Strange (and Untrue) Stereotypes about the French
I’ve put off writing this post for a long while—years!—because I run the serious risk of offending people with it.
To mitigate the risk, let me state clearly from the start:
Some and even many French people have the characteristics and capabilities below. You’ll find all types of people in France, as you will in all countries and cultures. As blanket stereotypes, though, these haven’t proven true in my experience.
They don’t even work as stereotypes, in fact, in that stereotypes often have some foundation or validity for at least the general whole of a group or category. In other words, the debunked stereotypes below aren’t “the exceptions that prove the rule.”
French People Know Everything about Wine
Stereotype: All or most French people know everything about wine, love wine, and they drink a lot of wine.
I’ve been with my French husband and friends, even, and because they’re at the table or invited to the party, they’re told to choose the wine “because they’re French.”
My husband isn’t into wine at all. One of his friends, in talking about this stereotype, said he started getting told to choose the wine and getting posed wine-related questions as a teenage exchange student in the United States—long before he was of legal age to drink wine, even in France (where the legal drinking age is eighteen). Maybe his hosts thought wine skills are French-person innate?
While certainly France is well known for its wine and most of the French enjoy it—even drinking a good quantity of wine per capita annually—they’re happy on most occasions to drink the restaurant’s house wine or whatever the host serves (which typically isn’t something outlandishly fancy).
In fact, I know more people in the United States who are wine connoisseurs than I know French people who’d consider themselves particularly wine-interested, even if they happily drink it.
The French are Hedonistic
Stereotype: The French have hedonistic, bohemian lifestyles, living life as it comes and as they like, staying up and sleeping in late, and eating and drinking copious amounts even into the wee hours.
Nope. The French tend to eat their meals at culturally fixed times, none of which are by any means late. (Read my article about what to know about French culinary habits for the schedule.) Further, portion sizes of food and drink are pretty controlled. They may eat several courses in a meal, though you’ll find each course’s portion size restrained.
They don’t live randomly in general, in fact. Their lives, just like those of us all, follow schedules tied to work, school, and everyday living. Just as most cultures do, the French have set habits.
The French Never Get Fat
Stereotype: The French eat a lot of really fatty, carbohydrate-rich, and heavy foods—and in quantities—and they never get fat.
If you look around, you’ll see overweight French people in France—just as you do in every other country.
As in every other country, weight depends on genetics, sure, and on lifestyle.
Many French people live a comparatively active lifestyle compared to some other cultures, true. True not because they go to the gym, but because they move a lot more in their daily lives when it comes to shopping, going to work, and all the rest.
Further, many French people have healthier eating habits than people in some other cultures. Yes, they may eat bread, cheese, and dessert, but in reasonable portions. They don’t tend to snack as a culture, either. And they historically haven’t consumed many processed foods.
However, even in France, processed foods, snacking, and fast food have grown increasingly popular while the need to move to conduct daily activities has decreased. You can see these changes in French society when it comes to struggles with the attendant health challenges of poor diet and a lack of exercise.
The French Have Artistic Sensibilities
Stereotype: The French have artistic sensibilities and high culture in the arts.
French history boasts incredible art and culture, no question. I regale myself with French culture at sites and museums for hours and days when I have the time, no matter where I am in France.
However, as a whole, the French don’t have educational levels or training in the arts and culture that surpass other cultures I’ve encountered.
In fact, the French educational system prioritizes math and sciences over the arts.
In 2020, 35.4 percent of French tertiary graduates focused on business and 14.1 percent focused on engineering, with only 8.3 percent having focused on the arts, according to the OECD. Compare these percentages with those in the United States for the same year, where 18.7 of tertiary graduates focused on business, 7.2 percent focused on engineering, and 17.9 focused on the arts.
The French have rightful pride in their art and culture, no question. However, they aren’t all artists, they don’t have a huge focus on educating the citizenry in art and culture, and a knowledge of art and culture isn’t considered critical or even particularly important in today’s French society.
The French Language is Rich
Stereotype: The French language has a rich vocabulary.
