The French have a real social dilemma on their hands. This H1N1 flu business is threatening one of their time-honored traditions: the bise.
The bise is the famous French 2-cheek social kiss (one cheek for small children, and in some parts of the country you might bise someone three or even four times depending upon how well you know each other). It's the REAL "French kiss". It happens everywhere, everyday, with everyone, in every imaginable social scenario. French colleagues bise hello and goodbye every day; it's the first priority in the morning to walk around and greet your coworkers and even your bosses in this way. French schoolchildren bise each other as well. You might bise when you meet a neighbor on the street or at the marché. I have bise-d our cleaning lady and our nanny. OK, I don't normally bise our concierge or even our next-door neighbors, probably because we see each other so much, although I might on a special occasion such as a New Year's greeting. But otherwise we all do the bise thing regularly; it's just part of French daily life, as important as the daily baguette from the baker's. Grown men will bise one another and it's no big deal. It's considered a politeness, a sign of respect for the other person you know, when you deign to bise with them because you don't normally bise with strangers; the bise elevates your status to something like a friend. Being a stranger here myself, I feel welcomed and included when someone bises me; it's like I've been allowed to enter into a special club where the kiss replaces the secret handshake. For an Anglo like me sometimes all the bise-ing can seem a bit much but I've quite come to like it; the French are not very huggy, touchy-feely people and the bise is the primary form of physical social contact among friends. (I had to teach Georges how to do the combination handshake/one-shoulder bump/back-pat "guy hug" thing in America so he'd be prepared NOT to kiss my brother-in-law, who looked utterly terrified the first time Georges went in for the bise automatically. My nephew, to his credit, has learned to suck it up and do the bise with good humor. Even though he's in the Army now and thinks he's pretty macho.) For the French, all the hugging we Americans seem to do is rather off-putting; it's TOO much physical contact for them.
Now, the French are being strongly encouraged to give up the bise... because of the health risks of the flu. Georges went to a parent's meeting at the Little Guy's school on Saturday and one of the mothers told him that at her workplace, 3M, they were not only FORBIDDEN to bise at the office but they were all being given antiseptic hand gel and told to use it (or wash their hands well) several times a day, and they were also foregoing the handshake or any other physical contact with one another. They may even be wearing masks in the office, I can't recall. New office policy, she said, and it was making her really stressed out because of all the fear about it among the management. She was one of the parents who seemed most anxious about the flu hitting the school -- not because she was so worried about her kid getting sick, but because she herself could not afford to take a whole week off from work to stay home with a sick child.
That's what seems to be worrying people most here: not the physical threat of the flu (only 3 people in France have died and I believe they were people who were in high-risk categories) but the economic impact. If la grippe goes through the school, the sick students can be kept home but if too many teachers are out, the whole school has to close. And then those parents all have to either stay home to take care of their kids who may not even be sick but who are out of school for a week or more, or they have to try and find a baby sitter which will be next to impossible. If those parents are out of work for more than a couple of days, then productivity suffers. Same thing if the illness starts to spread around a workplace like a big company, or the national rail system, or Air France, for instance: it can spread like wildfire, this flu, and what if you've got half your pilots and flight crews, or half your train engineers, or half your corporate employees out sick? What about workers in government offices? In hospitals? What if they all get sick and can't come to work? Catastrophe!
At Georges' workplace, they have not, as yet, been forbidden to bise although some who are worried are already just foregoing it on their own. He is still bise-ing his colleagues and I am still bise-ing my friends, and yesterday we bise-d a couple we know and their two children (playmates of the Little Guy) when we ran into them at the neighborhood brocante. It's just automatic... you just end up doing it. And we're not sick. I guess you just have to trust the other person NOT to bise you if they're feeling unwell, which is just common sense and most people will just tell you they don't want to kiss because they've got a cold or something.
Some will go to greater lengths though. I had to go in for a doctor's checkup two weeks ago and saw two other people in the waiting room with their shirts or a scarf over their noses and mouths. Either they were sick themselves or they were worried they'd get sick from someone else, and given that doctor's offices and hospitals are hotbeds of germs anyway, I couldn't say they were being paranoid. I haven't (yet) seen anyone on the metro or bus or on the street wearing surgical masks, but that's a distinct possibility if the flu situation worsens. If that happens, the Paris metro will look like the one in Tokyo where people have been wearing masks in public for years to protect against illness (and also poor air quality) in a city that is infamous for its overcrowding.
Still, despite everything, the French are going to find it very difficult to give up the bise. It's too deep in the culture. Georges said the last part of that article summed up the French very well:
"The French are traditionally rebellious souls, they don't like to be told what to do. So if it is really important, and if there are rules in the offices, or if they get very scared they will, but otherwise they will say pfff."
Well, if they DO say pfff, I hope they will at least cover their mouths while they're doing it.
