Ladies and Gentlemen,
Here is "french lesson" number one, which should satisfy some of your (legitimate) curiosity about "the French", these measured and properly educated... Italians. Just kidding.
It should also give you the means to act very adequately in society... even in my quite rigid country that displays this precious "aloofness" in the social relationships, although you really are staked to the wall coated in your own blood for every "bad taste" choice made in public.
Here we go (and be brave) :
Bad taste choices are for intimacy, and are compulsory : You should always have a few of them at hand, when you invite your guests. The more intimate the guest, the most blatant the bad choice should be, so as to test the person's sense of humour, and... taste. (Yes, it IS about what we (also) call "perversion". What else is politeness by the way ?)
Examples of "bad taste" intimate choices for the guests:
1- Everybody's hungry, so you pop out of the drawer : A fresh "baguette" bread and an old Camembert cheese, but oops. All you have that's clean is a little silver spoon.
It is THE bad taste choice. Even Boris Vian and the post WW2 Parisian artists have nearly overused it, so... Please do not try it "tel quel" (as it is with no change made), and try to find new stuff : only a blue plastic knife is available from a picnic set you've just found, or sorry, only your fingers... This last option is my favourite : Is your guest able to pick the smelly sliding cheese with just the little pieces of bread and still look like he/she 's done it all life long and doesn't mind ? Does he/she leave greasy finger marks on the glass of wine? Be sure to notice, it is a nasty game after all... everything counts. "Do you have a hankerchief" counts too. It is weakness. Asking for another cheese kills your guest.
2-The Pope's portrait is in your lounge. Preferably a Pope from the middle ages, because insulting Pope Benoît XVI could proove hazardeous with 86% of Catholics in France... And because there's nothing more vulgar than to have a color photograph of the current Pope in your lounge. To be (more) insolent (than i've just been), you have put an aquarium right under this long forgotten Pope's portrait... (This one is for aquaponic freaks, of course) Please be sure you'd grow ivy all around the Pope's portrait's frame... Watch the guest's reaction. If the person chokes, she's lost. A polite smile or a small laugh is perfect. Not noticing that it is a Pope in the frame IS the fault... Lack of culture should not be tolerated from your guests.
3- In the toilets, you have put a little golden frame on the wall right above the "throne", handmade and handwritten, saying : "Please, now. Wash your hands." if you do not hear the guest laugh, she's either "cul serré" (do I need to translate this) or she is a child, or... She is not suitable for you to re-invite at home.
Still, this is always a dangerous game to play so remember : an unforgivable bad taste choice for you at home would be : To have a little plastic made pannel with nice looking little smudgery all around spelling "Toilets" on the toilets door. (The "bathroom" one is not better, by the way. Same for the "kitchen" one)
But : You do not have to throw it away if you have one like these : Stick it on the boss's door next time you go to work, or on your strict old profit-obsessed uncle's home door next time you leave his apartment : Not even his new wife will resent you. I promise. And that's gonna make you famous in the family with not much of an effort.
And for those who wonder : Now, what is "good taste" ??? Look, guys. I thought you'd got it by now. No ?
Well, here is my 100% posh, rich, clever, classy and (often) unbearable uncle's definition of snobbism, which is in France either a proof of taste, OR a rigid "I have a good taste" attitude that ends up making you ridiculous (hey. Are you still with me):
"The secret of true snobbism is to be able to do just a n y t h i n g in an elegant and natural way."
And yes, "bizarre" as it may sound, it IS about even cleaning your nose in public, but with everyone thinking : "Gee. Is that what he's doing ? I didn't realise. Wish I could to that this way." I cannot explain any better. But sure as hell, I did think this way many times about Uncle Christian. He's the best. And you should see his wife Anne...
You want a proof ? At my sister's wedding, Anne and (former) Auntie Sylvie poped up wearing both the very same Calvin Klein's taylor suit. Only Auntie Sylvue had the 18 sized one. Uncle Christian had this crisp little "muscle bounce" near the mouth, and that stern look saying "life sucks today"... But Anne, his new 100% French-elegant-clever-sassy wife, just gave everyone THE crystal laugh and, sitting down, she...
"Ah, summers are so hot."
... took the vest off, folded it with no regreat, and remained this way, displaying a crisp white top, so elegant you could die. Auntie Sylvie had to wear her vest the whole day, sweating, but this way, no one remembered their unwilling "faute de goût". Or almost no one.
All these are just the basics of course.
It is not the whole story, and you'll need some practice over years (centuries, that is).
