The French Woman is a Femme-enfant

There is the femme fatale.

There is the trophy-wife.

There is the bimbo.

There is the lolita.

And there is the femme-enfant. 

Not long ago, as I was having a conversation on women with male friends, one of them cut short and suddenly told me “you know what, very simply, our type of girls is the femme-enfant one”.

It’s funny coz we all understood what this friend meant by “femme-enfant” so I was wondering if it’s because we were all French. An English translation for “femme-enfant” would be “child-woman”. I asked German friends if there was such a word that could translate “femme-enfant” in German. Funny thing, they actually have “men-children” in Germany! But no femme-enfants. Then I asked a Belgian friend who speaks fluently French and Flemish. Interestingly, the word femme-enfant does not translate into Flemish, which led me to the conclusion that maybe, this concept is proper to the French language and maybe to the French culture.

So let me explain what a femme-enfant is, and if there actually is such a thing as femme-enfants in your language and culture, or any other types of complex gender-related stereotypes, please share!

1. A stereotype of a French woman: the “femme-enfant”

A femme-enfant is a type of women.
It’s a stereotype.

ONLINE ADVANCED FRENCH UNIVERSITY COURSES

Illustration Faustine Sayagh for Les Echos

Wanna attend French university classes? Let’s look at the offer of MOOCs (massive open online courses) and online classes in France.

MUSIC: STROMAE, why his French songs will blow your mind

Close your eyes and picture the bitcoin value curve. It’s amazing, right? It’s pretty insane! Now keep your eyes close and replace bitcoins by Stromae, and $ by popularity. That’s how big this guy is getting.

Note: there is always news about Stromae coming out (his clothing brand, new songs and stuff). if you wanna be aware of them, the newsfeed is Crème French’s facebook page!

1. And how ubiquitous.

His name, Paul van Haver, Belgian singer, alias Stromae. He became famous in 2010 with “Alors on Danse”, “a mournful anthem that evokes unemployment, divorce, debt, the financial crisis” (NY Times) :

“You say studies/ I say job/ You say money/ I say spend/ You say credit/ I say debt/ You say love/ I say brats/ You say always/ I say divorce/ So we dance/ Then you think the crisis is over/ If it got worse we’d be dead/ But it’s not finished so you shout even louder/ And so we dance.”

FREE FRENCH AUDIO BOOKS – IMPROVE YOUR FRENCH LISTENING AND PRONUNCIATION

A wonderful find is the website of the French association Des Livres à Lire et à Entendre, an association which aims at enabling blind and partially-sighted people to enjoy audio literature for free. All genres are represented, a great number of writers (not only French) and works are offered for download as MP3 files.

It is a great opportunity for French people to make discoveries, and it’s also great if you are studying French and want to improve your French listening comprehension and pronunciation, as well as your knowledge of French literature.

HOW LIFE CAN SUCK, THE FUNNIEST STORIES

For a few years now, the website Vie de Merde (VDM “shitty life”), or F my life in English, has been a phenomenon in France. Every young person knows it and its concept: people post little funny episodes of their lives that sucked. Everyone can share and the others can show their support by clicking “I agree, your life sucks”, or “you deserved it”.

“Today, alcohol-fueled party in a loft with many people. My wife, drunk, grabs me in the toilets and we wildly have sex. Later during the party, she notices me and flies into my arms: “Oh chéri, at last you arrived!”. Self cuckoldification. FML”
“Today, at night, my girlfriend whispers “Are you sleeping?”. I don’t answer to see her reaction. She then releases a fart as loud as evil-smelling. She shook the blanket, giggled and fell asleep. FML”

MUSIC: CHECK OUT THIS FUNNY SEXY OLD SCHOOL SONG

Your friends have their very own qualities, drawbacks, idiosyncracies, phrases and gestures and you just like them the way they are, and even because they are the way they are. And you know how they can be a of great inspiration for you.

My friend Alice has this nice humour very fond of absurd, puns, unexpected downturns, and other witty stuff. Once in a while, she likes to sing, and sometimes, to my great delight. She once came up with this bawdy song yet very witty, which she sung with a great enthousiasm, spying on my reactions, La Jeune Fille du métro. You will have to speak french for it… or, have it translated by a French friend and it’ll be your turn to watch their reaction!

Lyrics below

MOVIE NIGHT: Le Péril Jeune (1994) – The movie of the French youth

A classic!!

Every summer in Paris, for the poor Parisians left working in the empty capital are organized movie nights in parks. And every summer, they show this movie, Le Péril jeune (the youth peril, wordplay based on the phrase “le péril jaune”-yellow, referring to China). As we say in French, “c’est une valeur sûre”=it’s a sure bet, no matter how many times people saw this movies, they are coming back. 

The story begins with the gathering of 4 friends five years after high school graduation. They gather at the hospital where was born the son of the fifth member of their crew, who has died a couple of weeks before. They recall the past, and hop, ellipse, we are in 1976, and it’s their graduation year. It’s the group of friends that makes every Frenchmen nostalgic of their high school years, being insolent and rebel, getting in troubles/into politics, looking at girls, joking around, pretending to be intellectuals, not giving a shit about anything. If you are interested in learning French through movies, I have to tell you that the dialogues are full slang -as you can expect in such a context.

FRENCH: THE LANGUAGE OF FOOD – Bring your strawberry my little cabbage!

This great illustration is a courtesy of Lucile; here’s is her Etsy shop, and her blog. Merci beaucoup Lucile :)!!

The French are obsessed with food. Proof? Their language!!

{…} During almost four years living in Strasbourg, Toulouse and the island of Corsica, I saw how the French passion for eating and discussing food flavored the language in tasty and unusual ways, though some expressions are unique to different regions or generations.

It began to make sense that endearing French metaphors are often rooted in the pleasures of taste. “What a nice person” is served up in French as “c’est une crème!” – what cream, while “la crème de la crème,” the cream of creams is the best of all. And “you are so energetic” takes on a carb boost in French: you have the French fry (tu as la frite). To be in high spirits also can come from the fruit family, as in you have the peach (tu as la pêche), while having a banana (avoir la banane) is to have a big smile. And, of course, there’s the affectionate “mon petit chou,” my little cabbage.

Allusions to food also season the language of love. A broken-hearted UC Berkeley student of mine from Marseille described her flirtatious boyfriend as aDon Juan with the heart of an artichoke, “quelqu’un qui a un cœur d’artichaut,” offering each of his lovers a leaf from his heart. He was skilled at making romantic advances or as my student put it: serving up a dish, “faire du plat à quelqu’un,” a prelude to going off to the strawberries, “aller aux fraises,” to enjoy an erotic interlude.

PROUST’S LITTLE MADELEINE AND RATATOUILLE

Lately, I stumbled upon the word « Proustian ». In French,”proustien” simply refers to Proust, French writer of the late 19th-early 20th century; we talk about a « style proustien », «atmosphère proustienne », « personnage proustien » maybe.

1. The meaning of “proustian”

But in English, the term is much more interesting than that as it has more meanings than in French :

1. A kind of reverie, recollection or memory triggered by something in the present.

2. Writing in a way that many might think long-winded, indulgent, even a little rambling… but which would more charitably be seen as the kind of writing which is unhurried and patient, that has time for details and digressions, and that is characteristic of a more relaxed and literate era.

3. It can be used perjoratively, to convey negative connotations of being arty, highbrow, supposely intellectual but actually rather tedious, e.g. ‘He bored us all to tears, wittering on in his usual Proustian way…’

MUSIC: French band Fauve≠