What young people in France really think about the newly elected President Macron
They care more about his age than his controversial love life
Working at Kedge Business School for the summer, I have already learned a lot about the French culture and right now, an important part of everyday culture in France is its politics.
The country just saw the election of their youngest ever president in Emmanuel Macron and, when asking them what they thought of their new president, students gave different opinions than I expected.
While talking about politics and Macron in particular, the students gave short, blasé answers. Some of the recurring themes of their answers include: the fact that he’s young, that he has a much older wife, and deflection to questions about Trump.
“Well, what do you think about Trump?”
“I’m obsessed with his love life”
And his love life is super interesting. Macron is married to his old high school teacher, Brigitte Macron who, as well as being 25 years his senior, also has children around his age, and divorced her then-husband to be with him after he graduated high school. This is a very odd occurrence in both French and American culture, but an interesting point that the students made that point that Trump’s wife is young enough to be his child, yet no one made as big of a fuss about the age difference simply because the woman was younger than the man. It therefore begs the question, would people still be as opposed to the marriage if Macron was a young woman married to an old man? As an American in France, this strikes me as a good point, but it’s low-key still creepy af that she was his teacher to be honest.
Two other interns and I surprised about the opinions we’ve heard about Macron.
“He’s everywhere.”
“What do YOU Americans think about Macron?”
“Do you know Bernie Sanders?”
“Better than le Pen.”
I found it strange that, aside from this person, not many people mentioned Le Pen, despite the fact that it is a big part of the international dialogue that surrounds him.
“le Kid.”
“He is young.”
Overall, I noticed that the students seemed to be caught up on his age, despite there being a great controversy surrounding his love life. In addition, it was very amusing whenever someone would ask me about Trump in response instead of answering.