids, not Maxime’s stomach.)

‘But I know that I be back into my good habits this week. And I’ve been doing a lot of skipping at work.’ (He keeps a skipping rope in his office.)

So it's all good. Except maybe for Maxime’s colleagues having to listen to the boom boom boom of Maxime’s skipping. Especially since his office is between the CEO and the CFO ...
IF YOU LIKE THIS POST, SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE (see email subscription box in the sidebar)

The Frog Becomes a Fitness Freak

Given my last post (Aussie Lunch Break, French Breakdown), this one is going to surprise. Because Maxime’s major discovery since coming to Australia is not the restaurant Shoya, not Mount Mary wine, not Bruny Island cheese, not even TimTams, but yoga. Of all the things I expected him to get out of being here, yoga was not one.

He has been swept up in the Australian craze for personal trainers (PT) and bootcamps (though he has yet to be swept up by Aussie fashion - the craze for sleeve tats and bushranger beards. When he had to pick up the kids from school, he came home puzzled, saying, ‘I was the only parent without a tattoo.’ What a rebel!)

Maxime's life-changing moment came on a day trip to Mount Baw Baw (as they do). We were having lunch (no surprises there), when my attention was snagged by a line of spiky rubber mats on the ground near our al fresco dining table. We hadn’t known this, but it was an extreme sports weekend at Baw Baw. We’d just come for the less extreme sport of having lunch and looking at the view. But the thing is, despite my association with a decadent frog, I’m actually a long-time runner, with long–time injuries to match. And I wondered wistfully if a spiky mat might massage various tight muscles. But I’m a shy type, and so I made Maxime (not a shy type, as you’ve no doubt gathered by now) ask the bloke next to the mats about the product.

 It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. Maxime purchased a mat right then and there. But not for me, I was chagrined to discover – for him! What did he need a spiky mat for? A digestion aide? Not only that, he made himself an appointment with the mat guy for a PT session the following week (in Melbourne, not Baw Baw).

I just looked Maxime, mouth gaping and a weeny bit cross.

Spiky yoga mat

‘I thought in Australia it would be easier to start a new exercise regime,’ explained Maxime. 

‘How do you mean?’

‘There’s the outdoor lifestyle. And it’s easier to eat more healthily. They try to cook healthily in restaurants here. You can have something vegetarian which tastes interesting.’

Well, I knew that in France, vegetables were often soggy and soaked in either oil or butter or cream or all three for good measure and bad arteries, but did Maxime just say vegetarian?! I mean, this is someone who, as we drove through the rolling hills of the Belloc in France, announced that the region was famous for its agneau and said, ‘Mmmm, I can’t wait to eat them!’ as we passed a flock of sheep.

‘OK,’ I said now, ‘but what are you going to use that mat for?’

‘Yoga,’ said Maxime.

‘Yoga on that? God. I guess it would be good for nerve stimulation and stuff, but … ouch!’

But the determined frog did. He yoga-ed all over the place on his bed of rubber nails. He still does training with his Baw Baw PT too, and, to the mystification of colleagues, has begun skipping at work. He has bought a special adult skipping rope (i.e., not pink with tassels) and while his workmates eat their Not Lunches, they can hear ‘pound pound pound’ coming from Maxime’s office.

What's more, where in France, breakfast consisted of croissant au chocolat, now it consists of smoothies. (Everyone these days seems to be eating gruel, as my dad calls it.) Each morning, Maxime mashes up chia seeds and rice bran and various combinations of coconut, turmeric, cinnamon and cayenne pepper, which have special properties, like making you live for ever or something. And Maxime only uses ‘quality products’, because, he says, otherwise the spices taste ‘like nothing’. So he buys a brand called ‘Herbs of Gold’, as in, gold for their marketing department. The only snag is that Maxime has a deep mistrust of our blender’s capabilities, so he makes his smoothies by hand. They are hand squashed, with the result that the smoothies are more like lumpies.

And unfortunately, he always wants me to try a sip.

‘What do you think?’ he asks eagerly.

‘Well, what can I say, Maxime?' I answer. ‘It’s completely foul.’

There’s one last consequence of all this new lifestyle and yoga-ness. Now, whenever the kids roll around on the floor in random fashion, Maxime insists that they are performing the Downward Dog or the Upright Pigeon or the Lopsided Duck or something. Personally I think they look more like a cut snake or a stuck pig.
IF YOU LIKE THIS POST, SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE (see email subscription box in the sidebar)