Comments on: Sturm, Drang and Laetitia Casta’s breasts – or – Why France bashing is a feminist issue

By: This Guy

This Guy — Fri, 30 Apr 2004 07:33:25 +0000

Americans have little problem with Germany because the Germans, for the most part, have paid their pennance. We dislike France, though, because of the Parisians. I am originally from Germany, but have been living in the US the last 21 years. Never once have I passed through France and not been given hell by the Parisians or French officals. Personally, I have a problem with people who assert that they are better than I am just because they are French (I was actually told this by not just one, but several Parisians over coffee) when Germany has been using France as a road to Britain for, oh, about 2000 years. The Germans know who spanked them during the second World War. The French, on average, seem to have completely forgotten that were it not for the US, their beloved city of Paris would be either a pile of rubble, or Germany’s easternmost capital. How could you possibly expect the American people to give two shits about what the French people think when they have the gall to desecrate the graves (at Normandy) of our soldiers who gaves their lives for their freedom?

By: Pheshal

Pheshal — Fri, 30 Apr 2004 02:52:52 +0000

Cowboy movies? Speaking of sexism, lol. But seriously, every one-man-army movie out there is spun off of the same rightous hero path you can find in any cowboy movie. There is no way a 30 year old hasn’t seen at least ten of these.
Anyway, an American can see France as a bird chested, fake accented, queer little man; while America itself is engaged in a happy marriage with several infant children. But then they suddenly are forced to realise the truth, that their wife has taken the next plain to follow the little man while the children hold her husband just to get even with him.
So? Does this metaphor sound familiar? The difference is either an unbearably hot women that we adore making our life like an episode of Cops, or a completely out of character cartoonish insult doing their worst. You people should be ashamed of yourselves for accepting the latter.
But nobody is ever really going to think of France as an oily man.
BTW, the consensus of America will always agree that masculin is considered the most common trait of sombody that is really homosexual, male or female.
The whole Latin thing was just a phase, eventually life got better in its respective country and those who moved in on Americans just thinned out through the generations. Or, instead of going for the average strong woman they adopted American customs and went for those considered more desireable through showboating and very poor grammar, not the most admirable of characteristics.
If any womanizers read this get your laughs out while you can still feel all of your legs.

By: Zizka

Zizka — Thu, 02 Oct 2003 20:32:06 +0000

The American male ideal historically was more the John Wayne type. Cary Grant was to get women to go to movies. I didn’t say that American women, back in the day, liked the way things were then. There was in fact a whole mystique of the Latin lover.

I remember that in 9th grade history (ca. 1960, and we used obsolete texts) I came away with a distinct impression that the French were defeated on the Plains of Abraham and elsewhere because they were too sexy and epicurean. And then, around 1980 I got a clear impression that the hottest coeds were majoring in French and Spanish.

Times have changed. My 30-y.o. son has probably never seen a cowboy movie.

By: Edward Hugh

Edward Hugh — Thu, 02 Oct 2003 16:56:26 +0000

“Cary Grant was a Brit”.

OK,OK so I just put the first two names that came into my head. Regardless of whether he was British or not he was perceived as the perfect galant by a large number of US women. I could have made more of a fool of myself and said Rock Hudson, but this would only have allowed zizka to be even more ironic with the ‘women prefer gays’ argument. The point is not how things are, but how they are perceived to be.

And while we’re on the subject of how things really are, I would just love to see some qualitative assessment from US and French women on the image and reality of the performance of their respective men as lovers.

By: Zizka

Zizka — Thu, 02 Oct 2003 06:39:48 +0000

Cary Grant and James Stewart may have been queers. Their sense of style, good manners, and attentiveness to women are the tipoffs.

By: Patrick (G)

Patrick (G) — Wed, 01 Oct 2003 20:04:11 +0000

Cary Grant was a Brit.

By: Edward Hugh

Edward Hugh — Wed, 01 Oct 2003 16:09:17 +0000

“that’s the normal, macho way to be”

Funny, I never thought of american men as ‘macho’, and I never thought of ‘macho’ as normal. Whatever happened to Cary Grant and James Stewart?

By: Zizka

Zizka — Wed, 01 Oct 2003 07:03:34 +0000

Men who like women too much are basically queers. Americans understand that. We are heterosexual because that’s the normal, macho way to be, but we don’t go on and on about amour and jouissance and shit like that.

By: Mitch H.

Mitch H. — Tue, 30 Sep 2003 23:55:20 +0000

I have no idea where this notion of “stereotyped French femininity” comes from; one rather suspects the psychological confines of Ms. Bernstein. As previous commenters have noted, Pepe le Pew, or more accurately, a cartoonish image of Maurice Chevalier, is the standard American archetype for France. The American “official” image of France is the Eifel Tower – as erectile in its way as the Washington Monument is in its own. If you asked the American man-in-the-street what or who “Marianne” was, he’d probably guess something to do with fashion magazines.

In short, the American stereotype of France is one of a charming, oily, masculine, sexual predator.

By: Patrick (G)

Patrick (G) — Tue, 30 Sep 2003 20:35:44 +0000

Frans,
I would condemn any American or European who attempted to assassinate President Bush.

But if an Iraqi were to do it, I couldn’t do so because Bush himself opened himself up to such an action by authorizing the same for Iraq’s head of government.