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.
‘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.
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