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CULTURE

OPINION: Please stop saying that French people smell – we do wash every day

Well aware of the stereotypes surrounding France, French writer Gwendoline Gaudicheau was nonetheless shocked to be told she smelled 'surprisingly good' - she delves into what lies behind the cliché that the French don't wash.

Published: 23 September 2020 17:15 CEST
Updated: 6 July 2023 11:21 CEST
OPINION: Please stop saying that French people smell - we do wash every day
This photograph taken on November 3, 2022 shows "Savon de Marseille" soap on a supermarket shelf (Photo by Christophe SIMON / AFP)

When abroad, I – a French person – have been told several times that I smelled “surprisingly good”. When discussing these rather odd comments with my French pals I learned that it happened to some of them to.

Though I was aware of international questions about our hygiene, I genuinely thought the ‘smelly French person’ stereotype was a joke and widely known to be untrue, but it turns out a lot of non-French people still think we are a stinky nation.

While I understand than when visiting France, and especially big cities like Paris and Marseille, clean is not the word you’d use to describe our streets, the inhabitants are – generally – quite clean and nice smelling.

Where does it come from?

But the rumour that French people are not the fondest of water and soap actually goes back to before World War II.

At that time, Paris, like many other European cities, had very little indoor plumbing facilities – generally only in the fancier areas of the city. With no shower or bath in their homes, many French people could not bathe frequently and had to either share bathroom facilities with neighbours or use the bains douches municipaux (public bathing facilities).

Even after the war ended and the plumbing situation improved, the cliché remained and was even fed by British taboids in the 1990s.

 

At that time, articles were written addressing how the French bathed less and used less soap than the Brits after a survey came out in 1998. It said that each French person used 600g of toilet soap each year compared to 1.4kg for a Briton.

But what was not mentioned was the fact that at that time, shower gel was way more popular in France than it was in the UK, which could explain the soap gap.

Others say that the cliché was also kept alive by jealous competitors to the renowned French perfume industry. It is not rare to hear than these delightful scents are only due to the fact the French needed to come up with good products to cover up their bad smell.

Shower over bath

“I think that it’s the contrary, sometimes people’s perfumes are very strong and mix when in the métro and it’s then that it smells bad,” 24-year-old French student Mathilde told The Local.

But if French people love – sometimes a bit too much – their perfumes, it does not mean they skip the shower part each day. In fact, according to a survey issued by Euromonitor, French people shower more than Brits, though they bathe less.

“Who has the time to bathe everyday, I’d rather take a quick and efficient shower and sleep more than spend 30 minutes in a bathtub,” Clémence, a student in Paris told The Local.

Indeed, bathing is not so much a French thing: it takes time and it’s not great for the environment. Though children bathe a lot, adults tend to only do it when they feel stressed and want to relax. 

It’s also true that many smaller apartments in France are not equipped with a bathtub.

Remaining cleaning issues  

Though once the shower part is over, we may have some other sanitary habits to work on.

“Compared to other cultures, we are considered as quite dirty with for example people not washing their hands after using the toilet,” 23-year-old Inès told The Local.

According to an IFOP survey shared by Le Parisien in February 2020 (prior to the start of the pandemic), only 75 percent of French women and 68 percent of French men said they washed their hands after going to the bathroom.

On the same idea, only 42 percent of women and 31 percent of men said they washed their hands after using public transport.

And – in news that might strike a blow to the cliché of Frenchmen as great dates – one fifth apparently admitted to not changing their underwear every day.

But for 23-year-old Marie, if the stereotype is much attached to French people, it’s also something you hear about other nationalities.

“I have heard it said that German people are very hairy and smell,” she told The Local.

It’s my experience that French people don’t smell that much, sure there are some with poor hygiene, but that’s also true of people in other countries.

Member comments

  1. I’ve never ever heard any one describe the French as smelly, but if you say, as a French person, that is the comment you’ve experienced I must believe you. It’s never occurred to me that the French smell except generally nice. The use of bidets has always been strange to the British it seems, one of the more sensible additions to a bathroom but completely absent from the average British home except as embarrassed smutty giggles. Cleanliness is the idiocy of the last 100 years and can be put down to the brilliantly success of the likes of Lever Brothers et al. One of the Royal family has, I read, bought a house in Los Angeles with 7 bedrooms and 19 bathrooms … What on earth do they do all day? Do you smell? Is your home smelly? Is your kitchen hygienic? It’s all bollocks peddled by companies wanting to instil fear and doubt to sell their products 90% of which are unnecessary. I’m sliding off topic here so I’ll leave it.

  2. It is something of a long standing joke in many English cultures but one I have not found to be true. I live in an agricultural region and we work hard…so people do get sweaty and can smell by the end of the day…that is perfectly natural.

