1 – ALL FRENCH PEOPLE ARE RUDE
Just imagine this scenario: your city is flooded with tourists every damn day of every damn year. They approach you & yap at you, just assuming that you speak their language. What do you do?
If French people (especially Parisians) come across as being rude, maybe it’s just because they get a little bored with a bunch of silly American tourists approaching them as though they were employees in an amusement park.
One more thing: Americans are a smiley group of people – we smile at each other even if we might not be feeling that smile deep down. We also have a tendency to chat with strangers for no reason. Most French people aren’t walking around grinning & chatting with each other & with tourists – especially in Paris. It’s not really rudeness…it’s just the way it is.
2 – FRENCH PEOPLE SMELL LIKE BUTT & B.O.
In general, French people do not have funk; they shower daily & use soap. Go to any city in any country in the world & you’re bound to find someone who stinks. You can start by checking your own armpits first.
Of course, when you do something like, use the métro system in Paris, you are very likely to catch a whiff of wafting stench – that doesn’t mean that every single French person stinks – if that were the case, the pungency in an enclosed space like a subway train could easily be lethal.
3 – FRENCH PEOPLE HATE AMERICANS
Like most people, French people don’t like assholes, regardless of which country they come from.
4 – FRENCH GUYS WEAR BERETS, STRIPED SHIRTS & MOUSTACHES
Yeah…& all Americans are cowboys.
Seriously…this one is just fucking absurd. When I hear someone saying shit like this, I just want to brain them with my beer bottle.
5 – OLD GUYS JUST WALK AROUND PLAYING THE ACCORDION
There is actually some truth to this – I’ve seen it. One minute, you’re sitting on the train spacing out to ambient noise thinking about penguins & pizza…then, all of a sudden, some old guys jumps on the train & starts going to town playing an accordion.
Of course, you’re just as likely to see some amateur rappers, hip-hop guys, or maybe even a puppet show.
That’s right – a puppet show.
“STEREOTYPE: A shoe designed to fit all feet within a particular ethnic or social group. When the shoe actually fits, as it sometimes will, the satisfied salesmen exchange sly winks across the room.”
– Rick Bayan, The Cynic’s Dictionary
I’ve just had a lot of fun reading these four posts. One time when stayed in France, working on a farm when I was 18, the family I lived with served wine every lunchtime and every dinner. Even the children were given wine — watered down 50% — in green tumblers. Very sensible. It didn’t give kids the idea that alcohol is the holy grail, to be consumed to excess the moment you turn 21.
At a pavement bistro in Nimes many years ago I did observe an American mother, to the evident embarrassment of her husband and child, shouting “Have you got ketchup? What kind of a place has no goddamn ketchup?” at a bemused, elderly waiter. Eventually, the American friend I was with got up, went over to her table and said something or other that made her shut up. He never told me what it was.