Brewing my coffee in our cheap leftover coffee machine this morning made me flash back to something.
It was about nine years ago and I was at one of my first teaching jobs, a language school. I had to make coffee for my student, an astute businessman type. I wasn't familiar with the coffee machine at all and it wasn't a single serve machine but a machine with filters and a huge capacity. I hadn't used a Mr. Coffee style machine very often because in my world I made coffee in a press. I was having coffee issues at the time in fact because my new French boyfriend bought I thought the worst coffee in the supermarket. He made coffee like my grandmother did and he often reheated it in a saucepan, horrible! In the States I had always ordered my very expensive coffee beans from a snobby little coffee store in Atlanta who shipped them to my door. They were so wonderful that you could bite them and they would shatter in your mouth, a sure sign of freshness. I had a fancy little grinder that I used to grind my beans before running through my press each morning using a three minute egg timer. I don't think I had ever made coffee in a machine before that day.
I left the coffee to brew and went in to chat with my student. Not much time later my French boss came in with a furrowed brow. "I'm so sorry Olivier! It seems Christine has made you some sort of American coffee" ::rolls her eyes:: and I'll have to remake some French coffee. You know the American like their coffee to be practically like water." They both laughed and I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. I felt really stupid but I couldn't defend myself in front of my new boss. I had just been culturally stereotyped again. It was something I would have to get used to so it was a good lesson, particularly coming from someone as sharp as my boss.
It is almost banal to be stereotyped nowadays. It happens so often my skin has grown thick. I am the bad cook, the McDonald's fanatic, the fatty, the ketchup lover, the war monger, the person with the expensive-oversized car, the hypochondriac and the consumer. I have no family traditions and work for the almighty dollar to the point where there is nothing left of my family but outings to buy bulk supplies of food at warehouses and maybe a dvd or two. I have a bad diet and I feed my kids hot dogs and frozen pizza at every meal. My kids watch cartoons all day long and never go outside. These are actual conversations I have had with French people.
It is hard to not get defensive. We have a new family doctor who I genuinely like. After telling her where my accent was from two different times I think she has forgotten I was American (she has a leetle memory problem I've discovered) and now for some reason she thinks I'm Mexican. She went on and on about how the Americans have wrecked the French diet and corrupted the entire country. You'd have thought those long lines at McDonalds were a conspiracy by the American government promising warm baguettes and rich camembert to lure them in only to find they'd been duped and couldn't escape. The funny thing was that when she thought I was Mexican she gave me the third world sympathy treatment which was totally new to me. It was completely new territory. Suddenly I wasn't causing the ills of the world but I was a victim of it. It was kind of interesting to be on the other side of another stereotype for once
It's kind of nice to be an American these days. Americans in the states you owe all of your American expat friends a big hug for being forced to suffer through the Bush years as we have. It hasn't been easy. I have been the ambassador for the politically sane, assuring the French that when I was in the US there were indeed people who didn't vote for this man. That the Bush years would pass and people would land on their feet again. That I wasn't taught to bring my guns to school.
French t.v. enjoys this stereotype very much and they play with it in such a way that it makes the French believe that this is the majority of the US population. They never use the intelligent interviews but take great delight in interviewing the stupidest person in a crowd of Americans and using that interview. The only documentaries I have seen about the states have been ones on the overcrowded prisons, inner city violence, gross obesity, and radically independent conservatives living in the woods within their own communes. I know my French family here watches a lot of this t.v. because I often get into conversations with my father in law about how he saw a documentary on the US ...and then I know it will be one of those conversations where I will have to get defensive and assure him that the America I come from is not that America. That perhaps government funded t.v. is not the best place to source out your cultural leanings.
I am used to all of this by now. I don't even flinch when someone says something incredibly inapproriate. But let me just say that--
Some of the best meals I've ever eaten have been at the homes of my American expat friends. I was actually served frozen food once at a French person's house where she pulled the boxes out of the freezer and asked us to choose. And I've been served frozen peas and sliced ham once at a French meal. Most Americans who live here try very hard to learn French cooking because it's a challenge and Americans love challenges.
