August 13, 2002

Grisettes

These two excerpts are about the search for a word some seem to think is badly needed these days. I segue in the discussions into raving about the French word "grisette."

Although I define "grisette" casually in these excerpts, I've since done a bit more formal research on the word and I added an addendum/correction to what I said in these excerpts regarding the word afterwards -- as I wasn't entirely accurate, it seems.

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Excerpt from an email thread between an old friend of mine (May 2001)
5/01

Her: Passing note - I think it's really pathetic that we don't have any word better than "fuck buddy" in English to describe this perfectly good relationship. Perhaps we should send out a call to all our friends for other language research?

Me: I agree. It's a dreadful term. But there isn't anything else, really, that quite fits the bill. All words that have been used to describe social/sexual intercourse dynamics seem to get tainted with people's baggage and there's always someone who can come up with a plausible reason why any suggested term is objectionable -- it becomes a charged term that it gets scrutinized for a host of ills and has to survive someone finding it too cute, too vulgar, too offensive, culturally insenstive, politically incorrect, trite, flippant, meaningless, intimidating, unseemly, grandiose, and/or shallow -- etc. It ain't got a chance having to please all the people with all their different caveats (both towards the word and towards the interaction, I think).

In doing the French research, though, I did happen upon a term -- grisette -- which I particularly liked and could be offered up in certain circles! It was a term in vogue with the 19th-century artists (ya know, the poet-pig ones I do so adore but who did tend to go on stupidly about Woman being the ideal while often treating women on the temporal plane rather disgracefully ..... syphilitic logic there for some of them, I guess .....). Grisettes were essentially groupies of the time -- women who hung out with the artists and in the cafes and often slept with them, lived off of them. Camp followers of the arts. They had some overlap with prostitutes, but for the most part they weren't in business and were socially akin to rockstar groupies.

But the best part is -- grisette these days means pastry! (I'm not sure whether it meant that first or came to mean that later -- must check on that ....)

Pass the croissant, please.

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Excerpted email (from (July 2001). This bit is an odd request I got in email from one of our regular readers who writes me occasionally:

When you and your word whores get together, if you haven't already, find me a word for a "misteress." I'm the married one. He's not. So what does one call a male misteress?

Me:..... [Regarding] your particular question about finding a word (a label, even!) for what you call a "misteress." Heh! Why do you ask ME when you have come up with a very useable term right there yourself? But I'm glad you did, because that means I got to hear your word and I shall surely share it with pertinent others next time I do get into a word whore discussion about terms for .... uh .... what to call them? .... let's just say, generally, those boys one is messing about with. You are correct in presuming the topic has been broached in the past. Usually drunkenly. We reached no conclusion. All the terms seem to fail on some point.

You could fall back on traditional terms. Lover. Paramour. Lacking, but established terms. The traditional terms for a male lover are so less numerous than for the female, where one has a pick of delightful gradations and nuances to reflect the nature of the particular connection: from courtesan to grisette and the plethora of ways to just say whore, as bonus. Grisette is one I have come to appreciate relatively recently, and I would so like to give it a comeback and place in modern English where it could be applied to either gender. It's an old term popular during the heyday of all the usual French artistes we all know and love and was what they used to call the chicks who were hanging around them and whom they could and did regularly boff. A grisette was, apparently, lower in the art/cafë hierarchy than an official mistress but much higher than a prostitute. When I encountered the term and the history, I immediately thought, "Oh, you mean GROUPIES!" Heh. Best yet, though, is one translation of the term, which is "pastry."

Might it have some correlary to our English slang term of "tart"?

So. I really, really want to to use the anglicized version of this term to refer to those certain types of boys I idly lust after and desire to engage in a stray dalliance of interdeterminate length, but I have a feeling if they find out I'd been calling them "pastries," it would hinder my chances of getting anywhere with them. So. I might have to give up that idea, as sensible as it sounds to ME.

I suggested this term even as an alternative to the sometimes-used term "fuck buddy" in an email conversation I had with a friend a couple of months ago where she said there really ought to be a more elegant term to denote that nuance of a relationship. She was amused by my suggested "pastry," but skeptical as to its practical usage for pretty much the same reason I gave above for giving it up as an idea.

The problem with finding a word to use in the arena of love is that there is also the baggage of denial and desire of the participating parties to consider, and it's far too difficult to define and grapple simultaneously, don't you think? As well as finding that right blend of conveying the nature of the relationship without letting the definition define what transpires in the relationship itself. I prefer to let the terms stay vague rather than adopt a slew of definitions that would describe the stages or ranks of a relationship, in essence providing a progress report by every switch of noun.

During the drunken conversation mentioned above where the subject came up for quite a lengthy discussion, we were saying what we usually called our "paramours" when referring to them to others (although far from ideal, "paramour" could be a contender for general usage, methinks), and I reflected and my mood prompted this remark: "I usually just refer to them as my friend, and as I refer to people I'm not doing as friends, too, it means no one can ever be sure who I'm doing or not doing. And I like that." There is advantage in being enigmatic about dalliances sometimes, but I will grant that other times one wants or needs to point out the distinction. Sometimes, it's even the paramour who DEMANDS the validation of a distinction. "Rank me, rank me in your heart! Where do I stand? What do I mean to you?"

(And, herein, again, is where "pastry" would fail, as at such a confrontational moment of vulnerability, the beloved is not going to want to hear you say that to him.)

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Addendum/corrections about the word "grisette"

grisette first appeared in the early 18th century and meant cheap, unbleached cloth. (gris literally translates to "gray.") Presumably, because cheap unbleached cloth is what they wore, it came to refer also to a young working-class woman in general, and had sometimes a more shady nuance meaning a working-class woman of "ill repute" (i.e., someone who probably worked part-time as a prostitute.)

And, as I described above, the term grisette did become popular in the latter 19th century as a specific reference to the women who hung around the art/cafë society of the time and consorted with the artists/writers of the time. Grisettes often worked as models for the artists.

A 1913 dictionary entry defines "grisette," however as: "A French girl or young married woman of the lower class; more frequently, a young working woman who is fond of gallantry."

Gallantry?

Grisette is also the name of some species of mushroom.

Is there really a pastry connection to this word? I'm not entirely sure of this now.

I got the "pastry" bit about grisettes from a friend who told me that he'd had pastries called grisettes. In doing a bit of research, I didn't really find enough references to indicate that grisette really means pastry generally, though, and I surmise my friend had some pastries that were simply cleverly named. Or perhaps were made with the type of mushroom called grisettes.

Actually, if anyone can set me straight on the pastry connection (if there is more to that), I'd be grateful.

So, although my original amusement at the pastry connection in regards to this word does seem to have been a tad exaggerated after further research, I still yearn to start a new (or revived) slang by calling dalliances "pastries." Even as impractical and improbable it would well be to try to convince any "pastries" of the idea that:

"No, really, my little cabbage, it's a term of endearment!"