Mrs Mademoiselle

If you take me apart the way you would take apart a matryoshka, you will find that some of the little versions of me are mademoiselles and others are madames. [Although admittedly sometimes I just have vodka inside me like my representative doll in this photo].

The "mini me" that pays my bills is a madame whereas the "me" who skips through paris clamouring for violet-flavoured icecream is a mademoiselle.

Like in english speaking countries with the titles "miss" and "mrs", marital status determines whether i'm a mademoiselle or madame for official purposes. But in my daily interactions with strangers, who am I?

People size you up and judge your age before branding you with a title, "madame" generally considered the safest bet for any girl beyond puberty. But of course this is relative. For the truly old, I’m always mademoiselle, and to tiny tots bullied into social niceties by their parents, I’m mostly madame.

After I had a sleepless night recently, everyone was madam-ing me like there’s no tomorrow. But on the days where my skin is freshly white direct from the teat of a cow, I can hear them crying "mademoiselle!" in the streets.

My title is of course related to my comportment. If I enter a shop squeaking and hunched I'm likely to be coaxed out of my nut house with a "Bonjour Mademoiselle". Alternatively if I stride on in, tearing up the room with my authority, I’m Madame.

I saw a film called Mademoiselle a couple of years ago which highlights this idea of comportment. I must have been at a low point in my life because I managed to get to its end, despite the film's obvious banality or pehaps because of this.

It was the story of a married woman with two kids, clearly a madame in the eyes of society, who goes on a 24 hour love binge with a man she meets at an out of town work conference. The next morning when they are in a brasserie about to say goodbye forever, the waiter brings our heroine an espresso and says: “would you like sugar mademoiselle" and we ooh and ahh and remark how the juices of love have injected her with new youth-giving vitamins. She excuses herself and skips off to the bathroom to admire her new yummy mummy self in mirror, but alas, when she gets back her lover is gone (obviously bored at the idea of having to repeat the same phrases over and over about her being the best lover ever) and she slumps into her chair with dismay.

Our waiter bustles on to the scene, proud that although he only has two lines he has the most poignant line in the film, and he says in a big voice: “voila l’addition madame". His ill chosen words immediately zap her back to the drab world of madamehood, her face creases in conformity to her re-appropriated role, and she realises that her lover has left the table covered in crumbs and hasn't paid the bill.

Perhaps there is also a bit of old world morality in the way that someone chooses to address you. For example, boys who approach me in the street always call me mademoiselle as a way of showing that even they, the ultimate personal space invaders, wouldn't stoop to steal "someone else's woman".