Weekend excitement

From the newspaper : -The awfulness of Penn Station is difficult to convey, but Lawrence Downes has done a fine job of it . -One step forwar...

Cheapness made easy

Ever since Kei invented the idea of a " wanty list ," I've used this concept in my own life and spending-or-lack-thereof. At a...

What is wrong with French people re: same-sex marriage?*

Frahnce. You instituted civil marriage before everyone else, thus giving me a dissertation topic. Your appeal to gay men is well-established...

Un verre de vin, s'il vous plaît.

Think of the children. Specifically the 18-year-olds given wine on a class trip to France , with their parents' permission. To Paris , ...

WWPD, language police

-Yes, yes, the First Amendment, but whevs. I'm going to hereby advocate for a ban on the use of the word "fresh" to describe h...

Echarpe rouge homme

This afternoon I indulged, from the can't-believe-the-semester's-over-but-need-to-get-back-to-work-soon-anyway-but-oh-it's-nice-...

Serge Gainsbourg is not my style icon

Day 1 of 2 of oral exams. Most are today. Stamina so far so good, to be improved with (more) caffeine. Happier than usual not to be a Mormon...

What your great-grandmother recognized as de-frizzing serum UPDATED

-A Frenchwoman lectures an American audience on chic, which she humbly implies she was born with. A Frenchwoman in a track-suit . But she...

The greener grass across the pond

American women - well, some, maybe not Ann Romney - want to be French. French women, at least the demographic equivalent of the American wom...

WWPD Guides: Beauty

Beauty - as in makeup, skin creams, and so on - is strangely compelling. But why? Is it just because relative to clothing, makeup is cheap, ...

The least true assertion ever

"'Often, American women look for practicality in a bag whereas les Francaises understand it is more about the image and the compl...

Qualms

I love that the woman profiled in that  article about how French women are in fact capable of getting fat, or at least of worrying that the...

Scarves and stripes

-Fashion-advice columnist Hadley Freeman explains that contrary to what you might expect, she doesn't care about shoes, and that this i...

GAR!

Well gee thanks, Paul Rudnick and the New Yorker , for running off with my   fabulous   idea .

For a change, trains, France, food, and Jews

-File under obvious, but I wouldn't recommend NJ Transit on St. Patrick's Day. We got seats, because ( as per usual ) there were emp...

My aspirational pants

Thanks Whitney ! Mom jeans are back , after all. In the words of His Sartorialousness: Trust me, French young ladies are still the ones to l...

Un-trendy Pendleton

Bisou's maniacal barking alerted me that my much-anticipated  all-cotton jeans had arrived. Remarkably, they fit. A pair of jeans I ord...

Des Français

Sometimes, from the ol' mailing list, I wonder if being an American getting a degree in French is a bit like if I, a "cis" wom...

Speaking of...

How timely ! Fresh in my inbox, an email forwarded to my department proposing what could only be described as the job Elaine does for Mr. Pi...

Raising Johan and François

Miss Self-Important alerted me to something "combining amy chua with skinny frenchwomen," so I had to look, and before even knowin...