The French. We all knock them for being on the logical side of the war in Iraq (i.e, the side that isn’t involved), and we make fun of them for eating a lot of cheese and smelling really bad. Well, I just spent ten days living with a family of four just outside of Paris, and I’m here to tell you that everything you’ve ever heard about the French is true. They all drink a lot, they’re all obsessed with cheese, lingerie and perfume, and they all smell terrible. With those things said, though, I would like to offer the French side of the story, as told by a ignorant and vulgar American pig.

They drink a lot of wine. And champagne. And beer. Very little hard alcohol, but what they lack in potency they make up for in volume. Although my host father was really the only member of our “family” that drank with any regularity, he would go through about a bottle of whine, or the equivalent in beer or champagne, at every meal except breakfast. EVERY MEAL. But he never got drunk. He drank for the taste, as most French do. The wine flows like water, but I only saw two drunk people in the entire time I was there-fewer than you see walking on the streets of Boston at six o’clock on Saturday morning, fewer even than I see every Sunday morning in my church. They grow up drinking wine, and drinking it for flavor and not for intoxication, so alcoholism is simply not a problem.

Along with an abundance of alcohol, the French have an absolute GLUT of naked women. They’re everywhere! In the movies, in the advertisements, in the Sunday funnies….naked women on billboards, naked women on TV, naked women in public places, naked women hiding in my suitcase. I’m absolutely SICK of naked women. This relaxed attitude toward the “beauty of the feminine form” is enough to make even the most red-blooded American porn freak uncomfortable, and it doesn’t stop with the billboards. The public acceptance of sex and all things naked extends to all walks of life; there are racy lingerie stores in the metro station (“Let’s see, I got bread and cheese, but I know I was supposed to pick up something else on my way home…oh, that’s it! UNDERWEAR!”), and all of the mannequins in the clothing stores appear to have been modeled after the same really well-endowed man and the same poor girl that had just been rescued from hypothermia. The mannequins had NIPPLES, for the love of Mike! Not sedate American nipples, either. You could take out an eye with nipples like these.

Despite the lax attitude toward sex and the body, sex-related crimes are virtually unheard of in France. It seems paradoxical, but it makes sense when you think about it. If I’m this bored by naked people after only ten days, imagine how people growing up in a world like that must feel. Sex is not foreign or exotic or interesting, and you don’t have to go out of your way to see some booby; why should a pervert go to all the trouble of making crude jokes at a fully-clothed woman when he can just go pick up an issue of Time magazine and find all the nudity he needs in the advertisements? Sex and nudity are everywhere, so nobody is willing to get into trouble trying to find them. No wonder they need so much lingerie-they’re all so bored of the naked body by the time they become sexually active that covering it up is the sexiest thing you can do.

Check back later for more observations on those darn “Cheese-eating surrender monkeys.” Peace, out.

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