Burr-Head French Kids

Walter Agnew Moore II, Roving Reporter
22 December 2001, Amiens, France

Christmas lights are winking everywhere, and the Amienois are in a frenzy of last-minute shopping, which means the down-town city streets are packed here, because the vestigial appendages that Americans call "legs" are still functional on the vast majority of French.

I wander the wet cobblestones, thriving like a beer-wagon horse in the damp cold, snorting steam and stamping my shaggy hooves, and I contemplate the thing that is French Fashion, Late 2001.

Your first clothing article is the scarf. You must wear a scarf. This is not an option. Put your scarf on, do it before you read one more word. I'll wait for you. It doesn't matter what kind, just put one on.

There, that's better. And it is probably actually good for you. Losing your voice in most places is merely a personal inconvenience, but here, without a voice you are like a beaver without teeth. Your life will be short and miserable, and it is not unlikely that you will be found weak and starving beside your home-pond. You need your voice (and some basic French) to function here because everything is negotiable, and everything is negotiated. In Germany, you simply follow the posted rules. In the Third World, you wave Yankee Dollars. Neither approach works here. Life is verbal give-and-take.

You can survive in a miserable, three-legged-dog sort of way by shrugging, making exaggerated expressions, and going "boof"! blowing air out your lips, but sooner or later you will need that voice. Keep the scarf on at all times.

For those of you who are gangly adolescent boys wishing to imitate your French peers, the trick is to dress and act like you are showing up late for the casting-call of an American Gangsta Rap video from 1993. The word is "baggy synthetic fabrics". If you wish, you can wear the motif of some sports team, but the potential absurdity here is lessened by the fact that most French kids are in good enough shape that they look fairly athletic anyway. Still, when they try to put on a pimp walk, it is all that I can do to keep from laughing so hard that Hot Wine comes out my nose.

(It is interesting that it is almost always kids of European or Middle-Eastern descent who try to imitate the Black American Ghetto Look. The Black French kids, many of whom are actually from Africa, tend more towards good manners and Dressing For Success.)

The most original part of the French Rappeur ensemble is the Tiny Head Syndrome. To achieve this, it helps to start out with an actual tiny head, preferably mounted on a thin stalk-like neck with a huge Adam's Apple. You may have to squunch down your scarf a bit to show this off. Then you shave your tiny head or get this French-style haircut that leaves you short hair that looks like it is waxed flat to your skull. Top this off with a French baseball cap, which is to an American baseball cap the same way a Greyhound is to a Sheepdog. It fits snug to your waxed tiny head, except for the bill, which is comically large.

I think it is a prestige item among the youth of France as to who has the tiniest head. I watch two boys hail each other on the street, and I imagine their (verbal, this is France) struggle for dominance:

"Salut, DJ Stephane, I hate ze peegs, comment allez-vous?"

"Oui oui, MC Jean-Luc, ze peegs, she is to hate, non? Especialment by ze bad-ass gangsta batards comme nous, hein?"

"Ah bon. you do not go to work out, to do ze jog?"

"Mais non! I cannot to dirty my new running shoe, quoi? Moi, I am ze bad mozzer-fooker!"

"Putain merde, I spit on your baditude, c'est moi ze most ba—"(snatches off cap)  "Regard, ze head, she is tiny like ze insect!"

"You are to make me laugh, Honky-Neegah, it is I who have ze head tiny... tiny as ze *zob* of your papa!"

(Random yelling and posturing as seen in, and carefully memorized from, an old NWA video. Finally, a compromise):

"Boof, Stephane, fils-d'pute... We will have zees settled by anozzer... regard, ze big Anglais wizz ze enormous head who stands zere watching, he shall judge, d'accord?"

"OK. Ah, pardon, monsieur, if you please, monsieur—monsieur, please come back..? Ah, merde."

And so I walked on.

The other main current of Men's fashion is the natural-fiber drunken poet look, where you dress in scarf, dark jacket of leather or heavy cloth, big baggy cream-or-grey pullover, denim jeans, and heavy leather shoes. You kind of scruff up your hair, get a distant hurt look in your eyes, and hang out in bars with a cigarette in one hand. It helps not to sleep or to sleep way too much. The goal is to look like a drunken poet, or for the more prosaic, a drunk.

Say things like "...ah...bon.... ... ze woman.... she ees a, a world of her own, quoi.... boof..." (drag on cig with squinted eyes, blow out) "phew..... .... ...." (shrug) "..." (look off to side, cease responding to conversation)

Women have a simpler time of it in France. All they have to do is be is very skinny. Now, this may be the expectation for American women too, who go kill themselves in "health" clubs after driving 30 miles to get there stressing out and scarfing Cheetos in their car. But life has dealt the French Woman Who Wants To Be Skinny an easier hand. She never has to go to a gym. She doesn't count calories. She lives in a place where to eat fast food. You have to *walk* a half-mile there and back and walk fast. She has to run up and down three flights of steps just to use the bathroom.

To see how it feels to be a French Woman, think thoughts like "I must get to ze Centre Commercial because my leetle cousin Jean-Luc has demanded ze truly tiny caps zey have there, and ze bus, he is leaving—PUTAIN MERDE—and my boyfriend, he is to drink too much and he forget to pick me up today after he smoke all my cigarette, ze, ze SALAUD, he do not talk to me, he stand zere in his stupid bar all morning—ZUT! I got to run to catch ze other bus, and I got 2 minutes to eat zees lump of cheese, but i weel swear I am to vomeet eef my boss touch my leg again today, I know he should not do zat, but eet ees because his WIFE'S FAULT, she ees not WOMAN ENOUGH to satisfy heem. How I hate her."

Fume and burn 400 calories an hour.

It all combines to produce a skinny, tall French girl who usually dresses in a feminine version of the Drunken Poet look. Even if genetics conspire to keep her chunky, she has at her disposal long tailored jackets that could make the Himalayas look like a mole-hill.

Then, on about her 30th birthday, she takes a government-supplied pill and immediately transforms from tall and skinny to short and brick-shaped, like Gerard Depardieu in a skirt. At this point she is issued with several cute children that she will push around in arctic weather, at 2 in the morning, their little beady eyes staring suspiciously out from under their layers of hats and blankets.

Those who don't care for children are given dogs instead.