We’re All Going to Die Anyway: Picking Your Poison in France and America

I’m studying abroad in France right now. When meeting and talking with French people, one of the discussion topics that invariably comes up (second only, perhaps, to the discussion of swear words in our respective tongues) is that of cultural stereotypes and clichés.

There are many of them, of course. The most popular, respectively?  American people think the French are a pack of spindly-legged chain smokers, while French people think that Americans are hamburger-toting blubber sacks.

But is any of it true, really?  After having the cliché discussion countless times (both with American and French friends), I decided to do a little research.

It appears that about 10% more of the French population (about 30%) smokes than in the United States (~20%)–which, while a significant statistic, isn’t as bad as the stereotype would seem to indicate.

On the other hand, about 20% more of the American population (~35%) suffers from obesity than the French population (about 15%).

So, it would appear that their stereotype about us is a little more true than our stereotype about them.  However, recent trends do seem to indicate that smoking is on the rise in France, while obesity may be taking a slight decline in the United States.

I was thinking about our two countries and our respective drugs of choice.  We all know that too many cigarettes and Big Macs are bad for us, so why do we continue on, deliberately oblivious to the obvious?  And why do we unfailingly ascribe each other’s respective method of fatalistic overindulgence as a primary cultural characteristic?

Is it just xenophobia?  Is it a means of negative self-definition by assigning certain attributes to “the other”?   We’re all going to die, bien sûr; is the difference simply that the French would rather do it looking good, while Americans would rather do it feeling good?

I don’t know that I have an answer to any of these questions.  People ask me quite frequently, “how’s France?”; after six weeks, I am still nowhere close to reaching a satisfying answer.  Immersing oneself in another culture and trying to understand it fully is a daunting task, and one which takes an incredible aptitude for careful observation, open thought, and nuanced reflection.  It is difficult enough to blend individual experiences into general observations at home; in another country–with a unique culture, language, and history to absorb and synthesize–deducing anything in a general sense without crashing into tired clichés is a downright formidable task.  In some ways, I guess it makes sense that our countries would create pseudo-farcical caricatures of each other; anything different would indicate a level of familiarity which might blur the differences between us and render both cultures less unique.

These are complicated issues, tangled up in a plethora of cultural problems and historical tendencies. There are panels and committees and entire organizations dedicated to research and remedy these phenomena; if I could divine their root causes, they would have to be simpler issues. In the mean time, it’s interesting to investigate the clichés that our countries have ascribed to each other, and to ponder the truths and falsehoods therein.  We are all going to die, it’s true; but in the mean time, at least we can try to appreciate and understand each other a little better as we make our mutual journey to the grave.