Why are Americans so obsessed with the French?
Bonne fête nationale française!
Happy Bastille Day, also known as le 14 Juillet. Today marks the storming of the Bastille in 1789 and the start of the French Revolution. It is a day of celebration filled with fireworks, picnics, and free museum visits. Or for those lucky enough, an escape to the countryside and the start of the sacred Les Vacances (vacation days). I thought it would be worth reflecting on what it means to be a lover of French culture, especially as I near my second-year anniversary of living in France.
Sitting atop a small hill below the ghost town of Jerome, Arizona, is a small museum dedicated to the history of the old copper mining town. In this vast landscape, where you can see across the valley, to the iron-rich mountains of Sedona and even to the snow-capped peaks of Flagstaff, it is not hard to imagine the cowboys that once herded cattle or the Native Americans that lived and cultivated the ground for so long.
So imagine my surprise when I encountered references to Paris and the gargoyles of Notre Dame at the Douglas Mansion in Arizona.
Like many rich Americans at the turn of the 20th century, James Douglas (one of the many members of the mining Douglas family) was a Francophile and he’d spend as much as three months every year in France. And like many tourists flocking to Paris, he brought back a few souvenirs, including a replica of one of the gargoyles on Notre Dame.
This obsession with French culture has continued to this day. Perhaps it’s because I am married to a Frenchman and live in France, but I’ve noticed more and more coverage of French politics and French travel guides in American media. Not to mention that one show on Netflix that is an awful caricature of life in Paris.
Even the Associated Press seems to have a strong affinity for the French. In January, the news style guide agency tweeted a now deleted advisory on using dehumanizing labels, such as “the poor, the mentally ill, the French, the disabled, the college-educated.” You can imagine the amount of backlash that got in French media.
So where does this obsession with French culture come from? And where does the term francophile even come from?
A francophile is someone who has a strong love for the French language and culture. The word was first recorded in 1875 to describe someone who had an excessive fondness of France and the French people.1
The word itself comes from Medieval Latin and Greek, a combination of Franci, meaning Franks or the people who lived in what is present-day northern France, Belgium, and western Germany, and -phile, which is a word of Greek origin that means one loves, likes, or is attracted to.
But this obsession with French culture also has its downsides. French culture is sometimes put on such a high pedestal, that when some foreigners visit, they are so disappointed that they experience various physical and mental symptoms including dizziness, sweating, hallucinations, anxiety, and vomiting. Referred to as the Paris syndrome, it generally affects people from Japan and other Asian countries. Another way to think of it is as an extreme form of culture shock.
Francophilia veils some of the issues that France deals with today, like racism, inequality, sexism, and corruption. Instead, there’s this idea that the French have everything figured out, from parenting, to staying thin, to looking chic at all times. But that’s far from the truth. This ideal even harms the French, as French and British journalist Iris Goldsztajn wrote in Vogue:
“The French Girl archetype found me wanting in real life when I lived in France, and she finds me wanting now.”
Despite living in France and wanting to live in Paris for years, I never considered myself a francophile and I still don’t. If anything, I was a bit of an Anglophile, or obsessed with English culture. I was even one of those weird high school kids who faked an English accent before it was cool on TikTok. That is, until I lived in London for a year when I was 24 and discovered just how cold, foggy, and depressing it could get in the winter.
While I do love France and hope to one day conquer the language enough to become a French citizen, I am also aware of its many issues. Paris is not perfect. It’s dirty, the waiters can be rude, and people will always correct your French. But despite France not holding up to the image it might have abroad, it still holds a charm that I just can’t shake off. So bonne fête nationale française, whether you’re a francophile or not.
À bientôt,
-Moriah
From the Online Etymology Dictionary: "characterized by excessive fondness of France and the French," 1875, from Franco- + -phile. "A newspaper word" [OED]. Its opposite, Francophobe, is recorded from 1890, implied in Francophobic; Francophobia is from 1862. An earlier word was anti-Gallician (n.), attested from 1755.
As a French woman who lived in NYC for years, I can attest to Americans' unfounded fascination with with France, Paris and la Parisienne. From people asking me how French women stay thin (answer: they smoke) to being told what I was saying didn't matter because my accent was so charming (true story), I was often reduced to my Frenchness. It's OK, I had fun with it!
Funnily enough, now that I am back in France, I see French people's enamored vision of America (and esp. NY) everywhere - from photos of Times Square in a restaurant in a random village in Burgundy to people peppering their conversations with US slang and expressions.
My parents were French and I grew up in the US and France (i went back to the US for college) and go back to France often. There are things I love about France but OMG there are so many things that I dislike about France. (Same with the US too by the way.)