Clarissa's Blog

François Hollande’s hairdresser is paid €9,895 per month for taking care of the politician’s thinning hair 24/7. 

There is this trend started by a very silly American expat to idealize the French in very bizarre ways. First, she published a strange (yet bestselling) book on how the French have collectively developed superior parenting skills that make American parents look like total idiots. This week, the expat published an article in The NY TIMES about how entirely indifferent the saintly French are to money and how they despise luxury and condemn inequality. 

In reality, of course, the French are as human as everybody else. Hollande’s hairdresser is not only a money-hungry fellow but also a bad father. He boasts that he missed his own child’s birth in order to stay close to Hollande and cater to his hair needs.

Moral of the story: exoticizing people is stupid. Everybody is human.