Like a great goddess who presides from afar over the sport of lesser deities, the Princesse had deliberately remained somewhat to the back of her box, on a side-facing sofa, red as a coral rock...The beauty that set her far above the other mythical daughters of the semidarkness was not altogether materially and inclusively inscribed in the nape of her neck, in her shoulders, in her arms, or in her waist. But the exquisite, unfinished line of this last was the exact starting point, the inevitable origin of invisible lines into which the eye could not help extending them, marvelous lines, engendered around the woman like the specter of an ideal figure projected against the darkness. (from The Guermantes Way)
It's no accident that Proust is often quoted for saying, "Let's leave the obviously pretty women to men with no imagination." The Princesse de Guermantes, described above, would make a good example of jolie laide ("unconventionally good-looking woman: a woman whose facial features are not pretty in conventional terms, but nevertheless have a distinctive harmony or charm.")
We first meet the mysterious Princesse de Guermantes in Combray, when the young Marcel spies her in the town's Gothic cathedral, as the light spilling through the stained glass windows illuminates "the little pimple flaring up at the corner of her nose." Courtly love is very much alive and well two volumes later in The Guermantes Way, as the protagonist, now a man in his early twenties, continues to worship her to the point of stalking her by visiting her favorite Parisian haunts every day.
I thought of the topic of French women when I saw an article in the New York Times on October 11th ("Where Having It All Doesn't Mean Having Equality"), in which the editor-in-chief of French Elle says: "We have the right to do what men do--as long as we also take care of the children, cook a delicious dinner and look immaculate. We have to be superwoman."
Debra Ollivier, author of the scholarly tome (okay, guilty pleasure) What French Women Know: About Love, Sex, and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind, adds her own interpretation when she writes, "Readers, let us bite into the Big Camembert with this: In France men and women actually like one another. A lot. There is no American-style war of the sexes going on. French men and women actually want to be together. They enjoy their mutual company. They spar. They debate. They flirt. They seek out one another's company in a multiplicity of social settings." (Unlike American women who are sex-starved and prickly, I assume.)
What is it about French women, besides their scarves and their thinness (attributed on alternate days to cigarettes, delighting in small portions of foie gras, and peer pressure), that makes them so unique?
I think Jeanne Moreau summed it up when she said, "One thing you have to give up is attaching importance to what people see in you." This is a tall order when you grow up in a "haveaniceday" culture in which it is not only important to be liked, but well liked. French women (at least in Eric Rohmer films) share a blend of self-possession, self-knowledge, and poise. These women are as intelligent and acutely emotional as they are individual. The American woman in popular culture is childlike, doughy and half-formed in comparison. Superwoman or not, the French woman shoots out at sharp angles, like the Princesse de Guermantes and her "marvelous lines."
I read that article in NYTimes, too, and thought about the many hoops French women must jump through to appear to "have it all." A good companion to that article (and your excellent meditation on Proust and modern notions of beauty and self-image in France and USA) would be the newly released World Economic Forum's Gender Gap Index Rankings. France winds up a dismal 46 in terms of broad-based measures of equality.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.weforum.org/pdf/gendergap/rankings2010.pdf
I can't help think of Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" where he argues (from his inescapably Gallic POV) that the universe is divided into that which exists "in itself" (object) and "for itself" (subject, typified in human consciousness and agency, and at its most alarming, freedom to choose.) Object cannot act for itself, but since the freedom associated with subjectivity is frightening, so he argued, people flee from such freedom (what he called "bad faith" and "inauthenticity.")
He further explained that in sexual and "romantic" encounters, there is an existential sado-masochism at play, whereby the dominant male (who exists "for himself") seeks to objectify and humiliate women, who in turn self-objectify (in a flee from Being/subjectivity/freedom) by offering their fleshy parts as object for the male's pleasure. Conversely, the man seizes (e.g. the breasts, buttocks, etc) precisely because these are the least agile and human, and he enjoys the power of reducing the woman to object.
Not a terribly romantic vision, n'est ce pas? But how did his counterpart and lover, Simone de Beauvoir, feel about all this?!
At any rate, though I think ol' Jean Paul paints human sexuality with too wide a brush, I do find value in his system, especially as a way of analyzing SOME (hardly all) relationships I've witnessed (e.g. in fiction and real world). And to be perfectly honest, I always thought some of the women I encountered in France struck me as perfect exemplars of this "bad faith" flight from subjectivity and freedom. That was a while back. Nowadays, in the glib backlash against PC and feminist advances, many young American women seem just as, if not more, self-objectifiying than their French counterparts.
Thanks for your comments, Johnny! Sorry if my blog entry sounded a little flip when it comes to French women and equality. I'm not sure that there has ever been a feminist movement in France like the one we had here in its heyday in the seventies. (If French women gave up their bras, I'm not sure that they proceded to burn them.)
ReplyDeleteYour talk of women who objectify themselves reminds me of the film Contempt in which Brigitte Bardot opens by asking her lover if he loves her toes, her ankles, her legs, etc. and he keeps replying in the affirmative. "Therefore, you love me completely," she concludes.
I'm not sure how Simone de Beauvoir felt about the "transparency clause" in her relationship with Sartre (they supposedly told each other everything about their respective amorous adventures) or whether she was no more than his typist at times...
But you would never have a phenomenon like Socialist candidate Sergolene Royal in the United States. Just the fact that she had four children with her longtime partner without being married (and that they separated just before the election) would ruffle a few feathers state-side.
In comparison, Sarah Palin looks positively childish. Her endearing "just folks" tone and insistance that she's just another god-fearin', gun-toting gal would just seem weird in France. Of course, we do have a good number of strong, intelligent women politicians here, but I felt there was something about Royal that was a little less self-apologetic.
However, Royal could not escape criticism and objectification for wearing a bikini in public while she was still a candidate. So there goes my argument.
Are American women less self-objectifying than French women? Back to movies, I saw the 1988 Working Girl last night and it was interesting that Melanie Griffith (complete with football-like shoulder pads) found it difficult to balance "a mind for business and a bod for sin." The Sigourney Weaver ruthless businesswoman character loses out in the end to the Griffith character who is somehow more "woman" and softer around the edges. This reminds me of a more recent film with Sandra Bullock (The Proposal) as the bitchy boss with a deeply hidden heart of gold. There are still reservations about women with power (here and in France) and yet I don't think it is as bad as it is in Italy...but I digress...