All You Need to Be Impossibly French: A Witty Investigation into the Lives, Lusts, and Little Secrets of French Women Book

Sooo... French women never wear sneakers, will always sleep with someone's husband, are thin because they NEVER eat junk food, and oh! there's more! Thanks, Helena!

I picked up this book because I'm going to France and thought it'd be interesting to see what the culture is like, but I have a hard time believing the author's account is accurate. These are some wild things to assume about an entire country full of different people. I'm more inclined to think that French women are pretty much like British and American women. All around the world, people are competitive, eat junk food and wear sneakers. The European lifestyle is different, it is. But it's not like French women are some alien race who work so hard to be perfect that they cannot enjoy themselves and are no fun to hang out with. (Which is exactly what she says.) And while she is pretty critical about French women, she brags about being able to be just like them after living amongst them, claiming she has lost weight, always wears matching underwear, and is way sexier. She also laments how she didn't speak French when she gave birth to her son because she was unable to yell at the other women in the hospital for not breastfeeding their babies. I always love a good Breastfeeding Nazi. Arent' enough of those.

The book was slightly amusing, though. I read the whole thing. And I think, if I take everything the author says down ten or twelve notches, I can get a faint idea of what it is like to be a French woman.

I want my upcoming trip to be incredibly stereotypical, anyway: I'm going to wear scarves around my neck and gnaw at a baguette the whole time whilst riding a bicycle around. And I'm going to start smoking. So the over-exaggerations are humorous and in the end, I welcome them.