Image of France around the World - Page 2

walter, americans are, on the whole, pretty careful about their personal hygiene to an extent very few other nations practice. the french, on a whole, seem to be less so. actually, there are groups a great deal less careful about that particular issue than the french, but that is a different story..

........or fart in your general direction .

During my life I have learned that there were three great myths I grew up with; Santa Claus, the Easter bunny and that France was not wonderful. After 20+ trips there, IMO, France is heaven on earth.

Me neither, I just said it to annoy Ernest.

De Paashaas

I agree that Americans have high standards of hygiene, as do Scandinavians. But aprat from those, I think french are doing ok. Much better than the english IMO.

I think most western european countries are doing ok. Some better than others. But when you move further south, or eastward it gets worse pretty quickly.

I actually like the french and france a lot. I am pretty pissed off over the actions and activities of a lot of french and the french leadership concerning the war on terror and on iraq, but that is a minor point. I do have to say that I have riden along with french sales people several times, and having spent a few weeks in cars with middle class french people (and not just one individual), I have to say that it is not a myth that their is a serious difference between the concept of hygien in americans and french. but the french are far from the worst, very far - I worked with an indian guy who literaly didn't bathe for long periods and rubbed some kind of butter based cream on himself, for religious reasons.

Poor you. Do you consider one shower a day (supposing you dont do sports) good hygiene?

everybody has what they are used to. I usually shower once a day, and if I excersize a second time. I use mostly unscented toiletries. I don't smoke, and almost nobody I know does. if I am having a cigar, I will change out the clothes I wear when I get home and shower and brush my teeth. I launder my underwear, shirt and socks every day, and rotate my suit or pants and shoes. During some times in my life I changed shirts at lunch every day, because of excessive heat and humidity. I am sure that there are people, probrably a lot of vegitarians, who may find my smell less than pleasant. this is the way that I am comfortable. I spent once 5 days with a french man who had 2 pair of pants, 2 jackets and 3 shirts for the 5 days. he was a smoker, and frankly I got to know his smell pretty well by the end of the week. it wasn't that bad, but it was very different from what an american would expect. I think that there is a lot of truth in some stereotypes - the fact that americans and french have different hygine habbits doens't make one or the other worse.

just one smeller than the other.