What makes French girls as serenely self-satisfied as purring cats...and catnip to the men who admire them?
We'd all be as free as the French girl if we looked like her, right? The stereotypical French girl is often insolently thin, casually chic, and fashionable despite a simple wardrobe. With or without makeup she is always put together and utterly self-confident, imbued with natural elegance and an elusive distance that is particularly, maddeningly French.
But this stereotype obscures delicious pardoxes about the French girl and her body. Yes, she does have an exasperating tendency to be thin. Reams have been written trying to decode the mystery of a people who smoke, drink, eat goose fat, and still look fabulous. But in reality, the French girl comes in a multitude of styles and body shapes, and whatever her figure, she looks remarkable and just plain sexy.
The French girl understands that sexy is a state of mind. Her relationship to food and her body is sensual, not tyrannical, and she takes pleasure in both.
Entre Nous copyright 2004 Debra Ollivier

Have you ever wondered how French women live life on their own terms? They seem to have conquered the modern world, with all its pressures and conflicting signals, while many of us elsewhere are struggling to balance love, sex, work and family. What French Women Know about Love, Sex and Other Matters of Heart and Mind, by Debra Ollivier, debunks long-standing myths about French women, and lets us in on the ways they have learned to take life as they want to live it. Going beyond the cliches of Gallic glamour, Ollivier looks at the guiding principles that play out in the French woman's world to challenge our own cherished notions about body politics, seduction and flirtation; sex and love; dating and marriage; motherhood and raising children. With fresh guiding metaphors from French sexperts, authors, actors and more, What French Women Know will reframe your cultural prejudices, providing more realistic and life-affirming alternatives from a culture that loves to love - and has been doing so for centuries.

The Los Angeles Times bestseller! "A Gallic prescription for living a life that is richer, more sensual, messier, and a lot more fun" (Boston Globe) It's not the shoes, the scarves, or the lipstick that gives French women their allure. It's this: French women don't give a damn. They don't expect men to understand them. They don't care about being liked or being like everyone else. They accept the passage of time, celebrate the immediacy of pleasure, embrace ambiguity and imperfection, and prefer having a life to making a living. In What French Women Know, Debra Ollivier goes beyond stale ooh- la-la stereotypes, challenging ingrained notions about sex, love, marriage, motherhood, and everything in between. With savvy, provocative thinking from French mistresses and maidens alike, Ollivier presents a refreshing counterpoint to the tired love dogma of our times, and offers realistic, liberating alternatives from the land that knows how to love.