Stateside

By the time Christmas rolled around moving back to the states seemed less and less appealing. I didn't want to be a nanny anymore and I was happy to even trade that job for the equally mind-numbing and frustrating position of substitute teacher, even if just for the change of pace.

I'm back now and I've had a couple weeks to adjust. I have an overwhelming feeling of "been there done that". Our sublet is directly behind my former morningside heights apartment, I'm back at work subbing for the school I used to teach art at. The only thing that has changed is my perspective. Living in France was no dream, but like everywhere you grow to appreciate things, and you grow accustom to and accept a different base point.

Not to pick on Americans for their weight problems, but after living in France where most people are very thin and the non-very thin people are not overweight- the extra weight Americans carry seems down-right cartoonish. We were flying from Appleton to Milwaukee and the man next to us could not fit his seat belt around him and told Sylvain he had recently gained 60 lbs after quitting smoking. This seat to body ratio thing is also noticed on the subway, molded seats run along the sides and when there are 10 seats often no more than 6 or 7 people can wedge their way into a seat.

Sylvain has often remarked on how many friends I have here who are vegetarian- something I never saw in France- we just spent a week skiing in the Alps with some of the hippiest earth loving people I have ever met, all of them, hearty meat-eaters. The US has had a longterm movement of people who adhere to organic diets, who are gym fanatics, and who are simply health conscious, and yet in France where it's almost impossible to come across a gym, or someone who exercises with any regularity or eats as consciously as many Americans do, we're the one's that can't fit in our seats.

Are we thinking too much about food and health? Do we have these problems because the food that is accessible is so bad for us, filled with preservatives and chemicals? Is our food industry regulated in such a way the that the foods available and affordable are those that are superficially maintained by our government?

One of the main differences I see is a cultural acceptance in America- and a personal will power or determination in France that stops people from becoming overweight. A little voice that says, this is too much and it's not ok for me. There are definitely attitudes in France that place too much importance on being thin, but not nearly as extreme as some of the ways these extreme attitudes towards food has manifested itself in anorexia and bulimia epidemics in the US. What worries me most is that even when someone places a superficial value on being thin as you sometimes find in France, these attitudes hardly end up costing lives, the biggest loser and heavy shows just how many Americans have lost their lives-I mean the acts of living - that comprise a life.

Food is hugely important in France, but it has never become a weapon against ourselves. It has added to the living, not chipped away at it.