On The French Relationship With Air
Specifically moving air, which is both bad and good, but mostly bad.
In a taxi home from Orly, the first thing the driver asked me was “How is the air flow?” He was adjusting the height of the windows a bit, and wanted to know if the air was on me too much. I didn’t quite know how to answer, but the way he worded the question was a sure sign I was back in France.
He didn’t ask me how the temperature was, if I was too hot or too cold (it was too hot). He wanted to know if the flow of the air was okay for me. In fact, I would have appreciated even more wind. Blasting in my face as it was, the taxi was stifling, and I prefer the air to move if it insists on being warm. I told the driver that the flow was fine. He was surprised, because most other passengers would have told him it was too much airflow, because most other passengers were French.
Why is having air in your face a bad thing in France? You might ask. That’s the thing; I wish I could tell you. After orbiting the culture for nearly 12 years, sometimes asking French people point-blank why they don’t like air, I still can’t create an overarching statement on the air topic. I’ve posited many hypotheses, I’ve tried writing this very post on ten different occasions, but I always end up not knowing enough about the topic to write it, or I can’t get it down on paper without being a total jerk. I now believe I can write it and be only a kind of jerk, which I can live with.
What I know for sure is this: the French have a complicated relationship with air, specifically moving air. It’s somewhat like how we Americans feel about temperature, but still a bit different, because, from what I can tell, it has less to do with comfort and more to do with the real or imagined effects of the air.
Air makes you sick, air can be bad, rapid changes in air temperature can make you pass out. At the same time, air needs to be circulated to get that bad air out, windows must be flung open no matter the outside temperature, the same air that sickens us dehors is our saving grace à l’intérieur. All of this is slightly true; the air can do these things. But not to a degree that warrants such a fuss. And yet, in France, they will fuss.
I began to build this air-wareness when I’d hear people, usually middle-aged to advanced-aged French folks, comment on the air, something I never much thought of. Sometimes, simply saying there is air or wind, or that they feel the wind, in a way that seemed bad. Sometimes people will ask me if the air is on me, and like in the cab from Orly, I don’t know how to respond because the air is on me, and I literally don’t care. The prevalence of scarves, even during mild months, seemed to confirm that letting this wind touch your corpus was undesirable. When I lived in LA, I could spot a French family on a hiking path not just by their Decathlon sac-a-dos, but also because they’d always have a light scarf around the neck to stave off those LA breezes.
In the summer, people complain less that the air is hot, and more so that the air is heavy, lourd, its stillness somehow more offensive than its hotness. If you ever share a car with a French person during the summer, you’ll soon learn that the clim is highly undesirable, and if it must be on, it can’t be pointed at anyone directly, and must be turned off again as soon as possible. It doesn’t matter how hot it is inside the car; being touched by the moving air just isn’t worth the comfort it will bring. In fact, training materials for le Code, the set of French driving rules, strongly recommend that the interior car temperature be kept within 5 degrees Celsius of the outside temperature. So if it’s 32 out, they encourage you to cool to no more than 27, which means still too hot for a comfort-seeking human.
What complicates this stance on air—not for the French, but for me as an outsider, trying to make sense of it—is the importance of air circulation of the domicile. While experiencing the air on the outside is bad, bringing the air inside is critical. Every morning the house must be aired out, every window opened to let the fresh air in. It’s logical in the Summer when we need to let the cool air in before locking things down for the day. But tell me why my husband insists on doing this at 6:30 in the morning during the winter, when I’m in the middle of changing my clothes, when I’m taking a shower, when I’m still in bed in my pyjamas? I protest, he looks at me like I’m crazy for not enjoying the icy breeze.
There are a few cultural and generational neuroses at the root of this, all of which are grounded in reality and science, but then get extrapolated to create this collective air conditioning. One is likely TB, which still rattles nerves in France to this day. Back in the day, cold drafty houses were frequently linked to respiratory illness the world over. My grandma was also terrified of a draft, and that fear persists across many cultures. The result is a reductive belief that cold directly makes you sick; causation, not correlation. People will argue about this.
A second touchstone is the idea of airborne disease, which we all know to be real; malaria is called malaria for a reason, though its origins are Italian, not French. More than distance, the French guidance during Covid was to crack a window. Par contre, I was once told by a nurse at a hospital that the AC was forbidden during the pandemic, because it was thought that the blowing air would move the virus around too much, maybe hasten its entry into the lungs of waiting patients.
Finally, there is thermal shock, aka choc thermique, which is a real thing but not as common as those French car AC recommendations would have you believe. Yes, you can get a headache or pass out if you go from super hot to super cold conditions, but unless you’re going from a sauna to a cold plunge several times, the level of temperature change required for that type of illness isn’t available on every French street corner. Personally, I like the thrill of walking into an icy room on a hot day; it’s so artificial, so consumery, not unlike drinking an iced coffee from a plastic cup WITH the plastic straw.
