Book Excerpt
es,
French
eastern rance one exchanges two
kisses, starting on the left. In
Finistère, at the furthest tip of
Brittany, it is customary to give just
one kiss but in whole swathes of
the South including the départements
of Cantal, Aveyron and the Drôme,
one exchanges three. And across the
départements of northern France,
the affectionate locals share as many
as four bisous on average.
To guide the uninitiated through
the labyrinthine landscape of French
kissing, in 2007 a Frenchman named
illes ebunne produced a wonderfully
helpful kissing map of France,
combiende bises.free.fr, an interactive
site where over ,
rench people
have registered their kissing
preferences by region. But even here,
there is confusion within regions. In
Pas-de-Calais, for example, roughly 50
per cent of respondents say they kiss
twice as a greeting, while the other
50 per cent declare that they kiss
four times. In the Charente, in
southwestern rance, the situation
is even more obscure, with voters
divided between two, three, and four
or more kisses. In general, Parisians
will limit themselves to two, starting
on the right cheek; just one kiss gives
a dangerous suggestion of secret
intimacy, and more than two runs
the risk of one being regarded as a
provincial bumpkin or, as they would
disparagingly say, un plouc). Generally,
the urban bourgeoisie limit
themselves to fewer kisses than
effusive provincials.
If these
French kissing conventions seem
complicated, they are as nothing
compared with Belgium, where one
kiss is the norm for someone the same
age as oneself, but three a mark of
respect for someone at least ten
years older. social minefield,
especially when it comes to women
d un certain ge.
So much for the number of kisses;
but what type of kiss are we talking
about? The ancient Romans, after all,
distinguished between the friendly
peck on the cheek (osculum), the
passion- ate meeting of mouths
(basia), and the kiss involving the use
of tongues (suavia). The French bise
or social kiss is none of these. In
fact, it is barely a kiss at all. If done
correctly, it involves merely the
lightest brushing of cheek to cheek;
but at the moment of brushing, one is
expected to make a loud and explosive
sound of the lips, as if to imitate a
good mwah . It is here that some
nglo Saxons can get it wrong, with
a slobby lip to cheek or worse,
lip-to-lip) contact that has the
average aul cringing with disgust.
To the extent that several Frenchmen
abroad have remarked that they
would prefer to shake hands, or even
par- take of a good, old-fashioned
merican style hug, than wipe off
saliva juices from a bearish
foreigner.10
Which brings us to the time
honoured alternative to the bise,
the handshake. Surely a safe retreat
from the ha ardous minefield of the
social kiss? Not quite. It should not
be forgotten that the French
expression for shake a person s hand
is serrer la main, in other words, a
hand squeeze and not a handshake. In
France, it is not customary to grasp
the hand and energetically pump it
up and down, as nglo Saxon
practice dictates. France – like
Japan and China – is a country of
limp handshakes. This is especially
true if you are a woman, as it is
considered the height of rudeness
energetically to grasp or pump a
woman s hand. So if your ealous
piston meets a limp wristed
response, don t take it personally.
Nor should you make the faux pas
of proffering a hand to someone older
or more senior than yourself. French
bourgeois eti uette always
concerned with establishing
boundaries and limits – dictates that
the older or more senior person, or
a woman, proffers their hand first.
Social minefield as it may be, those
who would love to kiss goodbye to
the rench bise will be disappointed.
Despite a brief period of panic during
the bird u epidemic of
, when
the official advice was to avoid social
kissing (some schools installed
kissing boxes in classrooms for
pupils to post kiss notes to their
friends rather than swapping possibly
contagious pecks on the cheek),
the bise has fought back with a
vengeance. Social snogging is now
pretty much de rigueur in France
between friends as it increasingly
is among the chattering classes of
Britain and the United States.
Die-hard enemies of the social kiss
can, however, take comfort in the
fact that in some parts of the world,
including many parts of Asia and
Africa,
2
121
kissing is looked upon with
repugnance. In China, for example,
kissing was for many years considered
a revolting allusion to cannibalism,
and in southern Africa the native
tribes people recoiled at the European
habit of sucking each other s saliva
and dirt . So if you really can t cope
with friends and colleagues slobbering
over you, there are places to escape
to. But if you come to France, you
have no real option other than to dive
in and have a go at the kissing game;
but if you botch it, be prepared to
take it on the chin.
Myth Evaluation: True. The French
kiss when they greet you most of the
time, certainly between family and
friends, but there is huge variation in
the number of kisses and with which
cheek to start. The safest bet is to
give two kisses and start with the
right-hand side.
Excerpted from hey Eat orses, on t
They? The Truth About the French by
iu arie Eatwell. opyright
by
the author and reprinted by permission
of Thomas Dunne Books.