When it comes to stereotypes, there are few more viscerally opposed than that of the youth-obsessed, overly-body conscious American and the serene, gracefully aging French woman.
American journalist Pamela Druckerman, an expat who spent decades living in France, dives into this issue with her own anecdotes of what it was like to learn how to age gracefully in the land of ageless women. A coup de vieux, as the French say, forced Druckerman to confront outdated American views on aging. What she learned was that while she was trying to look 25, her French friends were more focused on being bien dans son âge — comfortable in one’s age.
That’s easier said than done, of course, but a lesson worth remembering. Because if French women worried half so much as we do about being called mademoiselle instead of madame, they’d probably have just as many wrinkles as we do.
