I can't help it...I was just drawn this way

Posted by Isabel Dexter at 15:55 on 14 May 2010

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Now I absolutely love my doctor in Paris (in a platonic way of course, he looks like a cross between Gerald Depardieu and Father Christmas. Wouldn't stop you? I hear you say. Ok ok I like French men but even English girls have some standards, thanks) I have a phobia of taking medicine. I think it started when aged 14 at school in Derby all the cool girls used to take asprin for every little headache. I started doing it too and also bought a mood ring in an attempt to get in the in-crowd. It all came to an end when a teacher told me that too much asprin would make my stomach bloat. It was cool to look like you were pill popping at my comprehensive, less so to look like you were pregnant.

Anyway, even if I feel like there is a bulldozer listening to minimal techno in my head, I don't take paracetamol.  When I had shingles, I thought I'd just got a rash from changing my shower gel. As far as I'm concerned there's no illness that can't be cured with 12 hours sleep a night followed by a mammoth Skins-watching session with a cup of hot water and lemon.

And so I find the widespread hypochondria epidemic in France rather amusing. A headache is a 'migraine sensible' a stomach ache is a 'maladie digestive'. If a French person sneezes once they go and buy a bottle of Sterimar, a 'douche pour le nez' (literally, a shower for the nose!).

So when I finally succumbed yesterday to visiting the pharmacy, j'étais choqué (I was shocked) by the fact that there were only three choices of headache pills and about 50,000 diet aids, slimming creams and lose-three-pounds herbal teas. Being fat here is akin to having a fatal disease. And lets remember that most people in Paris have a smaller body mass index than that of a teenage antelope. I saw girls with hip bones sticking out buying diet teas to substitute for dinner. And with all those pain au chocolat? Talk about extreme self-restraint.

Cecile enlightened me over a chocolat chaud (me) and an espresso and cigarette (her).
she: "Mais, non but we love food in France."
me: "Yes but you don't actually eat it."
she: "We like to taste the food. We don't need eating the big portions like you do in England."
me: "But what about all the diet teas?"
she: "It's normal. A girl needs to look thin for the summer. Everyone wants to be thinner."
me: "But everyone is so thin already."
she: "Yes, but that is the French thing. It is like making someone fall in love with you. We pretend it is natural and it just happens. But we have our secrets."

How very Valley of the Dolls. Don't tell the girls in Derby...

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