Bitter but toned American women, meet thin but flabby Frenchwomen

It turns out Americans and the French alike are responsible for keeping us from that Jane Brodyesque paradise in which no one consumes anything unhealthy and all get an hour of exercise a day, and then act smug about it in the intervening 23 hours. Seems we bring the bagels, and they the cigarettes, to the international table of decadence.

One thing that doesn't make sense in Jessica Seigel's op-ed: If we're supposed to take note of the fact that well-off French people smoke more than their American counterparts though the overall rates in the two countries are quite similar, and that this is somehow relevant in looking at the two nations' relative obesity problems, then what of the fact that well-off Americans are significantly thinner than poorer ones? "So those chic upper-crust French women trotting around not getting fat smoke far more than their American counterparts." Walk around comparable upscale areas of Paris and NYC (such torture that would be!) and you will see skinny women. Skinny women carrying Longchamp bags, accompanied by tiny dogs, which may or may not be carried in those bags. (In Paris, lap-dog-carrying is a workout; in NYC the dog is an accessory and the workout involves lifting things the size of Newfoundlands.) Basically, if poorer Americans are both the smokers and the ones more likely to be obese, then the Seigel hypothesis doesn't make too much sense.

What is really at stake, though, is that the French, for all their talk of slow meals, go more for immediate enjoyment, and Americans more for the abstract enjoyment that comes from knowing that you've had just the right about of vegetables and spent just enough time on the elliptical machine. A thin American woman will have a better body than a thin Frenchwoman, but will probably be a bit more, well, bitter.