The lines are long at McDonalds in France. French people adore McDonalds.
My doctor is obese so it's funny that she has this speech about Americans. Certain members of my extended family are too. I always laugh to myself when they go off on their Americans are obese speeches while gorging on a second helping of cheese.
My nieces and nephews watch far more t.v. than Little S does and know more t.v. characters than he does. He's the last person to know who's who in the kid's aisle. He's much more aware of quality and materials than labeling on toys. We try to teach him to appreciate wood toys and using his imagination more. We buy him far less toys.
I'm not sure what stereotypes I'm victim of with the French. I am really aware of stereotyping and try very hard not to do it. Seb gets a bit of it when we go to the US but I think the Americans have a much more lighthearted version of it than the French do. I know it happens on both sides but I think it must be just a tad easier being the French in America than being the American in France.
12 comments:
I've always found the issues betwen America and France bizarre as you'd have thought it would be England and France who had more prejudice against each other!
I personally don't feel that you can make a judgement on what the people are like in any country based on a single person from there..... everyone is different.
I'm not completely aware of all the British stereotypes that the French have but I know drinking is one of them! None of my English friends can have a glass in their hand at a French gathering without getting the comment.
Very interesting post!
I have been fighting stereotyping for the most part of my adult life because I am living proof that stereotyping someone simply by where he comes from or what he looks like is plain stupid: I am mexican born and bred but don't look at all like it. I am american in my way of thinking and speaking but have never watched SNL nor Monday footbal and until recently didn't even know what TiVo was.
I think stereotypes come mainly from ignorance, and I don't say this in a bad way. The more I travel around the world the more I realize that diversity is an infinite possibility in the human race. The globalization and intercultural mixing thas has been going on for the past 15 to 30 years has made our generation and the ones that come after us incredibly diverse and rich in layers. Unfortnetly, people who can't or don't like to travel get their information from TV and relatively biased sources, in the ways that you explain.
Being bi-cultural, I've heard similar remarks to the ones you mention in your blog on both accounts (Mexican and American side). When this subject comes up I usually turn the question around and ask if it would be fair to say that a Breton, a Lillois, a Parisien and a Marseillais are all the same. I even go further to saying that not all mexican women are lucky enough to look like Eva Longoria and there does indeed exist ugly ducklings like myself with my blond hair and my blue eyes.
And when people talk to me about american stereotypes I reply that that makes me think of the funny clichés I heard when I was getting ready to come to France such as the stuff about french women not shaving their arm pits or how the french invented perfume to hide the filthy smell of their bodies because it's a well known fact that the French don't bathe. That pretty much shuts them up and I always end my rant with all little: "but all that's plain silly because, please! Who in this time and age still believes in stereotypes??"....
Fned.
In my experience, the French are far worse when it comes to stereotyping Americans than any other culture. For some reason, the Italians will say we are ignorant when it comes to foreign policy, have terrible taste in clothes and even worse taste in shoes, but they tend to leave it at that. I have only been asked if I "learned to cook real food in Italy" a handful of times. Like you said, I almost don't even notice it anymore. My Italian husband is far more outraged at ignorant comments like that than I am.
And I agree, the Bush years have been hard to bear, but the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal was tough for me when I was living here too. Who knows what will come next.
Also? McDonalds isn't as popular here as it is in France, thank goodness. Jack has never been to one and has no idea what it even is.
But this was a really interesting post!!! I imagine you could write tons like this.
Fned - Yes I thought of you when my doctor mistook me for Mexican. I remember you wrote about using whatever cultural bias suited the situation. It was funny because I think she is so biased that she has jumped on the Mexican thing because of my dark hair! lol. I probably look more Mexican than American.
Jennifer - Yes! in traveling through Italy I did notice the lack of fast food chains. The refreshing lack! Why is that?
