Monday, May 12, 2008
When it comes to teaching their toddlers about sex, they really do do things differently in France
May 12, 1998 | BY DEBRA S. OLLIVIER | Every country has its cultural stereotypes, and none is woven more deeply into the fabric of its society than the association of the French with sex. Few would disagree that the French are more laissez-faire than Americans in this department. And indeed, while tales of Latin braggadocio and sexual virtuosity are often more mythic than factual, the daily reality in which French kids grow up (and presumably become those virtuoso Latin lovers) is decidedly different. In other words, the playing fields for French kids and their American counterparts are far from level. A sloppy French kiss at elementary school solicits laughs, not expulsion. Naked toddlers, who run bare-assed on public beaches long after American kids are required to don suits, are rarely reprimanded for touching one another at day-care potty central; rather, they're frequently left to explore the terrain. Later in life, instead of being singled out as a special subject, sex education is part of standard junior high school biology in France (in my preteen days, it was presented with the solemnity of a slightly alarming liturgical rite in gender-specific auditoriums). This is right around when American girls fret over training bras, which don't exist in France because, well, what's there to train?
Even language reveals sexual mores: In Victorian times, France was considered so libidinous that even the English language couldn't cope, which explains in great measure our abundance of French sex words -- from French kissing and ménage-à-trois to the vulgarities we excuse with "pardon my French." And the French language continues to bloom with cutely flamboyant diminutives for toddler genitals -- "foufounette," "zezette," "zizi" -- in stark contrast to English, which offers little beyond the generic "bottom," "pee-pee" or "wee-wee."
But nowhere do children's sexual landscapes diverge more flagrantly than when it comes to toys. Consider this: In recent years Mattel has fitted Barbie's body with unremovable flowered white panties. Meanwhile, the French doll company Corolle (owned by Mattel) has been successfully selling a very different kind of doll on the mass European market for decades. Recently, my friend's French toddler introduced me to one of these dolls; its name is Fanfan, and with the fierce pride of someone who'd just discovered a new phylum of animal life, my friend's daughter lifted up its tiny pants and declared, "Look! It pees!" What took me by surprise, however, was not the little drops of phony pee. It was the doll's little uncircumcised plastic penis. I found out later that these dolls and other French children's products are players in a bull pit of cultural commerce, where claims of French promiscuity and American Puritanism relentlessly butt heads.
For starters, anatomically correct dolls do exist in the States. You just have to look long and hard for them. You'll find American dolls that burp, pee, snort and eat, but, as Joanne Oppenheim, president of the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio (an independent guide to kids' toys and books) explains, "Most anatomically correct dolls available in the U.S. are for the school market. The few that we've seen here have been especially unattractive -- with belly button bandages and baby faces only a mother could love."
As for the lifelike, anatomically correct Corolle dolls, you won't find them in any mainstream toy stores because, according to Beau James, director of North American Operations for Corolle, "The mass market is reticent to sell sexed dolls ... The U.S. is still a Puritanical society. Sex is something that Americans don't want out in the open." This statement is laced with contradiction, of course, because while shielding children from the prurient influences of the outside world may be high on the national agenda, kids live in a culture where sex sells everything from mufflers to freeze-dried coffee. And when it comes to dolls, every day millions of American children play with bombshell, mass-market Barbie, who's far more sexual -- panties or no panties -- than a pudgy, anatomically correct Corolle doll. Then again, as far as genitals are concerned, we're in the realm of meta-sexuality here. As M.C. Lord points out in her book "Forever Barbie," Barbie is a "space-age fertility archetype," a "template of 'femininity' imposed on [a] sexless effigy -- which underscores the irrelevance of actual genitalia to perceptions of gender. What nature can only approximate, plastic makes perfect."
So while "fertility archetype" Barbie is made over to look more like "real life," you can forget the genitals in America and, by extension, the messy business of having sex and babies. As for those functional dolls that purport to teach kids about the proverbial birds and bees, Oppenheim isn't very effusive. "We had a rash of pregnancy dolls, all of which gave children misconceptions about how babies were born. There was one with a pop-off belly and a baby inside -- it also came with a flat tummy and no stretch marks -- and another doll that moved inside a sack; when the sack was opened the child discovered if it was a girl or a boy from the blue or pink ribbon on the doll. Talk about misinformation!"
Clearly, giving American children more of the real thing (and less "misinformation") could alleviate a certain amount of infantile embarrassment about the body that may continue to spore in an air of Puritanism. If nothing else, it would certainly prevent some basic confusion. I'm reminded of a friend's American husband who was around 8 years old when he first saw an uncircumcised penis. "I was in a ballpark urinal when I saw this guy peeing," he said. "I looked down at him and was horrified. I thought the guy had lost part of his dick in an industrial accident or a war." (Imagine his surprise when he realized that he was the one who'd actually lost part of his penis.)
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