things you see at the community center

My husband Carlos and I went to a lunch with the Association Franco-Mexicaine d'Aquitaine. He met the lady in charge through a series of phone calls while pursuing some volunteer work. The lunch is always Mexican food - the only thing in the States I miss besides my family and friends - and it's normally at the Saige Centre Sociale.

Carlos had also been volunteering at the community center in Talence, where I learned a lot about what's available to residents through these awesome programs. The one in Talence offers a little low-cost cafe run by another association that helps poorer folks have a place to interact and combat poverty-induced isolation. They also have expos, children's art and music activities, films, holiday parties (complete with alcohol for the grown-ups - this is France, after all!), and even someone residents can go to for help writing official correspondence, for example, to fight a claim of an unpaid bill. It's impressive how much work and resources the French are willing to expend to take care of people. Our neighbor for example is blind in one eye, and as she's older and can't get around easily anyway, the mayor's office sends her an "auxiliaire de vie" or helper. The mayor's office also sends food to all the old folks in the town it's charged with. Impressive. Especially since in the US, old people, once they're no longer useful economically seem to be left to fall through the cracks and fend for themselves.

One thing you find lots of in community centers is POSTERS! There are posters for everything. You have posters from the French government, from the department (kind of like state or county in the US), from the city, from different associations, from the mayor's office - in short, from everywhere.

What struck me about this sort of PSA style poster about folates for women was how nude the woman seems to be. And it was in a community center used by a large Muslim population who might find it off-putting. (I know the center has Muslim patrons because in the kitchen where we had our lunch there were dozens of little tea glasses with arabic writings on them and they were beautiful!). Even my American sensibilities were challenged. But what you realize after the initial shock is that it's not trying to be sexy or objectifying. (One might argue it may be objectified anyway, but that's the viewer's problem). It's evoking the body of a pregnant woman - with the choux as the belly! - and celebrating it. It's instructional, too, as it's meant to make women aware of the need for folates in their diet and for prenatal vitamins well before conception. And as my clever husband says, the nudity is emphasizing breastfeeding, pregnancy and the beauty of it all. :)

It's a breath of fresh air if you ask me. Mostly because so often in the US, any nudity is both automatically seen as sexual and shamed. Maybe it's a legacy of the Puritans, but female nudity in particular can never be free of what pornography has twisted it into, but it can never be innocent either. I won't complain more on the subject, because there are plenty of excellent articles about this. But it got me thinking.