Author Archives: charlotteschranz

Flowers for Danielle – #DesFleursPourDanielle

Instead of our weekly Throwback Thursday, we decided to focus on some charming old ladies who made the headlines this week : Danielle !

In the aftermath of the attrocious Paris attacks, turning on the TV on Saturday morning, we got one more piece of evidence that Old is cool! The proof came from a grandma which intervention on BFM TV – the French 24/7 news channel – just came like a rainbow after the rain of bullets Paris has undergone on Friday night.

Danielle on BFMTV

Danielle on BFMTV

Who is this charmingly refreshing old lady ?

This 77-year-old French woman was laying flowers near the Bataclan where 89 people were killed on Friday when she was interviewed by BFM-TV.

Here is the video and bellow the English version of what she said to the cameras:

“It’s very important to bring flowers for our deads. It’s also important to see several times Ernest Hemingway’s book, “Paris est une fête,” (the French title of “A Moveable Feast”) because we are a very old civilization and we will uphold our values at the highest level. And we will fraternize with five million Muslims who practice their religion freely and kindly and we will fight against the 10,000 barbarians who kill, supposedly in the name of Allah”

The video was and is still widely shared across France, and around the world (US : French Embassy) on social networks, because this statement deeply touched people, especially Muslims who fear the confusion between terrorism and Islam.

 

#DesFleursPourDanielle

However, there is much more to the story. Danielle got even more viral when a Twitter user asked his followers, using the hashtag #DesFleursPourDanielle (Flowers for Danielle), to help him find the lady in order to offer her flowers.

 

 

At that time he knew nothing about her but eventually, a BFM TV journalist revealed she is called Danielle and later on, a guy recognize Danielle as one of his grandfather’s friends.

After that, Karim Boukercha launched a fundraising campaign to buy this kickass old lady a bouquet. The movement quickly gained momentum, and with the 14 000 € he managed to raise (at the moment we’re publishing this article), he could probably buy her something much fancier than a single bouquet – which had been offered by a French florist by the way.

 

 

And actually, Danielle stated she would be donating all the extra money to NGO’s and associations she supports among which the association helping the victims’ families of the attacks.

So to sum up, Twitter knows her as Danielle and it’s said she broke the Internet… Well, in fact, her complete identity is Danielle Merian and she’s much more than “the grandma who breaks the internet after Paris attacks”. Her life is so cool that she should have had her 15 minutes of fame long before! What she said on BFM TV is nothing compare to what she’s done throughout her life. Learning more about her, just made it even cooler. A former lawyer, she is a woman of multiple causes, explaining she is trying to fight against all forms of stupidity, it being gender discrimination, death penalty, …

Thanks again Danielle!

Is your grandma as cool as Danielle Mérian? Share with us how your grandparents reacted after the Paris attacks!

 

Have you met Colette?

For our 3rd Throwback Thursday, discover how Colette made her granddaughter Josy happy with books.

(yes, some people still read real books!)

josy's grandma

Colette and Josy

 

Here is a list of a few chosen things among all the coolest things my grandma Colette has ever done for me…

– lacing my shoes when I was too lazy to learn how to

– supporting me in my goth style period

– feeding me with home-cooked meals and Haribo boxes, chocolate cakes, éclairs, ice creams, coke

– letting me wear her former evening dresses and hats, that she wore as a young parisian

– driving me all around the country to visit every museum or castle they were

– sending me money so that I could buy opera and ballet tickets in Paris

– always believing that I was a good girl even when I was a spoiled brat then a bad-tempered teenager

– taking me to braderies so that we could find my favorite Fantomette books and the perfume samples that I was collecting

– watching Fort Boyard with me every Saturday night of August during 5 years

Fort Boyard

Fort Boyard

 

– hearing me complain for hours about my mother / brother / sister

– sending me each year 1) the new Amélie Nothomb, 2) a book from the Nobel prize winner 3) a book from the Goncourt prize winner

– giving me back the books I lend her with little notes on them with her feedback

– sending me « good luck » postcards for all the moments I needed luck for.

Thank you grandma!

josy's grandmother

Colette and her little children

 

Josy

 

Want to share your story too? Submit your grandparents’ portrait here!

Don’t want to miss our updates? Follow us on Facebook / Twitter / Instagram

Are you a hipster?

video
video Info
Comments

  • Tell me what you wear and I’ll tell you who you are? Hopefully, nothing is less certain…

    We showed old, less old and even young people photos of « hipster ». Listen, to what they have to say about it.

     

     

    What about you, do you think they are hipster ? Do you find them « cool », « fashion » or « creepy »?

How are the elderly seen by the media?

Have you ever read the page dedicated to elderly in The Guardian? Does it make you feel worried about your future? You should not!

…because what media show is not always the reality. We sure think there’s a better and brighter way to picture seniors in media, and that their media consumption is not limited to crosswords magazines… Remember that Old Is Cool!

We wondered how the – average english speaking having access to the internet – world saw old people before starting our project. So we decided to go on the most used search engine – Google – on the most seen pages (the first two, because it’s well known that no one goes further than that).

So if you type « old people » in google news and google search, those would most probably be the words you would have seen the most frequently used.

 

Perception of elderly in Google

 

It could be worse – if depressing and sad where the biggest – but it could also be waayy better. Most of the depressing words you can see here would actually come from the media articles. In fact, as you might have noticed, mass media tend to always talk about pensions and disease, often picture retirement as a boring and difficult stage of life, when income falls and dependence grows.

Click here to know how to help us showing the world that Old Is Cool! 

Don’t want to miss our updates? Follow us on Facebook / Twitter / Instagram

And read some of our others articles!