Scan the bookshelves of a cosmopolitan American woman in her mid-years and you’ll see titles like “French Women Don’t Get Fat,” “Bringing Up Bebe: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting” and “French Kids Eat Everything: How Our Family Moved to France, Cured Picky Eating, Banned Snacking, and Discovered 10 Simple Rules for Raising Happy, Healthy Eaters.” Of course many have long admired French cuisine and fashion, but today many aspire to gain the French woman’s alleged attitude: madame is nonplussed by parenthood, doesn’t take no for an answer, and doesn’t believe in guilt. Harried, rejected, guilty American women find these Gallic qualities understandably enviable.
So it shouldn’t come as a surprise to New York fashion publicist Lynn Tesoro that the French editor of Jalouse, Jennifer Eymere, slapped her in front of everyone at Fashion Week. After all, Ms. Tesoro had tried to take a front row seat away from her at the Zac Posen show. Eymere argued it was for her mother (and boss, Marie-Jose Susskind-Jalou, the president of Jalou publishing). Tesoro argued it was for a client. Neither would budge. Eymere slapped her across the face and the next day, Tesoro socked her back with a $1 million lawsuit. Eymere admitted to WWD (Women’s Wear Daily): “It was a small slap. It was just to humiliate her. Voila.” Quite the PR coup for Jalouse, which earlier this year made a big splash in the States by publicly apologizing to actress Megan Fox for misquoting her in the March cover story as saying: she “wouldn’t trade places with an unattractive girl.” Megan Fox is clearly not French.
