On Loud Talking
Sorry je ne suis pas sorry
Pfff.
So yesterday morning I was invited to a fancy new pilates place in the 6th called Studio Rituel for a private lesson with its founder and it was heaven. A big perk of my work is getting to try out stuff like this. I was in a fantastique mood after the class, a spring regained in my step and the cold I’ve been suffering for days somehow lifted.
I was even happier when I ran into a friend in the locker room after class. I hadn’t seen her for a while so we had a few things to catch up on. She is Italian-American-French which is relevant not only because we were discussing the potential pros and cons of bilingual schools, but also because of what came next.
At one point I noticed there was another, older lady who’d wound up in between us at her locker and I moved around her towards my pal, to give her space. The woman gave me a death stare and hissed: “you speak sooooo loudly. You should know. SO loudly.” (Unclear if she was referring to me or both of us).
Our eyes widened at each other, my friend and I. The woman’s tone was just so aggressive, as if we’d physically accosted her. My friend quietly replied (in perfect French) “well Madame, you could begin by saying it nicely.” She scowled at us, repeated her accusations and trudged off in a huff. I couldn’t even wish the same gift from the endorphin Gods upon her as I’d had —she’d already exercised!
I can’t say I was shocked by this run-in though. Caught off-guard yes, but nowhere near as shocked as I was the first time. You see, this is the fourth, maybe fifth time an older French person I don’t know has verbally aggressed me, or someone I’m with, in public, for loud-talking. Most times, the accusers have been women over 60.
And you know what, it really pisses me off. Because as much as I respect that I am in a different country than my own, with different customs, this one is a cultural norm I simply refuse to get behind. I must draw the line somewhere. My loud-(ish) voice can’t and shan’t be broken!
Besides, it’s so engrained in my upbringing I wouldn’t be able to quiet it if I tried. “Speak up” said teachers, “project” said my mother, “look me in the eye and make your point” said my Dad. Ironically I was awarded first prize at a province-wide French public speaking competition when I was twelve. In hindsight, the judges must have been overcome by my volume.
I’ve discussed this with my Parisian husband at length. French traditional education involves teaching children to be discreet. To speak quietly. To be largely seen and not heard. This works in the adults’ favour in a lot of ways —though they’re apparently entirely unconcerned with stifling the child’s passion, pride, or indeed will to be heard.
Let me nip something in the bud right here: I am in no way advocating for the trendy but controversial “education positive” — but rejecting being walked all over one’s kids doesn’t have to mean buying into every aspect of old school Frenchness. There’s gotta be a juste millieu (compromise!).
Because in my opinion, the quiet-talking oppression of their youth is a large contributing factor to my fully-grown French friends’ abject terror at making any kind of public speaking presentation. And it makes sense. You spend so long being taught to shut up, when you’re called upon to speak up, it’s positively phobia-inducing.
To be fair I think the quietness it’s also a reaction to the sheer lack of space per capita in this city; a need to be mindful of other people’s space. Not that quiet-talking is imposed on anyone in, say, New York City, with its comparable denseness.
But there’s a second element to it that really gets me: I only ever see or hear females being criticised for speaking too loudly. I know lots of bellow-y French males that are never told to fermer-la (shut it). Yet my daughter, and other excited-by-life little things like her, are regularly told to tone it down. That they’re too much. And while admittedly, I myself would often like her to hush, I’ve decided not to go down this path. I want her to speak up, and speak loudly if that’s what her particular emotion calls for, especially if it’s positive emotion.
So this time, once my friend had gone into her class and I’d thanked my teacher, I ran out after the woman in the street.
Madame! I caught up with her. She whipped around. I forced a smile and addressed her in French. “Madame, I’m sorry, but people are allowed to speak however they wish. It’s a free country. We weren’t even speaking that loudly, but even if we were, it would be our prerogative to do so. There is no sign or instruction not to catch up with friends in the change room. We are all adults and you are not our teacher.” I trembled with rage but did my best to hide it.
Her: "Well there must be something wrong with you!” she now shouted.
Me: “Maybe you were particularly bothered by us because we were speaking English?”
She turned on her heel. I suspect she knew deep down it was true. The English bit.
Because this is the other thing. The fabled anti-American/ anti-British/ anti-any big fat tourist speaking anything but French sentiment in Paris has largely vanished of late. Paris has internationalised massively in the past half-century, accelerated in the almost-decade since Brexit. The post 2016 foreigner exodus from London did Paris a lot of good, financially at the very least. It is the undisputed capital of Fashion these days. Its art scene too, has few competitors. Plus, for better or worse, Paris has caught up with every lifestyle trend imaginable, from modern coffee, to Kobido, gyrotonics, natural birthing, cycling lanes, and tech startups. Macron’s outward-looking business stance merits recognition here too -in my opinion- don’t shoot me!
But cultural modernity comes in many forms. And as much as we anglophones have a lot to learn from the French way of life, I’ll leave them to their quiet muttering and they’re going to have to leave me to my natural, cultural tendency to project my voice. Live and let live, or suffer the consequences of an endorphin-hyped Canadian in a stretchy Tory Birch crop-top giving you an earful on the street. Ironically, it was very Parisian of me to confront her about it.
Sorry je ne suis pas sorry.
Here’s some other stuff I’ve been thinking about this week:
To what extent was this photo staged? And what will come of this little rendezvous?
What the heck triggered the unlikely feud between Jack Schlossberg and Anna Wintour?
*IS* Staud founder Sarah Staundinger the Queen of LA? (Thanks for flagging this Pandora Sykes). Either way, her dresses are the answer to summer-wedding sartorial drama imo.
On May 13th Kim Kardashian will testify in Paris against the “grandpa robbers” who broke into her apartment, tied her up and held her at gunpoint in 2016. Since then a terrifying series of copycat robberies targeting influencers, actresses and socialites, to varying degrees of violence, have been set off around the city. Apparently, this trend continues because the robbers aren’t scared enough of jail time around here. What penalty will these guys get? Will lawyer-Kim bring new evidence? Will she come up in the spot looking extra fly? Almost definitely. Will it be televised? Definitely not — TV cameras are not allowed in French courts, regardless of public interest, so we’ll have to rely on written journalist accounts and sketches. Tant mieux.
As an American woman over 60 who was never told to be quiet and who engages in dynamic and loud conversations regularly on my home turf, one of the things I love about Paris is how relatively quiet the restaurants are because people are speaking to each other with restraint. I don’t equate that practice with being able to speak one’s mind since the French seem to me to be ready to do that anywhere, anytime. I have always just thought that speaking in low tones in public was part of the social contract.So I don’t support a movement encouraging people to talk louder in Paris. And, of course, I don’t support the “over 60” (agism alert!) woman’s rudeness. It seems to me that the rudeness is the real issue here and is actually something Parisians might tone down.
Unfortunately I have to agree with the scold and say…Americans are loud, not only in paris, but everywhere. It’s a cultural thing and it’s very noticable. Practically in any other country in Europe Americans stand out by speaking louder than the “regular” local volume, to an extent that you can hear every detail of their conversation. Go to dinner at any restaurant in New York and typically the volume of the place requires you to scream over others to be heard. The noise is sometimes deafening. This being said, older women are typically the only ones that like to instruct strangers on any behavioral topic, which is why it’s mostly brought up by them.