I don’t know where this one comes from, but I hear it often from people when I mention speaking French as a second language.
In fact, The French language has fewer words in it than many other world languages. Counting words in a language doesn’t really make sense, given each language’s mobility and diversity, though a quick glance at internationally accepted “comprehensive” dictionaries shows that French has just above 400,000 words in it to English’s nearly 715,000 and Korean’s whopping 1.15 million.
I’ll give you that the French language is complicated—even for native francophones. Sentences in French are often so complicated and so inexact in their meaning that even francophones struggle to make themselves understood with other francophones in discussion (as I’ve witnessed repeatedly).
Rather than having a rich vocabulary, the French language has convoluted and exceedingly complex grammar and structure. On top of that, the sounds required to speak French, and the letters used to incite those sounds in the written text, are different than they are in most other languages. Combined, these qualities make the French language difficult to use and to understand for a nonfrancophone. (The problem’s not the vocabulary!)
The French are Elegant
Stereotype: French people are elegant.
On this one: Hm.
I’ll give you that they tend to be sensitive, as a culture. I’ll concede as well that many have a flair in how they dress, all having somehow learned in infancy how to tie a scarf just exactly so to give them an air of “put together” even in shorts and a t-shirt.
However, elegant in general? Not sure I can agree.
Certain French manners and customs seem inelegant to me, coming from a different cultural background.
Random examples:
They have no problem loudly blowing their noses in company or even at the dinner table.
Speaking of the table: They’ll take a piece of bread from the basket and put it directly on the table surface, where they eat from it throughout the meal. (Nope, no bread plates for them. They don’t even rest it on the side of their plates.)
They are notorious for screaming arguments, whether with strangers or friends and family, and these screaming arguments break out constantly and for what seems, to me, little reason.
Along the same lines: The French burst into a violent swearing storm unlike any other culture I’ve ever encountered—and they do it all the time. They direct their cussing tirades at inanimate objects, other people in the street, people on television and the radio, and people they know in person and on the phone. No one around them even gives them a strange look.
I could go on.
In short, yes, many French people have polish and many of them have polish in many areas. However, French people are not universally elegant and refined as a culture just because they are French. In addition, however your culture defines refinement may not fit the French concept.
And that’s a-okay.
Because as we all know, what’s elegant and mannerly in one culture doesn’t necessarily take the same form as it does in another. These differences make this world as rich and as wonderful as it is.
The French are Seductive and Romantic
Stereotype: The French, particularly the men, are expert seducers and incredibly romantic.
Apologies to my husband here, who could most particularly take offense with this debunking, but I have not found any of the French men I know particularly romantic or seductive. At least, not in some sort of forward, intentional, naturally suave kind of way.
Not that I’d expect they would be with me, of course. I speak more as a general cultural observation. French men as a block are not seductive and romantic with their wives or partners, either. Or with people they find interesting among the opposite or their preferred sex. They aren’t even naturally seductively charismatic while out in the world. French men don’t even particularly seem to flirt, to be honest.
To be sure I hadn’t missed something, I cross-checked this observation with several people of several generations and sexes. The French among my poll group expressed surprise about having this stereotype and, by and large, either felt horrified or found it hilariously funny—because it’s thoroughly not true.
Where this French seduction myth comes from as a stereotype, I do not know, but it sure is pervasive—all the way to showing up in films and television shows from the U.S. when a French man appears on the scene.
The French Don’t Bathe
Stereotype: French people don’t bathe. The French stink of body odor.
I just… huh? This is another widespread stereotype that I do not understand—at all.
I have spent countless days and nights in French homes and on vacation with French people, all of whom have bathed every single day or even more than once per day. Further, across all my time and travels in France, I have not seen more dirty people or smelled more body odor than I have anywhere else in the world. In fact, likely less than I have in many other countries.
What Have I Missed?
No question I’ve forgotten several of the common rumors about the French—and I’ve yet to encounter several more stereotypes as I go!
What stereotypes about the French have you heard—and have you found them true or false?