Which brings me to the more modern air concern, the environment. As summers get hotter and AC use rises around the world, European leaders and consumers alike are shunning air conditioning. Slate cites a 2021 poll of 1045 French adults, 2/3 of whom said they had no plans to purchase AC due to energy costs and environmental impacts. These adults are not wrong: the planet is heating up, we create more heat trying to make ourselves comfortable, and the problem persists. If you bring this dynamic up in casual conversation with a French person, most seem to agree. Others will scoff that their countrymen are just cheap and don’t want to pay the high energy costs associated with comfort. They said it, not me. I hadn’t even thought of that.
And why does it matter what the French think of air? It matters twofold. First, their air aversion is constantly leaving me hot and uncomfortable. My temperature comfort is dear to me, as someone who grew up with central air in a land graced by dry heat year-round. Second, this difference of airpinion presents another teachable moment about how we’re all different, have different codes and beliefs, cultural touchstones that shape us. As I’m typing, with my beloved Muji table fan pointed directly at me, I can appreciate the beauty of these differences. But on a hot metro, in a hot cab, in a hot hospital after giving birth, where the nurse only shrugs when we tell her the window is broken and we can’t open it to cool off the room, understanding the psychology of my torturers is important to my survival.
That’s a lot of paragraphs haranguing the French relationship with air, and you know the rules here: we observe, we stay curious, but we don’t have a one-sided bully fest against a culture that does something differently than us, no matter how wrong they are. So let’s continue to speak of comfort (one of my favorite things), to draw an American parallel.
I get made fun of in my French/American household for prioritizing comfort. I want a big bed, cool pillow, and I don’t want to sweat too much if I’m not in a gym or sauna. When I say it’s too hot and we need the clim, or it’s too cold, can we close the window, my husband scoffs and says I’m such an American, all I want is comfort. To which I say, yeah, duh, why not? What’s wrong with comfort? Who doesn’t like comfort? Who would ever look down upon someone for not wanting to feel pain?
But that husband of mine has a point. I feel about comfort the way the French feel about air movement; we have a complex set of beliefs and preferences we don’t think twice about, assume are universally true, until someone from another country says the room is too cool, can we cut the clim. This is why I have found it difficult to fully understand the French relationship with air; any time I try to engage someone in conversation, they can’t speak about air, because it’s just too close to them, they can’t imagine how I could feel differently, they don’t know what I need explained. Similarly, they can’t imagine a world where both sides of the pillow are cool.
Is there an ideal relationship with air, then? I used to think it was apathy. I’m going to ignore air, circulation, everything everyone in France was fussing about. Then I realized I was allergic to a mold outbreak in my first Parisian apartment and learned I had to care about air. Therefore, I’ve concluded that an ideal relationship with air is functional and moderate.
My French in-laws, who have thorough measures they use to keep their well-insulated and shuttered home cool during the hot months, are considering an AC unit for those extra toasty canicules, which have gotten out of hand. My American parents, who have been lifelong devotees to the AC, who would sleep with it so they could snuggle up under down quilts in the summer, are currently running their AC less and less as they’ve begun to embrace the morning breeze and afternoon shade. Cooling a giant house for two people seems over the top. Two households across the globe, both alike in moderation.
Yes, I see that these two households are now effectively cancelling out the efforts of the other one to reduce energy use. But I prefer to be proud of the reasonableness of the air conditioning strategies on both sides.
Enjoy the heatwave.
I’m sure you’re going to have a lot of thoughts on this one, including pointing out every typo or grammar mistake that Grammarly and I both missed, so let me have it.
Hold tight for a rare cross-promo: I’m offering coaching sessions to folks who have moved abroad and are navigating change in their new career, life, everything. My practice focus is typically executive coaching, but I thought it would be fun to throw the offer out there for any transplants who might feel clunky, lost, or frustrated, and who would like to work on feeling… not that. If that sounds like you or a loved one, feel free to reach out for a discovery call.
I also quite like the expression "changer d'air" -- literally "change air" -- to describe moving to a new location or traveling. But also changing your point of view.
Once again, a great development of one of those subtle differences we don't read about. Bien vu!
I have been through all of these "air issues" with my French husband, especially epic car air conditioning battles. He has finally accepted moderate AC use, as long as no air is actually directed on him, because as he so delicately puts it "je ne veux pas choper la crève!"
It's interesting how outdoor air, though, can be considered an antidote for heat. Last week I was in a warmer clime than Aveyron and when I remarked to a resident "Il doit faire bien chaud ici l'été quand même" he said "Non en fait ce qui est bien, c'est qu'il y a toujours de l'air," which I actually rather doubt given the location.