I really don’t know you

The other day I lost my beloved cardigan. It was that one item, other than my Plan de Paris, that I brought with me everywhere. But it has actually been years since I’d worn one. My ex-boyfriend always felt that it made me look frumpy or old fashioned, like a grandmother. When we first met I had worn them all the time. They were so practical for a tiny momo like myself; something you could take on and off depending on the temperature. Perfect just in case your day went spontaneously into the night, or during summer in the office when the air conditioning made you feel like it was the middle of winter. But he hated them and so I stopped wearing them. And then I found myself single and in Paris and the unpredictable méteo prompted me to buy one, and besides, all the young hipster girls were wearing them so why not me? By the time I started working in my French advertising agency I realized that all the girls wore cardigans. They had different ones for different outfits but it was certainly the accessory of choice. I fit in quite nicely with the girls and their cardigans, and contrary to popular belief, not being too fashionable was actually fashionable.

The mysticism about French girls is so bizarre. North American girls want to know their secrets, assuming that all French women must be doing something different that makes them so skinny and beautiful. But the truth of it is they are not all pretty, or super slim or have perfect skin. They don’t all eat super healthy or drink loads of water. Many of them eat out all the time, or take home frozen dinners from Picard, and couldn’t cook to save their lives. They smoke, they tan, they drink. But what is unique about French women, and what you can tell in a glance if someone is French or British, is that French girls don’t dress up. This is not to say they don’t look great or fashionable, but it is what they wear and how they wear it that makes them French. Little or no makeup, flat shoes, big flowing tops. Pretty but super un-sexy. But why?

Being a Canadian girl in Paris, the one culture shock that is still resonating with me is that French men, and especially the immigrants who come here from north Africa and Algeria, gawk. And the have balls. A French girl friend of mine had no idea how bad it is here until she went to Sweden and realized that men don’t do this in other countries. There is nothing that one can say that they are specifically doing wrong. A man who says “Bonjour” or “Bonsoir” or “Belle boites” to you as you pass by is not essentially harassing you. But he makes you feel uncomfortable. And day after day after day of the same type of behaviour coming from men on Paris streets can make you quite conscious of what you are about to wear before you go outside. If I were to wear a pair of shorts, a dress, high heel boots, a tank top, anything considered somewhat “sexy” I would have at least five men speak to me in the eight minutes it took me to get to Metro Melimontant. I might have someone follow me onto the metro car, or coming running after me to ask for my number. And not the kind of man you want to give your number to. In Toronto men will look, and unless they are some asshole construction worker, you can generally wear what you like and walk down the street without anyone saying a word.

And so after four months of living in Paris, I actually started to become more like a real Parisian girl. I stopped wearing the kind of makeup as I used to in Toronto, I bought the big shirts. I rarely showed my legs, saved the heels for special occasions and ultimately kept that cardigan on; especially on my walk to the metro, even in the middle of August. I was still relatively fashionable, not frumpy as my ex would say, but what I found was to be fashionable here was to make yourself look less sexy, revealing nothing; because even though some of them don’t know it, French girls endure what many of us don’t. And so, minutes after I lost my cardigan somewhere between the Seine and Chatelet, I ducked into the closest Etam and bought another, because it served an even more practical reason than dealing with the ever changing temperature in Paris.