Great post! I find Americans don't stereotype as much as some Europeans and I think it's due to an even greater lack of knowledge about other cultures. There are some basic stereotypes, but to stereotype you have to have some exposure to another culture for a basis, no matter how incorrect it may be. In general, Europeans get much more exposure to American culturisms than vice versa.
Living in England, I was amazed at the out and out attacks on me because I was American. Most people were great, but many would just hear I was American and blast me with all that was wrong with the US (this was in 1996, so I can't blame Bush). And the stuff they said showed them to fit right in with the ignorant American type. My experience with the French hasn't been as bad, but what has amazed me is how direct some have been in their attacks. One guy went on about the evils of American women, which he knew because he had previously lived with him....
The Swiss can be just as bad, although more subtle. Some of the things I've heard have been amazing - all from people who have never set foot in the US. Even DH - who in the past would have agreed with them - finds himself gently correcting their misconceptions. They tend to believe him, but not me.
My favourite, though, is when people blast on, then say "But not you, you're not really American." I have my own complaints about my fellow Americans, but find myself defending them/us!
I’m British and most of the stereotypes I hear about us are true; It’s does rain a lot, most people drink a lot (including the women) people have bad dress sense and lots of home cooking is terrible OR maybe it’s just my family : ) ha ha
BUT – I don’t think your average expat is the same type of person as all these sterotypes. As Mister Joe Average stereotype wouldn’t dream of leaving his homeland.On holiday yes, but to live no way . So it seems that most expats are slightly more open minded, that's maybe the difference.
My parents have some good friends who come to France regularly in their camper and do you know what they bring with them? Cheddar cheese and sliced white bread !
I read a lot of blogs and I think that expats have a lot of sterotypes ideas about the French too, particularly those who haven’t been here so long. The longer they’ve been here the less they have.
Leon was born in 1998 the year of the world cup in France and there was a lot of talk about hooligans (particularly the British and Germans )at the time. I don’t know how many people said to me while I was pregnant ‘Oh if it’s a boy we’ll have another little hooligan on our hands’ Just what a first time mother wants to hear. So maybe I have become VERY thicked skinned since then.
Pauline
Very interesting post, Chris! I don't have much to add, since I've experienced certain things you and the commenters have posted about.
One of the things I would encounter in France back in the 90s was the stereotype that Americans were fat, mostly from my students. At the time I weighed all of 55 kilos, and I was like, um, HELLO! LOOK AT ME! Later it was "Bush this, Bush that."
The best, though? In 2007 my kids were picked up in France by their aunt and uncle, immediately following their month with me in the States. Their uncle (who's not a blood relative, not that it matters but I just had to throw that in there) asked "Did you eat at McDonald's a lot?"
Grrr. ;-)
It is so hard to respond to this post without dredging up some pretty terrible stories. I hear you, everything you've written.
The Italians like fresh food. They are very proud of their local cuisine, and it changes from one town to the next. There was a town in Ligury that ran a McDonalds out of business when the fastfood chain opened a franchise next door to a tiny Mom and Pop foccaccia shop, where the foccaccia was baked fresh all day long. The family-run business matched McDonalds' hamburger prices and retained all their business. The McDonalds had to fold. The Italians were so proud, not in an anti-American way, but because their traditions had prevailed.
Pauline - I love that they brought cheddar cheese! haha I wish they'd bring me some.
Although many stereotypes may be true I do think it's dangerous territory. Like for example small gossip between two friends of the same nationality about what we see as stereotypical of the French is one thing but using it as a topic of dinner conversation at a French person's house when I'm the invited guest would be plain rude. That's what I'm talking about here and what has happened a lot in France to me and I'm guessing others foreigners too. It may be explained by the French penchant for discussion to the point of argument but it's just plain bad manners to bring up the ill failings of a person's culture and then ask them to defend it, or worse yet paint that picture of them.
Anyway I think that's what you were saying too ;)
Jennifer - I would much rather eat foccaccia than a Big Mac. I love that story!
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