Im having a boat race and want to look similar to Napoleon. Help!?

Question

Im french and I want to show pride for France. For this boat project for physics we have to race. I decided for fun to draw the French flag. Im also gonna being a beret. what else would look frenchy or napoleonish? I was thinking bringing baguettes but thats too much, what about a moustache?

Answer 1

~I am not sure Napolean and French pride ought be mentioned in the same sentence. Isn't that something akin to Germans speaking proudly of Hitler? Or Cambodians and Pol Pot? Or Americans and Georgie the Younger?

If I'm not terribly mistaken, Napolean didn't sport a beret very often (mainly because they weren't invented when he was alive and the Tam O'Shanter from which the French copied them was still being developed in the Scottish Highlands) and due to a genetic anomaly leaving him with an abundance of female chromosones, he was unable to grow a mustache, so they're both out. Height could be a problem too. Remember, Napolean was a runt. However, the best reason not to emulate Napolean if you want to express French pride is that Napolean wasn't French - he was Corsican.

Now, if you want to appear French, follow these simple rules:
If you want to go as Louis or Robespierre, hide your head.
Don't bathe. Instead, douse yourself in overly sweet perfume.
Be extremely rude to Anglophiles.
If female, don't shave your armpits (or your legs, depending on the era).
Pick fights and lose.
Drink a lot of wine and pretend you know whether it's good or not (bearing in mind that if it doesn't have a French label, it isn't fit to drink).
Eat a lot of foul smelling sauces that clog your arteries and shorten you life and justify it by calling it "haute cuisine".
Deny vehemently that the French are decendants of the Teutonic tribes that conquered the region and who were then conquered in turn by yet other Teutonic tribes and there is truly no such animal as a "Frenchman" other than by the political acts of yet more Teutons. (Could I mean the Gauls, the Normans, the Vandals and the Goths, the ancestors of the modern French? Nah, there were more.)
Hide the fact that you can't spell by adding an abundeaunxe of letters that you Gnever Preaunoignsce.
Wear lots of frou-frou cumbersome accessories that always get in the way and have no functional value whatsoever.
Look longingly at the industry and science of all your neighbors and wish you could do something like that too.

But you're French. I can only speak from the perspective of a visitor to your homeland and the impressions I came away with. Maybe you're better off figuring out that which makes you proud to be French and going from there. (So you don't get too upset over the whole thing, be advised that I would be safer wearing my idea of a representative American costume in Paris than I would be in Washington.) Personal pride is so much a better suit than national hubris (or should I say chauvenism?), wouldn't you agree?

Answer 2

Do you want to look similar to Napoleon himself? Or just similar to to the people of France during the Napoleonic era. If the former, then I wouldn't suggest a mustache and beret.

Answer 3

People mistake your race because of your earrings? Lol, that sounds a little strange...But yes, I have the same issue. I'm Black & Italian (but identify as Black) and people are constantly asking me if I'm Native, Latina, Middle eastern, Filipina, you name it! It kinda gives me a thwarted sense of identity, but I know who I am regardless. Besides, i kinda like being "racially questionable".....Keeps people interested. I can't even count all the times I've ogled at people, trying to figure out their ethnicity.

Answer 4

Get a three cornered hat from a costume shop and put it on sideways. Also a large sash draped over one shoulder will look good.