So You Think You Hate the French, Huh?

Dear Readers: 

As I type this, July 4, Independence Day, is coming to a close. This day would not be possible if France hadn't backed the fledgling US in the Revolution - in fact, I seem to recall something about French ships defeating the Royal Navy at the very end of the war. 

For over 20 years, I've seethed at every philistine who makes nasty, untrue, or just plain bigoted comments about French people. Excusez-moi? I don't go around spouting rude remarks about other ethnicities/cultures, so I don't think it's unreasonable to demand a little respect.

Although it's outside the scope of this blog, I've been tempted to speak my mind on this subject for a long, long time. I promise I'll be back with my latest discovery in a few days (and it was a total shock!). In the meantime, please feel free to share this with anyone you know who might need to read it. 

So you think you hate the French, huh?

If that's really true, you had better act like it and stop availing yourself of everything good they've brought to this world. I will never, ever pretend France or its people are perfect (I openly discuss some very badly behaved Frenchmen in this very blog, plus I don't approve of the whole colonialism thing, even though I'm a product of it twice over). 

This list is not intended to be exhaustive. I don't know everything there is to know. Yet, anyway. Now here we go...

Fashion:

What could be more All-American than jeans? Oh, wait, sorry, you're not allowed to wear them anymore! Jeans are made from denim, which is French. The name itself comes from "serge de Nîmes", referencing the fact that denim was originally produced in Nîmes, France. 

Are you a shoe fiend? Not anymore you're not. Shoes in and of themselves have existed for millennia, but it was Louis XIV's passion for fancy heels that made shoe addiction a thing. (Read Joan DeJean's "The Essence of Style." Actually, read everything she's written. Professor DeJean knows her stuff.) 

Do you read fashion magazines? Cancel your subscriptions immediately and chuck your back issues in the recycling bin tout de suite. Fashion was first reported in print in Le Mercure Galant, way back in the 1670s. Fashion dolls, fashion plates, even depicting the latest styles on the celebrities of the day - that all began in 17th century Paris.

Lingerie as outerwear? Been there, done that, again in the 17th century. It was called "en déshabillé négligée." And I personally guarantee you that Versailles' courtiers wore it better.

And strictly speaking, you really shouldn't be dressing fashionably, or updating your wardrobe, or wearing anything mass produced, at all. Until the court of Louis XIV (yup, him again), clothing didn't change for decades, or even a few centuries, at a time. Trust me on this, I studied History of Costume extensively. The fashion industry itself was born at Versailles, again in the 1670s. Before that, everything was made-to-measure for the wearer.

Retail therapy is now firmly off limits. Until (you guessed it) 17th century Paris, most stores weren't much more than a storage room with a window for service. Customers stayed out in the street and would tell the shopkeeper what they wanted. What fun is that? Chic Parisian shops had the first luxe store interiors and the first window displays - so if you work in retail, you'd better change jobs.

You can also forget about getting a nice stylish haircut. The first professional hairdresser (also the first celebrity hairstylist) was one Monsieur Champagne, whom DeJean compares to Warren Beatty's character in Shampoo. The word "coiffeur" (still used by French speakers) had to be created to describe his job. 

Do you own rain gear? Donate it to a homeless shelter. Waterproof clothing - and compact folding umbrellas! - are French inventions.

Are you absolutely certain you want to dress like a 16th century peasant and cut your own hair yourself? If you truly hated the French, that's what you'd do.

Home:

Do you buy antiques? Thank 17th-century France (again). High-end Paris shopkeepers were the original antiques dealers. Heck, the French word "antiquailles", meaning "worthless old furniture" spawned the word "antique" to distinguish worthless old furniture from desirable old furniture. So hand over the oil paintings, ginger jars, and Bergere chairs - you get to hit the Burbank IKEA!

Turn your dining room into a reading nook while you're at it. The first dedicated dining room was at the chateau Vaux-le-Vicomte.

Do you have a dresser? Donate it - like so many other things in this entry, they debuted at Versailles.

Don't even think about turning on your central heating (if you have it) in the winter. French doctor Louis Savot invented and installed a special air-circulating fireplace at the Louvre, and French lawyer and scientist Nicolas Gauger innovated a heating system with ducts and registers to circulate and heat fresh air. Their work paved the way for an American invention - the Franklin stove.

And you can wave goodbye to your modern bathroom, too. While the French cannot claim to have invented the first-ever toilet, the first modern flush toilet - complete with bidet faucet and ventilation piping - was introduced in early 18th century France. As for actual bathing in a room built for that purpose (with faucets and a water heater etc.), it too began in the homes of the French elite, albeit in the mid-17th century. The increasing demand for modern sanitary facilities, by the way, led to tearing up French streets to install pipes that would bring water to private homes. By contrast, Los Angeles didn't get proper plumbing for another two centuries (through the efforts of a French-Canadian developer, a French-Jewish entrepreneur, and a public health official). If you hate the French, build yourself an outhouse, dig yourself a well, and get used to bathing in a horse trough.