    When I moved to the UK over 20 years ago people stank…using the Underground and buses in London was an endurance test…fortunately there too hygiene seems to have improved over the years…

  4. I spent a week in Versailles as a schoolboy at the Lycéé Hoche in 1952. I will forever remember the smell when travelling on the métro – Gauloises, alcohol and body odour. I have not been on the métro for a few years, but if my experiences in other parts of France are anything to go by there is no longer a problem!

  5. It’s something I have never heard any of my British friends say or even imply. The only Brits who I can imagine saying anything so unpleasant are those who still think Britain has an empire.

    Or Daily Mail/Express/Telegraph editorials of course. But then the truth is a foreign country to them too (-:

  6. Rob, with his comment on London Underground is very correct. It is much better but can still be a shock to the senses. The French no more deserve the reputation than any other nationality. It also depends on how much garlic we use.

  7. I live in the South of France. I find that the French do not smell at all but in the spring and autumn someone turns up in the supermarket and you can smell them up and down the aisles. I always thought it might be the Germans but I’m not sure.

  8. In a few months I will be celebrating 3 years since I moved from UK to sweaty, garlicy Provence. Tout le monde ici smells just fine.

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CULTURE

How many of France’s ’10 most iconic women’ can you name?

Ten monumental golden statues representing French women from the worlds of art, literature, sport and politics are shortly to go on display in Paris - but how many of these famous names do you recognise?

Published: 18 September 2024 15:34 CEST
How many of France's '10 most iconic women' can you name?

They were one of the early highlights of the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris this summer, emerging from the River Seine near the Alexandre-III bridge as the flotilla of boats carrying international athletes passed.

Now golden status of the 10 famous women have been made and are on display in Cour d’honneur of the French National Assembly until October 5th, while more permanent homes for them are discussed. Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo hopes to install them along rue de La Chapelle in the 18th arrondissement.

It will go some way towards closing that statuery gap – there are currently around 260 statues of men in the French capital, and just 40 women.

This temporary free exhibition will enable visitors to admire these polymer resin sculptures, created by 3D printing and designed to withstand the elements, by registering in advance on the Assemblée nationale website.

But, who are the women they celebrate and honour? Some might be familiar to international readers while others are barely known outside France.

Christine de Pizan (1364-1431) 

The oldest of the inspirational women remembered at the Olympic Games’ Opening Ceremony by some distance.

De Pizan was France’s first woman of letters, the first woman to earn a living as a writer. 

She started her career in the court of King Charles VI, following the deaths of her father and husband in rapid succession, leaving the family – she had three children – without a traditional source of income.

Her works were forgotten for several centuries, but resurfaced in the 1980s thanks to the rise of feminist studies – and, today, she is revered as one of history’s earliest feminists. Her most famous work, La cité des dames (The City of Ladies), clinically dismantles patriarchal discrimination and misogyny.

Jeanne Barret (1740-1807)

Explorer and botanist Barret was born into poverty in rural Burgundy – and went on to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe, while working as a ‘valet’ to doctor and botanist Philibert Commerson. 

At the time, the French navy banned women from their vessels, so she had to undertake the journey around the world in disguise, and was known as Jean. Her tireless work – she took charge of an expedition in Brazil when Commerson was unfit to work – earned her the respect of the crew and the expedition’s captain Louis-Antoine de Bougainville.

She and Commerson kept her true identity – and their relationship – secret for a year. In fact, such was his respect for her that Bougainville, after whom the botanist had named a plant, later wrote to King Louis XVI and requested that she be honoured with the title femme extraordinaire.

Olympe de Gouges (1748-1793)

Playwright, activist, abolitionist, disheartened revolutionary – feminist icon de Gouges is best known for her  Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne (Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen), written in scathing response to the Revolutionary Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen and demanding full legal, political and social assimilation of women.

She also wrote in favour of the abolition of slavery, and was initially in favour of the 1789 Revolution – but grew disenchanted by the lack of progress of women’s rights in its aftermath. 

De Gouges was executed by guillotine in 1793, after writing repeated literary attacks on the regime and leader Maximilien Robespierre.

Louise Michel (1830-1905)

If ever you see anarchists raise a black flag during a protest, remember Louise Michel – the teacher, anarchist and leading light of the Paris Commune, a French revolutionary government that seized power in Paris from 18th March to 28th May, 1871.

She was transported to Nouvelle-Caledonie in punishment for her role in the Commune. There, she took up the plight of the indigenous Kanak people, taking their side in a revolt in 1878. 

In 1880, amnesty was granted to those who had participated in the Paris Commune. Michel returned to Paris, her revolutionary passion undiminished. And she proudly waved a black flag at a jobless demonstration in Paris in March 1883 – it is, historians say, the first use of the modern anarchists’ symbol.

