WHEN God created woman, as he did in the 1957 film by Roger Vadim, there was only ever one choice as to her nationality. No daughter of Albion, with her thick ankles and bad teeth, or Barbie doll from the land of Uncle Sam had a look in. The first woman, the perfect woman, simply had to be French.

Bardot, Deneuve, Chanel, Bovary, de Beauvoir - in the cinema, literature, fashion, even philosophy, French women have, more than any others, helped define what it is to be female. France has supplied the clothes on our back, the paint on our faces, our scent and sensibility. It is the luxury brand par excellence.

All of which helps to explain why a book written by a Californian has become one of the publishing success stories of the summer in the US. Entre Nous: A Woman's Guide to Finding her Inner French Girl, has been flying off the shelves faster than Harry Potter on a sugar rush. It is a delicious irony to think that while the Bush administration and the US tabloids were branding the French cowards and worse for not backing war against Iraq, American women were quietly showing their support with dollars and cents at the bookshop tills. How subversive. How French.

The author, Debra Ollivier, fell in love with France in every way by marrying a Frenchman and living there for 10 years. It was not her intention to write a simple style guide, although there is some of that in the book, but to look past the stereotypes and discover what really makes French women a breed to be envied.

Her definition of the stereotypical French woman is ''the Euro goddess, thin, able to wear high heels on a football field or cobblestones, able to whip up a souffle with her eyes closed, slightly inscrutable, and mysterious.'' Yet this impossibly perfect being is not, according to Ollivier, what she means by the archetypal French woman.

''(She) is not the woman you see on the cover of fashion magazines or on the big screen . . . She is a distillaton of her culture's complex and enduring predilections: she is an essence, a way of being, a mindset. She is that part of us that is free - and not bound up by the joyless strings of Anglo-Saxon guilt and puritan morality.'' Above all, she is her own woman, self-possessed, and confident.

Phew. And you thought being French was simply about wearing matching bra and knickers. Good grooming is part of it. Advice on fashion and skin care tends to be passed from French mothers to their daughters like recipes. It is not unusual to see French mothers taking daughters with them to the beauty salon, or to watch them giving a masterclass in a changing room on the fit and quality of clothes.

Yet, there is more to being French, says Ollivier, than clothes and make up. For all the differences between French women - and Ollivier wisely points these up - she believes that enough of them share a certain attitude to life to set them apart. They have, as Thierry Henry would have it, va va voom. But where does it come from?

According to Ollivier, balance. French women, unlike their American counterparts, work to live and not the other way around. They may not have achieved half of what women in the US have in terms of career, but they are half as stressed.

This balancing act has been achieved largely through the unsexy means of the state. Since French mothers can tap into subsidised childcare, free healthcare, generous benefits, and a 35-hour working week, they have more time, and money, to stop and smell the rose- scented soap.

State support can, however, only account for so much. British women have access to free healthcare and other benefits, but the checkout queues in Tesco on a Friday evening are hardly fizzing with va va voom.

Perhaps the unglamorous truth about ''Frenchness'' is that it has a little to do with culture and upbringing and awful lot more to do with money. It is money that pays for nannies and cleaners, good food, a safe home, worry-free nights. Cash buys freedom, freedom brings choices, and having choices is a good look on any woman.

On that basis, anyone with a big enough bank balance qualifies for an honorary French passport.

Victoria Beckham? Straight out

of the Rue St Honore. Kate

Moss, Gwyneth Paltrow? More Deneuve than Deneuve. Even the new-look, designer-clad Fergie has a certain Gallic goddess air about her these days.

For all that, the beauty of Frenchness, the secret of its success as a brand, is that we can all buy into it for as much or as little as we like - the price of a bottle of perfume or an haute couture dress. Spending time and money on oneself is what matters. Why? Because it says to ourselves, and to others, that we are worth it.

In the end, trying to define Frenchness is like trying to pin down a butterfly. It can be done if enough effort is expended, but the thing loses all its charm and beauty in the process.

From Marianne to Marie Antoinette to Sophie Marceau, Frenchness has always been the impossible ideal, at odds with the reality of most women's lives.

And that is why it will never go out of style.

va va voom

for beginners

Step one

Buy a big wardrobe to put lots of little things in - the little black dress, the little black polo neck, etc. If it's little and black, buy it.

Step two

Do everything slowly, from making love to making bread.

Step three

Earn, borrow or inherit lots

of money to maintain a

life-long addiction to expensive face creams.

Step four

Acquire a Gallic shrug to deploy against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

Step five

Never, ever, wear a beret.