Re: holy contradictions batman

An alternative viewpoint.

http://news.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=50512006


Excerpt:

French women do get fat
GILLIAN BOWDITCH
Would you look younger if you came from Japan? Or be happier as a
Brazilian? We examine modern stereotypes for traces of myth or
reality

In heaven, says the old and decidedly non-PC joke, policemen are
English, mechanics are German, cooks are French, hotel keepers are
Swiss and lovers are Italian. In hell, policemen are German, car
mechanics French, cooks English, hotel keepers Italian and lovers
Swiss.

National stereotypes were meant to have gone the way of bowler hats
and the British Empire. They are a throwback to a less enlightened
era when Lord Baden-Powell could unblushingly opine in Scouting for
Boys that the way to tell a foreigner was by looking at his shoes.
The new empire builders are global brands. Disney, Nike and
McDonald's are meant to have melded into an international soup.
We're all inhabitants of the global village now.

Yet the latest publishing phenomenon plays entirely on the notion
that the inhabitants of a country share certain traits. Scots-born
writer AA Gill has stirred up huge controversy (and sales) with The
Angry Island: Hunting the English, which portrays the English as "a
lumpen and louty, coarse, unsubtle, beady-eyed, beefy-bummed herd".
But it is new, positive stereotypes of women that are raking in the
cash faster than you can say "German with a beach towel".

Hot on the kitten heels of Mireille Guiliano's bestseller, French
Women Don't Get Fat, comes Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat by
husband and wife team William Doyle and Naomi Moriyama, hyped as the
hit diet book of 2006. So do national stereotypes have an upside?
Let's take a look at the claims.

THE CLAIM French women don't get fat

THE CASE FOR Catherine Deneuve, Edith Piaf, Isabelle Adjani

THE CASE AGAINST Brigitte Bardot, no end of femmes de la maison

MYTH OR REALITY Myth

mikeV

( PS The Brazilians take the award)


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: holy contradictions batman
    ... French Women Don't Get Fat ... Your Guide to French Cuisine. ... Women on American low-carb diets like Atkins beware! ... ourselves personally instead of "following a diet." ...
    (sci.med.nutrition)
  • Re: holy contradictions batman
    ... English, mechanics are German, cooks are French, hotel keepers are ... National stereotypes were meant to have gone the way of bowler hats ... Women Don't Get Fat, comes Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat by ...
    (sci.med.nutrition)
  • Re: French paradox solved?
    ... It's the French paradox redux: Why don't the French get as fat as ... I assume when you call me pathetic, you mean it, and when you say the "America culture is totally crocked," you don't. ...
    (sci.med.nutrition)
  • Re: Productivity - Norway leads the table.
    ... The "French paradox" ... is/was that they eat all this stuff but don't get fat and have pretty ... "AFTER news reports in the last few months that the French eat as much ... who were quick to embrace the promise of this French paradox may have ...
    (sci.electronics.design)
  • We need Language Exchange Partners, we can teach you French
    ... We can teach you French in exchange. ... Dalesa Dalima, 24 years old, France ... I want to learn: English ... Je suis une fille très dynamique, ...
    (soc.culture.belgium)