Paris Letters: Being a Stranger, Becoming Yourself
Plus photos of the most fascinating-looking strangers I've encountered. So far.
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When I arrived in Paris at the start of the year, I was wearing brand-new punky boots with comically oversized soles. They make me look like an anime version of the Brooklyn mom I used to be and I didn’t take them off for three months. They were fashion armor, too over-the-top for a tourist. And though the weather’s nice at last, I won’t retire them because I still don’t know what kind of shoes Paris me wears.
Maybe to answer that question, I’ve been taking photos by the gigabyte. Most feature strangers—people I meet in cafes, on the Metro, and in flea markets. There are lots of selfies, too. It’s as if I’m mapping his new solar system to see where I belong and what I am. Am I Pluto? Am I more American here than I was in New York? Is it safer to remain an observer, the outsider in big boots?
My dad had similar dilemmas. He grew up in Germany and even after decades in the U.S., he was still so German with his accent and conspicuously elegant wool coat. He’d call the vacuum cleaner the “dustsucker” in front of our friends, and if we kids protested, he’d pronounce every syllable of vacuum so that it was more hilarious than dustsucker.
When people asked, “Where’s that accent from?” Dad would raise his eyebrows and say: “Vaht accent?” Then he’d laugh. On the flip side, he didn’t think it was funny at all when he’d go back to Berlin, and they’d tell him he sounded American. He was neither and both, the beautiful fate of all expats.
RELATED: Come write with me in Paris this Spring as part of The Blue Hour.
However, there is an outsider privilege. To start, you’re often forgiven for blunt curiosity. I’ll ask with my American accent if I can take someone’s picture, and they will almost always say yes and even pose. I’ll go home and review the images and wonder how I fit into that scene, standing there with my dog. Then, I get off track with thoughts like: Can I make jumpsuits my whole personality here too? I inexplicably packed four of them, like I needed a uniform for Act III of my life.
I don’t even know if I’m perceived here as an old lady with adult kids or middle-aged, never mind what’s appropriate clothing for whatever I am. This is the place that coined the expression: “une femme d'un certain âge.” But no one will tell you the exact age at which women become a woman of a “certain age,” much less when they transition from that to “old lady.” It is a matter of interpretation, like everything here.
There’s also an expression for women who are both attractive and ugly: jolie laide, or pretty ugly. Daphne Merkin described it thusly: “Leave it to [the French] to introduce a concept of feminine beauty so pure in its abstraction as to defy all logic. I am referring to the term "jolie laide," which translates literally into the clunking phrase "pretty-ugly," but which connotes something more lyrical, even. Transcendent.”
No one comes to Paris for logic. So hello ambiguity, my new friend. I will learn to love the blurry bits, to be not young but not old, pretty ugly beautiful, utterly at home in Paris, but also still a stranger. And I’ll keep taking photos of people who seem definitively themselves, which might be the definition of chic. Here are a few:
RELATED: Come write with me in Paris this Spring!
Hi Dave, and why yes ! I consider being unsure some what of a perk of being here. As in I get to rediscover all that. And she does probably wear big boots that woman. Glad re. good lyme day, they should have 50 day prizes! Thanks again for reading.
You have a point! I think when I’m trying to get it more than a specific place like Paris is being in a different place Which I think shapes more how you see things than what you see. Thanks so much for reading and for commenting!