The "Skinny" on the French

It was another exciting weekend here in France!!! On Saturday, my friend and I planned a trip to Toulouse, a city about 2 ½ hours away by train. We found a really great (and cheap!) hotel and stayed for the night! It was a really interesting city, noted for its large number of brick buildings, pink buildings, and violet products. Magnificent cathedrals and basilicas loomed over the tops of the buildings and beautiful public gardens filled with bridges and ponds could be found around every corner. It was certainly a city with a lot to see!!! The highlight of the trip for me was dessert on Saturday night—we found a great ice-cream place and I got Orange Chocolate flavored ice-cream that could stand the competition of Platters, I must say. I had it in honor of all of my loved ones in and from North Tonawanda!!! It was DE-LICIOUS!! I am very very VERY excited for next weekend because my friend and I are going to go to the French Alps, to a sweet little town called Chamonix, and we are going to go paragliding!!!! As the saying goes, “like father, like daughter”, right? Tee hee. I hate to wish my life away but, at the same time, I CAN’T WAIT FOR FRIDAY!!!!

Ok, so I thought that I would perhaps do a bit of a culture-blog, no pics (sorry, I know that pics make it all so much more interesting but hopefully this will still be good). I wanted to comment quickly on French bodies. Hopefully that doesn’t sound too weird, but it is an interesting thing that I have some thoughts on. There was a study done a little while ago and French women are generally perceived to be the skinniest of women in the world. It is interesting because, while there are certainly many skinny French women here, they aren’t all toothpicks, and the same thing goes for the men. Yet it is boggling because rarely do I see anyone overweight here and yet all of these healthy-looking people are eating pain au chocolat and croissants and cream tarts and “sandwich americain” (baguettes with mayo and fries and hamburger) and it just doesn’t seem to fit.

I am no professional on the matter, but in my opinion it is all about the walking. I forget how walking is a necessity here. It dawned on me the other day when I went to go mail some letters—I left the apartment and walked a good 10 minutes or so to get to the post office and then walked 10 more minutes to a grocery store and then walked 10 minutes back to the apartment. To do just those two little tasks, I had to walk for 30 minutes. I am used to the walking by now, and completely love it, but forget how, in the US, the walking for such tasks includes walking to and from the car and that is about it. So the amount of walking here, without being overwhelming, is substantially more than in the US. Another aspect that makes the women perhaps appear skinnier is that they wear clothes that fit them. The clothing isn’t super tight (like far too often in the US) but, instead, is flattering to whatever body shape they might have, showing that they are proud and confident of how they look. These two ideas together, I believe, make a HUGE difference in the body shape and appearance of the French and perhaps, contribute to the “miracle shape” of French women. I am not really sure but what I have to say is, “Pass the pain au chocolat and Nutella crepes, thank you very much!!”