All You Need To Be Impossibly French by Helena Frith Powell

"The big thing is the souci de soi or the care of oneself in every way. This means brains and looks, you can't let yourself go and be intellectually rigorous. In other words, the French would sooner forgive an extra-marital affair than a bad haircut."

All You Need To Be Impossibly French by Helena Frith Powell is about how to stay thin and beautiful à la French starting from your pre-teens to well into your sixties. Powell is an expat-British woman living in France, who has bought wholly into what she believes every French woman (with emphasis on every) believes about skincare, hair care, slimming, fashion, and other such self-care regimes. She praises the French women to the skies while disparaging the British and American women. The former look after themselves, the latter let themselves go.

Powell interviewed dozens of women in the fashion industry: supermodels, director of Chanel, Elle magazine editor, actresses, fashion icons, design and style gurus, among a host of others for insights into what makes French women "beautiful, intelligent, and elegant." The books covers the first and last, while assuming that the two together make the woman intelligent.

Here are some of the nuggets that she gleaned from her interviews and slavishly believed and adopted for herself. (Luckily, she decided to stay away from the incessant smoking that's a national pastime for the French.)

"Fashion is deeply ingrained in the psyche of the French woman. She hates to be badly dressed, and by badly dressed doesn't just mean in bad taste but in the wrong outfit for an event, including staying at home on a Sunday."

"French women are definitely more stylish when it comes to drinking. An English girl will drink and drink until she is drunk; it's horrible."

"Whereas, in France you might see a well-dressed woman with a bra strap showing, in England they go wearing practically nothing but their underwear. Sexiness is not about revealing everything."

"French women like a nice way of life and that doesn't include gyms and spending hours doing sit-ups. They have creams that can do all the work. The women spend more than 91 million dollars on slimming creams and gels."

"Lingerie is fundamental to way a woman feels. Matching, elegant, well-made underwear sets the whole tone for the day. It's the key to a French woman's self-confidence and assurance."

"One thing I started doing is sleeping is sleeping of my back instead of on my side to prevent wrinkles from forming."

"Here you see people with grandchildren and they still look sexy. They have this ageing this sussed. They continue to take pride in their appearance, they look polished."

"The battle of the bulge starts in the perfumery and the pharmacy. There you will find a range of products, all essentially the same aim of keeping you thin and beautiful."

"A woman who looks after herself, who takes the time to take her make-up off and cleanse is teaching the first gift of beauty to her child. The morning and evening cleansing ritual is the most important beauty tip you can pass on to them."

So the beauty regimen includes: not eating very much, diet pills, anti-ageing pills, manicures and pedicures, weekly hair blow-outs, face and body exfoliation, slimming creams, twice daily cleansing routine, slimming creams, and the list goes on. And this is just body care. There's shopping for these products, shopping for elegant and costly underwear, and shopping for beautiful and expensive clothes. Where does one find the time to fit all of this into a day that also includes food shopping, cooking, cleaning, taking care of family, and working? I'm mystified!

Powell is happier with the change in herself now. She believes, she's thinner, healthier, and stylish. She looks different and acts different, and this is a positive thing. She has become used to being like this and can't go back now, because it makes her feel good.

"During a recent trip to Paris a courier stopped me on his bike outside the Louvre to ask me for directions. I have rarely been more flattered; to be mistaken for a French woman is one thing. To be mistaken for a Parisian is more that I could have hoped for." This was the ultimate in Powell's year-in-training, as she calls it, while spending thousands of dollars on creams, potions, lingerie, clothing, nail-care, hair-care, body-care, diet pills, exercises, you-name-it.

An aside: These days, with so many tourists and so many foreign expats in Paris, being mistaken for a local has gotten easier. Ten years ago, we were mere tourists with no makeup, touristy clothes, and bad French wandering the streets of Paris and gawking at everything in sight. We were still stopped and asked for directions in French by a Frenchman. Luckily, we were able to direct him appropriately and received profuse thanks in return.