Alice Guy (1873-1968)

French cinema remembers the Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis. It remembers the visionary Georges Méliès, and early directors Marcel Pagnol and Jean Renoir – the son of the artist. And it honours Godard, Truffaut and Rohmer. The list of male cineastes in France is long.

Alice Guy routinely gets lost in the shuffle. She shouldn’t. She was the first woman to direct a film – La Fée aux choux in 1896; one of the first to make a movie with a distinct narrative; and, for a decade between 1896 to 1906, was probably the only female filmmaker in the world.

Guy was a cinema pioneer in many ways. She experimented with Gaumont’s Chronophone sync-sound system, colour-tinting, interracial casting, and special effects. 

Her Hollywood film A Fool and His Money – made with a wholly African-American cast – is considered to have historical and aesthetic significance and is preserved at the National Center for Film and Video Preservation at the American Film Institute.

And her 1906 33-minute film La vie du Christ, which tells the story of Jesus Christ in 25 tableaux based on the gospels, is sometimes cited as the first ‘epic’ movie. As was the case with many Guy  films, it was for a long time wrongly attributed to Victorin Jasset – her assistant in charge of directing exterior scenes and managing the extras.

Alice Milliat (1884-1957)

There’s still a vast distance to travel, but women’s sport might not even be where it is today without Milliat. 

While noted misogynist Pierre de Coubertin – he once famously said that a woman’s role at the Olympic Games should be to crown the winners – gets all the Olympic glory, Milliat was responsible for getting the men-only club to, finally, allow women to compete.

She founded the Fédération Française Sportive Féminine in 1917. She helped organise the 1922 Women’s World Games – which were originally called the Jeux Olympiques Féminins and which ran for four editions until 1934, and which prompted the International Olympic Committee to slowly and belatedly allow female competition.

She also managed a French women’s association football team that toured the United Kingdom in 1920. In 2021, a commemorative statue of Milliat was unveiled at the French Olympic Committee’s headquarters in Paris.

Paulette Nardal (1896-1985)

Journalist, activist, woman of letters and pioneer of ‘black intellectualism’, Nardal, who was born in Martinique, was also the first black woman to study at the Sorbonne.

In October 1931, she founded the journal La Revue du Monde Noir (Review of the Black World) with her sisters; French novelist Louis Jean Finot; Haitian scholar Léo Sajous; and Clara W Shepard, an African-American teacher and translator. 

On her return to Martinique in 1944, Nardal founded Le Rassemblement féminin. Le Rassemblement féminin, one of two feminist organisations at the time whose goals were to increase the number of women who voted in the 1945 elections.

Then, from 1946 to 1948 Nardal was a delegate to the United Nations, working with both the UN Department for Non-Autonomous Territories and the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)

De Beauvoir’s 1949 work The Second Sex is considered a “trailblazing work in feminist philosophy”, and is a foundation work of modern feminism. 

But she considered herself a writer rather than a philosopher. She won the 1954 Prix Goncourt, the 1975 Jerusalem Prize, and the 1978 Austrian State Prize for European Literature, and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1961, 1969 and 1973.

More controversially, she lost a teaching job amid accusations of inappropriate behaviour and she and long-time partner Jean-Paul Sartre campaigned for the release of people convicted of child sex offences.

Simone Veil (1927-2017)

Simone Veil survived Auschwitz and later Bergen-Belsen and went on to become one of France’s most respected politicians, steering through landmark laws to liberalise contraception and abortion.

She is best known for leading the successful campaign to legalise abortion in France – despite vicious abuse and threats – as the country’s first female minister of health in 1975. 

Veil later became the first female president of the European Parliament, where she served for three years, before returning to work for the French government again.

She was given an honorary damehood from the British government, and awarded the Grand Cross of the Légion D’Honneur in France. She died in 2017, and became just the fourth women to be interred in the Parthenon, after scientist Marie Curie, and two resistance fighters Genevieve de Gaulle-Anthonioz and Germaine Tillion.

In 2021, Josephine Baker was also honoured at the Parthenon, nearly half a century after her death.

Gisèle Halimi (1927-2020)

“Politics is too serious a matter to be left to men alone.” Tunisian-born lawyer, feminist activist and co-founder of equality movement Choisir la cause des femmes said that in 1978. 

In early 1972, a year after Choisir was founded, Halimi successfully defended a teenager who was on trial for illegally aborting a pregnancy after she had been raped in the Parisian suburb of Bobigny.

The teenager’s mother and three others were also charged with conspiring to commit the illegal abortion.

It was a landmark case that paved the way for Simone Veil to persuade France’s parliament to legalise abortions in France two years later.

In 1981, Halimi was elected as an MP, where she was a vociferous campaigner for the abolition of the death penalty, and tabled bills promoting women’s rights.

Four years later, she was appointed Ambassador and Permanent Delegate of France to UNESCO, and, in 1989, she was appointed special advisor to the French delegation to the UN General Assembly in New York.

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