Jambes Lourdes - Heavy Legs

French TV is full of adverts for treatment of a dreaded syndrome - Heavy Legs.

Fi and I had never even heard of the malady of Heavy Legs until we started watching french TV. Now every night we are treated to adverts showing women tiredly trudging up stairs, then, after taking product X, lightly skipping up the same stairs.

A Google search on "heavy legs" on google.com nets 460,000 results while a search on "jambes lourdes" on google.fr pulls a whopping 646,000. French menopausal women are obsessed with heavy legs.

But British women suffer too -

ANTISTAX Leg Vein Health Capsules - a clinically proven natural health supplement - asked 400 women over 45 if they suffered from problems with their legs and also asked how they felt it affected their daily lives. The results were astounding!
- 75% said they suffered with leg health issues
- 50% said they suffered with TAHLC (Tired, Aching, Heavy Legs
Complaint)
- 71% said TAHLC interfered with their daily lives
- 75% said it affected them more than the menopause!
- 75% said it affected them more than sight deterioration
- 77% expressed concern for their leg health
- 66% are concerned about the pain and discomfort caused
- 51% said they are hindered in their daily lives by having to
keep their feet up as a result
- Women over the age of 45 are more likely to suffer with TAHLC than
thread, spider or varicose veins and find TAHLC more disruptive to
their everyday lives than these other leg health problems

Most of the adverts for heavy leg remedies are herbal type snake oil stuff. The market is huge, and I am very suspicious of the efficacy of this stuff. I'm also very suspicious of surveys conducted by companies that sell a "cure"

Here is one of the more popular french remedies "Jouvence" by l'Abbé Soury.

The blurb says: the formula is based on plants (Hamamélis, Viburnum, Calamus, Piscidia) traditionally recognised for the properties against heavy legs.

Strangly, a google image search on "jambes lourdes" seems to show more "jambes svelte et legère" I feel obliged to post one for your (my) edification.

Found at http://www.italiq-expos.com/blog-shopping/2006/05/29/220-jambes-lourdes

La Honte

I don't judge the contestant too harshly, it must be easy to blow it under pressure, but more than half of the studio audience thought the sun went around the earth.

Spelling and Pronunciation

Thanks to TBNIL for a heads up to a series of SNCF adverts. He said:

I loved those SNCF adverts last year .... they used traditional french village signs to advertise flights ot far off places - so for example, there was:

St Gapour - Singapore
Losse-en-Gellaisse - Los Angeles
Quancoune - Cancun

...and many more. Fabulous, and combined with great photography.

So I found some of the ads on DailyMotion. DailyMotion is used by the guys at the factory and seems much more well known here than YouTube

Pequint
Uploaded by serialkisskiller

Nioudelie - sncf
Uploaded by ulfablabla

Loucsorre - sncf
Uploaded by ulfablabla

Nouillorc
Uploaded by serialkisskiller

More info and pics from the guy who uploaded those vids Ulfalabla

Cultural Differences

This is an advert on French telly at the moment. When we saw it we just sat there with our mouths hanging open in disbelief.


Here is the transcript:
No! That's for mummy.
Ah! You want to play?
One, two, scissors!
One, two, paper!
One, two, rock!
Ha ha, you're really a loser, like you're father.
(voice over) No point fighting against it. Daunat sandwiches, so generous that just one is enough

First the baby's hand morphing out of the stomach is horrible. Like a scene out of alien. Why isn't the woman screaming in terror? She should be grabbing the kitchen knife to cut the damn thing out. Nasty. Reminds me of a strap-on dildo, but that's probably down to the videos I've been watching.

And then ... the baby flips the mum the bird!! The middle finger! And she just laughs. She's got Damien inside her and she thinks it's funny. Comes time for childbirth a thing like that may well decide not to come out. She won't be laughing then.

And finally she calls the kid a loser.

I must question my french friends on their response to this ad, because if they think the ad is OK, or funny in a comedic sense rather than in the weird sense, then there must be more separating us than just the Channel.

And does the advert work? ie: will it sell Daunat sandwiches or will people associate Daunat with mutating, insolent, loser babies, and their mothers who pick losers for lovers?