Are French Women Perfect? By Anne Penketh.

Are French women perfect? The myths of foreign beauty . . . By Anne Penketh. The Independent, August 12, 2013. Photo Gallery.

French women aren’t effortlessly perfect – they just fake it! Gallic beauty myths busted by one of their own in Le Figaro magazine. By Deni Kirkova. Daily Mail, August 13, 2013.

French women lie about gorging on buttered baguettes - and they smoke. “Natural” blondes scour salons for best colourists. Invest in expensive anti-wrinkles creams from age of 25. Work hard to keep up with new trends.

A French woman’s real beauty secret? Fake it. By Katy Young. The Telegraph, August 13, 2013.

Why French women look younger than their British counterparts. By Katy Young. The Telegraph, March 21, 2013.

Thanks to an early uptake of anti-aging skincare, studies say French women look on average seven years younger than their British equivalents by the time we reach 40.

The French woman is “an American dream.” By Peggy Frey. Le Figaro, August 12, 2013. Google translation. French original.

Penketh:

Are French women perfect? Judging by the piles of American and British books attempting to nail their je ne sais quoi, it would appear that the rest of us are filled with a mix of envy and insecurity when contemplating France’s glamorous fair sex.

 

The way they walk, the way they dress, the way they do their hair, and the way they raise their families. It has all been put under the microscope in books ranging from French Women Don’t Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano to Pamela Druckerman’s Bringing Up Bébé. Le Figaro decided to get to the bottom of the French feminine mystique and came up with a startling conclusion – it’s all a lie. Or “an American dream.”

 

The journalist Peggy Frey set about exploding the myths, one by one, starting with the “natural beauty” of the French woman.

 

Her trim figure? Don’t believe the myth that French women never diet, says Le Figaro. It’s true that they never talk about dieting, just “being careful”. If you consider that almost half of French women smoke it’s hardly surprising that their appetites are suppressed.

 

Her sexy appearance? The paper quotes from a recent study showing that French women spend €97 on lingerie – or only a fifth of what American women spend. As for her “natural” blonde highlights, they come straight out of a bottle, except that the French woman is likely to have spent months finding the right hairdresser and will never give you the address.

 

Forget the image of a French cook slaving over a hot stove, preparing dishes whose recipes were handed down from generation to generation. The modern French woman spends two minutes 30 seconds heating up dishes in the microwave.

 

Her exquisite innate fashion tastes? Don’t be duped. Not everyone has the wherewithal of a TV presenter like Laurence Ferrari – who comes as close as anyone to the stereotypical “perfect” French woman – and most people make do with “putting on a bit of everything and any old thing … in any old way.”

 

According to the paper, the secret of French women is “to do everything falsely: [they are] falsely coiffed, falsely dressed, falsely fatal.”

 

To sum up, the French woman is a wizard of pretence. “What she does is to apply the motto: less is more – in almost every domain. A talent which apparently not everyone has!” the paper concludes.

 

France itself has been so in thrall to its image of women that a real woman is used as the model for the Marianne national emblem whose bust stands in every town hall. The models for past Mariannes include actresses such as Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve. But even the French seem to be doubting the strength of their own myth: this year, the Marianne on the nation’s stamps was inspired by a Femen activist (Inna Shevchenko) from Ukraine.

TV newscaster Laurence Ferrari, who at age 47 typifies the ideal of the fashionable,
 ageless French woman.