Keeping it Vrai

I've been a little down on my experience in France in these last couple of posts, so I think switching gears to something more positive is in order.

Recently I've come to a conclusion: all young women in their prime should live, even if briefly, in the south of France. The French attitude toward women is a blend of benevolent sexism and objectification, with a smattering of misogyny. So...why am I then recommending an experience here? Have I lost my feminist bearings?

Let's think about it. If you are a cute girl, you can skip the line at the post office. You can talk your way out of your bar tab. You are more likely to get the last piece of cheesecake at the restaurant not because you ordered it first, but because the waiter likes you better...and then you're also more likely to get the waiter's card or telephone number at the end of your meal, but you shouldn't feel obligated to call unless you think he's cute, too...

The plain and harsh truth, ladies, is that after you hit the peak of your attractiveness (for most around age 25) you have only a few years before you start to look your age--if not older--and, as your grandmother warned you, things can go downhill really fast. Now that I'm 26, I guess the prospect has become more real to me, having transcended that "magical" chronological number.

The take-away message is, get in that flirting while you can. Bask in a couple of compliments, even if mislaid, because there will come a time when you will not get compliments anymore no matter how hard you try. Unless you are someone like Demi Moore or Nicole Kidman and can afford expensive anti-aging treatments, botox, a personal trainer, etc., you probably won't get wolf-whistled at by construction workers when you're 45.

If you live in Wisconsin, it is even less likely you will be complimented on your shapely legs by a man old enough to be your grandfather who sips his espresso at the table of an outdoor cafe, walking cane propped up against an adjacent chair, no matter your own age or personal attractiveness. A puritanical sense of decorum, lack of outdoor cafes, and a general disregard for the sex lives of people over 70 sees to it that such a situation just wouldn't arise, and if it did, you'd call the police.

In the south of France, however, you do not call the police. You have two options: 1) ignore Grandpa or sleazy construction worker, or 2) say "thank you" for the compliment and move on. Option #2 may get you more attention next time, so you're going to have to decide if it's worth it to you. Personally, like with the waiter, I would gauge the other party's attitude (and personal attractiveness). Flirting is supposed to be fun--something the French seem to have mastered--and if it's not, be brief without being rude. You don't want to have an angry stalker on your hands.

Another point: although the French are getting better about issues that affect women, such as rape and sexual harassment in the workplace, and are (as far as I can tell) better about such things than their neighbors in Italy, they are by no means as cognizant of such issues as people are in the United States. There is not much recourse for women who feel they have been harassed or discriminated against at work--and a woman earns 60 cents to every Euro a man makes.

That's called the plafond de verre, people, and it is one of the (many) reasons I do not recommend packing up and moving permanently to the south of France. For most, I'm sure a visit will suffice.

New Job

As I mentioned earlier, I got a new job!

I've had it for a while, so it's not exactly new...but it remains a second job. Basically, my landlord has a friend who teaches English to adults as part of a job training or self-improvement course set up by the French government. The goal is to take an ESL test at the end of a six-week intensive immersion training course (called the TOEIC) which will make these candidates who participated more employable, and (one would hope) more fluent in English. It is particularly geared toward the unemployed (like everywhere else at the moment, France has a pretty high unemployment rate) or those looking to switch careers--either completely or in the form of a promotion. . It happened very spontaneously because my landlord is friends with the woman who runs the program. Basically, they were desperate. I happen to be a native English speaker. As they say, et voilà!

Anyway, I talked to the woman who runs the operation here in La Ciotat. They were basically desperate for an English speaker, so I was hired without an interview. Though I'm technically not allowed to have a second job here, an exception has been made: provided I don't shirk my high school English teaching responsibilities. Which I wouldn't (I consider myself very conscientious) and besides, there's not much to the high school responsibilities, and there's not much difference between the two jobs. I'm basically putting in more hours, that's all.

The course is a benefit of the French social security system, and my salary is paid for by the French government  Sometimes the students are grouped by their professions, i.e. all secretaries in one group, all flight attendants in another, but my group was quite varied: three med techs, a nurse, a real estate agent, a press agent, a couple of international businessmen, a high-end fashion salesperson, a flight attendant, a tour guide and a dental hygienist.

I'm not really busier than I was in Austria. I've been reusing lesson plans to the hilt (hoping it doesn't show and come off as lazy...) but I've also been tailoring them to a French audience. Since my students started coming, we've been having a lot of fun in class (I think). I'm trying to be as supportive (i.e. as uncritical) as possible to let them embrace learning English, even if they make lots of mistakes. Rome wasn't built in a day, after all, and I think they get enough disparagement from their teachers. If they get more from a native speaker, they'll probably never learn English!

Besides, I must always remember that I myself am a learner of languages. My French is pretty good, but I'm not a native speaker by any means, and I make plenty of mistakes myself. The coolest part of teaching is when I can give the kids slang or regionalisms, and then translate them. I think it catches them by surprise because they're led to believe I don't know any French.

My best example is from yesterday. We were talking about stereotypes of the French vs. stereotypes of Americans. I hinted around about the French being more "romantic" but they didn't get it until I spelled it out. One boy said, "Oh, no. That's more the Italians." I and I said, "Sure. But there are plenty of pick-up artists in France." They stared at me blankly until I intoned, "A pick-up artist is a dragueur, by the way," which sent them rolling in the aisles.

My compliments to French in Action for teaching me that word in the first place!

Generations: the History of America's Future

Last year, a friend of mine in Vienna suggested this book to me. We got to talking about certain stereotypes of our generation. Things like we're all a bunch of bratty mama's babies with helicopter parents, or that we don't know how to take care of ourselves.

That got my dander up, and my friend and I agreed that each of us has as specific role to play in the world, and in a funny way, we're nothing like our parents' generation, why is that? Certainly we've been influenced by them, but not necessarily because we were raised by them? What exactly is the rapport between generations, anyway?

Though a little dated (it was written in 1992), Generations: the History of America's Future by William Strauss and Neil Howe (who later expounded on the theory in The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy and Millenials Rising: The Next Great Generation), is a compelling read. Don't pick it up if you're a hard-core history student. There is a lot of pop-history and pop-sociology bandied about, with not so much peer-review to back it up. For the whole Wikipedia explanation, click here.Strauss and Howe go through the entire gamut of American history, from the Puritans to the 1980s. It was pretty revolutionary when it came out, I believe.

My generation is the "new" Civic generation on the continuum, people who were born roughly between 1983 and 2003, also known as Millenials. The generation above us is the Gen-X, or Reactive generation, and then the Baby Boomers, or Idealistic generation, and the old and very old would be the Adaptive ("Silent" generation) and the "old" Civic generation, or the "Greatest Generation" who were WWII veterans.

So, something my friend and I both felt was that our generation will do great things, it's just that we're stagnating now in the aftermath of the "Great Recession" and older generations just need to give us a chance! I also extrapolated from the generational profiles that older people (ahem, Baby Boomers) staying in jobs when they should be retiring are going to have to step down at some point and let us run the show. We have plenty of ideas, and we wouldn't be so spoiled if we could just get to work doing and building!

I don't have any claim to make in conclusion, just that I enjoyed the book, and how it affected my way of looking at history.