Food:

You can't be a foodie anymore. At least not without some restrictions.

For starters, the first modern cookbook, Le Cuisinier Francais, was published in 1651 by professional chef Francois Pierre, under the pen name La Varenne. This was the first cookbook that made recipes and techniques public knowledge, the first one that grouped recipes by section, and the first to have an index. So you'd better get very good at memorizing recipes very fast, or just tape a random assortment of recipe clippings to your refrigerator.

You can't have a pressure cooker (this includes the famous Instant Pot), either. French physicist Denis Papin invented the first pressure cooker. (It's also the forerunner to the autoclave, so hold off on getting any tattoos.)

Pasteurized food of any kind is absolutely forbidden. Louis Pasteur was French. Good luck not getting sick from raw milk.

Don't like mixing savory and sweet in one dish? French cuisine was the first in the West to separate the two and move sweets to the dessert course. Now pour some maple syrup on that cheeseburger!

I'm sure I don't have to explain why you can't have any sparkling wine, regardless of where it was made. Even if it's not actual Champagne, the process for making wine bubbly was still invented by a French monk, Dom Pierre Pérignon. Heck, any wine with a cork is off limits because Pérignon made corks the standard way to seal wine bottles. 

Also firmly off limits: all California wine, even if it's boxed. Regular readers already know California's wine industry got its start with Bordeaux native Jean-Louis Vignes.

Although restaurants pre-date France itself (a surviving Roman-era fast food place in Italy is proof of that), fine dining began in France - again, in the 17th century, when the elite would dine chez le traiteur. Dine out all you want - but you can't go anywhere upscale. Celebrity-chef establishments are off limits anyway, since the first one was Francois Vatel.

And you might not want to order soup when you're out. Soup bowls, and the rise of individual spoons, came about in late 17th century France. Up until then, diners simply drank soup from bowls. That's normal in Japanese restaurants, but not so much anywhere else. So have fun with that.

Travel:

Kiss your tourist guidebooks goodbye. They were first published in 1690 for foreigners visiting Paris.

Actually, you won't be able to get very far anyway. See, you won't be able to travel by air. The hot air balloon, which kicked off modern aviation, was invented by the Montgolfier brothers, the first human-powered dirigible was invented by Jean-Pierre Blanchard, and although two Southerners tend to hog all the credit, the first machine-powered flight on record was performed in 1890 by Clément Ader. All Frenchmen.

Public transportation is off limits, too. The first public mass transit system (shared carriages running on regular schedules) was invented in Paris, and co-created by famed mathematician Blaise Pascal at that. So no buses, no trains, no trolleys.

You can also forget about driving. The first automobile (albeit a steam-powered one) was invented by Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot. 

Hope your French-hating self can handle riding a bike everywhere! 

Oh, and it goes without saying that greater Los Angeles is permanently closed to you. This blog is about LA’s extensive French and Francophone roots. Modern LA would simply not exist without people like Prudent Beaudry, Remi Nadeau, and the cinema pioneers who made the entertainment industry possible (more on them in a minute). Oh, you’re an actor/model/whatever? Too bad. Suck it up, start walking to New York, and don’t come back. Ever.

Entertainment:

Without streetlights, nightlife as we know it simply would not exist. Operas used to begin in the middle of the afternoon so everyone could get home before it got too dark. Guess how Paris got the nickname City of Light? Because it was the first city to light the streets after dark. Which, in turn, made evening events possible and made nightlife a reality. So you can't go out after dark anymore.

You can never, ever see a movie again. Ever. Without Louis Le Prince, the Lumière brothers, and Georges Méliès, movies simply would not exist. (The LACMA exhibit City of Cinema: Paris 1850-1907, which ends in a few days, provides ample proof of this.) That means no television, either, since motion picture technology made television possible. Watching TV on your laptop or smartphone is still watching TV, so give that up too.

Everything Disney touches is also off limits, including its theme parks. Besides a disproportionate number of Disney princesses being French (Belle, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty), the Disney family has French roots. "Disney" was originally "D'Isigny", after Isigny-sur-Mer. The fact that Walt Disney's longtime home in Los Feliz was influenced by Norman architecture may not be a coincidence.

Don’t even ask me if you can go to the ballet. The answer should be obvious.

Are you absolutely sure you hate the French? Are you? Because all those nasty, hateful comments sure sound like sour grapes to me.