Furthermore, it doesn't save you the "baise-main" thing at the Queen's party (Noooo ! Do not touch the hand with your lips, you dirty thing!), nor the learning of every bit of table manners like the small/average/big spoon-fork-knife 's proper use for each salad... All I said is that eating the ice cream with a fork IS something you should train on, because one day, this very sassy girl you fancy so much, dressed in Dior but with poor origins is going to do it in front of everyone at your table. As I said, true snobbism will be : Just pick up your fork too, and do eat your B&J with it, with no pause in the conversation. This is French Galanterie, applied to snobbism and elegance. And your Mom is not going to notice the girl did it first, because she'll be too shocked YOU ever dared. Even if she, of course, used her fork too with her ice cream and gave THE LOOK to your Dad for ever trying to take a spoon... Avoid staying in the kitchen alone with your Mom, though, for a few months after this. She's not an Italian Mamma, ok. But the danger is as big when no noise is made, and you know it.
I hope everything is crystal clear for you now gentle savages, and all I still need to remind you of is the following (it will doom your reputation in France if you do not remember after the lesson, and forever) :
No, "poser" or "a poseur" is not a French word.
It is an "EnglishWord-that sounds-French" like "maître de" or other "specialities" fabricated by non-french people: Lots of words that are not either correctly spelled or expressions that have no meaning (or are cut short of their meaning part) in French are used as "elegant" in English all over the world. "Ma chère" is also one of them, and among the most vulgar ones...
(you ask me, I blame TV)
In French, "poser" is a verb that means you take a position in which an artist will paint/photography/sculpt you. Ok. But it doesn't mean you show off... To express this, you may, of course, say :
-"Arrête de prendre des poses !"
To someone that is very proud of herself/himself.
But it ... sounds like something my grand-grand mother would have said, if she had been very very posh and angry !
And not even Granny's great Aunt would have said "Ma chère" to anyone, because it is so thick and greasy on top of crazy old fashionned that it would have made her sound like a... I wasn't taught this kind of words.
"Chérie" is the word you can use with an intimate lady, but it takes using the first name along with it. For example I can call my sister : "Catherine chérie, tu me passes cette saloperie de sel, s'te plait?". Still, avoid it, it sounds too old and always a bit worn out. Only a letter should start with "Chère Madame Leroy"... And an old person could call you "Ma chère petite" or "Mon petit" (for girls and boys) or "Mon cher petit" (for boys). It usually is the start of some gentle scolding, and could be the alert bell for something stupid you've just done- and should apologize quickly for...
"Maître de" is also a good example. It is supposed to be "a butler" or something like that, but it doesn't exist in French. To call a waiter, in a restaurant you call "Garçon s'il vous plaît!" if it is a man and "Mademoiselle s'il vous plaît!" if it is a girl (and you call "excusez-moi Madame!" if the lady looks well over 40, unless you want to make her laugh aloud and make you blush by telling you how many lovers she already had, plus the ensuing kids...)
A (too) well dressed servant in a very rich (rigid) mansion who is in charge of all other servants (and makes it blatant) is called "un majordome" or "le majordome" (et c'est bien fait pour lui).
Of course, no one would ever call that person "majordome s'il vous plait" unless you'd want to pass for the local street bum. This person nowadays, you call her "Madame" or "Monsieur" (even if it is the street bum by the way) and you use her first name if you know it. (I mean, you use her first name INSTEAD of "Madame" or "Monsieur", of course... It is only a servant after all. Oh. And only the Gipsy fortune tellers are called "Madame Irma" or "Madame Isabella" and that is a mockery too. Do not, please, mock Gipsies or be ready for a nasty moment, ok?).
And the only times you get a "maître de cérémonie" is... funerals at the very famous Père Lachaise cemetary in Paris. Then, the Maître de Cérémonie (as he calls himself) is a short thick guy wearing a grey horribly-elegant grey suit and "beurre frais" gloves that leads you to your seat while you cry, and who elegantly pushes the "go" button for the automated system to swallow your mom's corpse with all the lovely flowers above the coffin, in the ash-maker system.
OR you can get a Maître de cérémonie (for fun) at the circus.
He is then called "Monsieur Loyal" and is a mockery, of course, of the majordomes of anciant times.
I'd say he is a mockery of all the pinguins that have swalloed a broom, especially the one I had to cope with when Mom died because Uncle Christian DID want her to be incinerated at the Père Lachaise-and-nowhere-else for elegancy purposes... but I'd rather not talk about this, please.
So ya see ? In France, life is both funny and dangerous, complicated and cruel. And you need to (at the very least) look proud of it.
Anyone needing an Immigration 101, now ?
Politely yours,
Sophie
Backyard Aquaponics
