The french dessert dilemma (or: justifying 'cake in the morning')

Here in France (where I've been living for 3 months if you haven't noticed) , I'm constantly a victim of the breakfast vs. dessert problem. You know which one I mean, that alleged distinction between breakfast and dessert. While this ambiguity doesn't obtain for all breakfast foods (i.e. anything savory), when it swings hard when it comes basically to anything sweet, I’ve never been able to figure out why french toast covered in maple syrup (or pain perdu, literally ‘lost bread’ as they call it here) and chocolate chip pancakes should be taken for breakfast instead of what they clearly are (dessert). Is it because a normal helping of most sweet, dessert-like breakfasts is embarassingly large for dessert? That would make sense in American diner-land, but here in France it gets trickier. When I go to the patisserie (almost every morning – I like me some French patiss) and I try to decide what’s cool for breakfast and what’s not. Usually it’s pretty clear. Chocolate croissants, almond croissants, pains aux raisins, pains aux pistaches are usually out in the open on one side. Then on the other side, usually behind glass, are the real desserts which aren’t normally eaten for breakfast, even if for me, a slice of French flan in the morning makes a heartier, more filling, and no more (or less) hearth death inducing breakfast than a half-ounce croissant. I mean, obviously it’s a cultural thing, and it does feel really silly walking down the street eating a piece of cake, but to me it’s really no sillier than eating pancakes, or hell, a croissant. What I’d really love for breakfast is a couple eggs and swiss cheese on a Kaiser roll. But that doesn’t really count as breakfast here. In fact, people here don’t really do breakfast. It’s more just like a little ‘gourmandise’ that holds them over until lunch, even though it doesn’t really because it’s as unsubstantial an amount of food you can eat without actually eating anything – and plus even if they did do breakfast, it wouldn’t entail any of the ‘hearty’ things we (amuricans) think of when we think of a hearty breakfast to start our day with. So if you see some dude scooping flan out of a bag on the metro with his hands it’s probably me. Don’t tell me to eat cereal, I don’t like cereal. Don’t put out your flan at 7 am if you don’t want me to eat it for breakfast.