I’ve been listening to audio books on the treadmill a good bit lately. One of those books was French Women Don’t Get Fat. I figured a book about skinny French women would be just the thing to keep me going, and it was. It was right up there with the Lance Armstrong book for motivating exercise. You can’t get off the treadmill when a guy who has survived cancer is talking about winning the Tour de France. And you can’t get off when a woman with a French accent is talking about admiring the way she looks in her spiky heels as she sips champagne with the man of her dreams over an afternoon snack of a pinkie nail’s worth of dark chocolate.
You just can’t.
Mainly, I wanted to entertain myself long enough to just not quit the treadmill too soon. Of course I would be lying if I claimed I wasn’t also hoping to learn the secret of what it takes to be skinny and French. It turns out the secret is the most powerful motivating force in the world: obsession with appearance. French women don’t want to be fat worse than any other group of women anywhere don’t want to be fat. If they happen to spend a little time in America where some fattitude rubs off on them, a doctor is called in the moment they arrive back in their homeland to put them on an onion diet until they have repented of all things Krispy Kreme and KFC.
At least that’s how the story reads if you are a Southern woman whose family asks if you are sick if you don’t go back for thirds.
French women pick at their food. They eat such small portions that even when they go back for sixths they still haven’t taken in a whole plate’s worth of food.
French women like to be seen walking around in spiky heels, and so they take extra long lunch breaks to stroll around and be seen.
French women don’t drink cheap alcohol or cheap coffee either. They have no choice but to linger over a meal taking small bites and smaller sips so as not to see themselves as a total waste of a high end beverage.
French women live in cities so as to increase the number of people who see them walking around in spiky heels and drinking high end beverages. In cities, it’s easier just to walk where you want to go than to get in a car and risk creasing your slinky dress.
There’s more, but these are the basics I think. Now I understand why Southern women do get fat. We wear flip-flops, live in places where we just about have to drive to get where we want to go, and drink straight from the can that came off the bargain rack at the Dollar General.
In the book, the lady eats leek soup as penance whenever she accidentally eats a thumbnail’s worth of chocolate instead of a pinkie nail’s worth. Anybody can be skinny and French if they do that.
Today I ate leftover broccoli casserole for lunch and about an index finger’s worth of almonds for a snack. I chased it down with water straight from the tap. I don’t think that was very French of me.
Truth be told, I just don’t know how hard I’m willing to try on that one, but I’m going to start practicing my French accent just in case.
