Méritance

Ah yes. The international online sport of French bashing. This social hobby dates back to the Hundred Years' War and can be traced through the ages with every political tension when France has policy disagreements with its western neighbours — and some of those disagreements are weighty enough to deserve their own essay entirely: the neocolonial financial grip on fourteen African countries, the arms sold to conflicts France publicly deplores. But that is not what we are here for today.

What we are here for is considerably more petty, and considerably more entertaining.

You have probably met a few French person or two if you live in the anglophone world. They're known for exclusively speaking Frenglish in London — all errs and urrhms — for French-shopping in every Australian supermarket, and for being, if American women on the internet are to be believed, remarkably effective at making off with other people's boyfriends. But one current runs through all these countries, a stereotype so consistent it has become its own genre of online content: the French man on a date.

French men are renowned for being tight. They are equally renowned for being disgustingly romantic. And somehow — bafflingly, paradoxically — both accusations come from the same people about the same dates.

Because every anglophone who has ever been on a date with a French man has a version of the same story. It started at two in the afternoon. There was a museum, unhurried. A café, then another. A dinner that arrived somewhere around ten. And at some point across the table, in the low light, he told her that her father must have been a thief — because how else could she have stolen the stars and put them in her eyes.

And then he split the bill.

But here's the thing. I'm not going to sit here and argue that the French aren't tight — but what I will say is that they just know when something is not worth the price tag. Because French culture is still steeped in l'artisanat, which they take as seriously as the craftsmanship behind the work itself. France's backbone is arguably in functional art, and still littered across the country you have schools dedicated to passing on the art of savoir-faire — stone, leather, fashion, ironwork, painting, preservation, woodwork. The list goes on. And these jobs are still respected in society, even if the wages for this type of work haven't caught up with inflation and the cost of living crisis.

A large part of their financial discontent, I believe, comes from American consumerist tendencies seeping into the country — filtered first through their British neighbours across the Channel and arriving in France already diluted — leaving the French perpetually dissatisfied with a quality that doesn't merit what they're being asked to pay. After all, as the saying goes: when America takes a shit, Britain wipes its arse. And the French are given the offcuts to make do with.

Take McDonald's, for example. Britain, with its complicated relationship with food culture, welcomed the American chain with practically open arms. But nearly four decades after its launch in California, when McDonald's arrived in France, the story took considerably more twists and turns. Lawsuits, rebranding, reclaimed franchises — and eventually, branches burning to the ground. The French are, or perhaps were, proud foodies. The country has a deep agricultural and culinary tradition, and it does not take kindly to shortcuts.

José Bové is perhaps the most vivid illustration of this. A farmer, union activist, and one of France's most celebrated anti-globalisation figures, Bové led the partial dismantling of a McDonald's under construction in Millau in 1999, in direct protest against American trade sanctions on French goods — Roquefort among them. He was arrested, tried, and became a folk hero. During the demonstration, he hosted a Roquefort tasting. His words at the time: "The Americans took Roquefort hostage, so we had to act beyond the law to defend ourselves."

That's the spirit.

Coming back to the topic: the French know good food. They also know good booze, good fashion, good labour, and good company. They are still fighting for a good life. A noble pursuit. And I think they are on the very edge of a cultural revolution — not a political one, but a personal one. Because they know the difference between quality and cheap crap imported from China under a highly consumeristic American model of capitalism. They have always known. They just haven't quite named it yet.

By virtue of being born French, they don't like cheap products sold for market value instead of real cost — and that, my friend, is why he insists you buy your own Jack and Coke. And quietly notes, without saying a word, that you don't drink wine.

The French take things personally. And at scale, they feel and enact revolt. This spark of revolution is passed down through generations simply by virtue of being French — over dinner, in work, in schools. If you don't like something, you say it. This can be in itself a form of profound respect, or profound disrespect, depending on the company.

In contemporary France, I believe the only place you can still find liberté, égalité, and fraternité together is over the dining table — and anything goes, because it will always revolve around the two things anglophones are explicitly told never to raise in polite company: politics and religion.

The French know that ideas can only be fully formed and correctly expressed over two hours at a table with people you know and people who are guests. There is something quietly radical about this. The young find their voice in the company of elders who have been there and done that; the elders are kept honest by peers still figuring things out themselves. The table is where the philosophy is formed. It is also where the standard is set — for the wine, for the food, for the argument. Quality is not aspirational at a French table. It is assumed. And when the quality of what is served — literally or figuratively — falls below what is owed, the French notice. They file it. They discuss it. And then, eventually, they act.

The guillotine.

Let's get onto it.

The guillotine is not merely history in France. It is a piece of furniture moved to the attic but never thrown away. Among certain dinner tables it is raised as an honest suggestion — entirely seriously, with historical precedent cited in its favour. It has been done before. Why could it not be done again? The French carry the spirit of revolt as a reflexive response to perceived attacks on their culture and political dignity, and that spirit does not distinguish neatly between the eighteenth century and the present one.

I don't think it would take much. They are waiting, I think, for permission — or perhaps more precisely, for a name. For the thing they already feel to be given a shape they can march behind. Already, every spring when the frost thaws, they are out en masse protesting something new, and they will burn a Renault just to make sure those in power are reminded that all is still possible.

Currently, the French are force-fed consumerism à l'américain like a fat goose, and are bursting at the seams for something to be furious about — poised for a new French-style revolution, but not yet quite sure what they're revolting toward. They haven't named it yet.

By nature the French are refined in their consumerism, and are historically neither anti-materialist nor cluttered. Healthy French homes have everything that is needed and a few things that are wanted. They are not drowning in junk bought on next-day delivery. The instinct was always there — the artisan's instinct, the table's instinct — a quiet, practiced knowledge of what a thing is worth and what it is not.

But the landscape is changing, and the seams are showing. The French are growing more dissatisfied, and they feel the wrongness of it acutely, but haven't yet found the name for what they're already living.

So let me propose one.

Méritance. From mériter — to deserve, to be worth. The philosophy, practiced instinctively by the French for generations, of spending only where something has earned it. Not minimalism — there is pleasure here, and abundance, and beauty. Not maximalism — there is no excess for its own sake, no accumulation without intention. It is the love child of both, and it is wholly French. It means the farmer's market over Nestlé. The artisan over the algorithm. The thing that lasts over the thing that ships tomorrow. It means knowing the difference between a price tag and a value, and refusing, flatly, to confuse the two.

I hope they will once and for all ditch Nestlé and opt for the farmer's market instead. I hope they'll buy locally, as it was always done, and abandon an imported culture that simply does not suit them. I imagine the revival of French seamstresses, of produits du terroir that extend beyond a handful of tourist boutiques. Bring back tearing down franchises. Bring back mami's recipes. Vivre la France, and long live the revolution.