Everyone Dressed Not-Quite-Right

The concert last night was just as much fashion show as concert. While the general attire of the French male is a blazer and dress shirt with jeans, the male concertgoers seemed to feel compelled to wear their “hip-hop” clothes. One pulled the Walter Payton jersey out of whatever back closet it had been moldering in; another pulled out a pink satin Yankees cap with oversized brim, endearingly, naively straight—I wanted to tilt it the proper angle for him; a third wore a Chien-Mien Wang jersey with snakeskin loafers. And that is only to pick three of the more memorably hilarious examples. Yet all of them who tried to adopt American styles had their own failings, even when I couldn’t really identify what was wrong, but I could instantly tell the difference between Americans and French.

Where do they find those clothes though? There was a kaleidoscope of BAPES, a multitude of Nikes, a wardrobe of jerseys—the variety on display was the same as any major American city. Now, of course you might say, hey, it’s Paris, of course they sell that kind of stuff. And sure, I’ve seen some American clothing, particularly shoes, but I’ve only seen Americans inspecting them, and I haven’t really seen any jerseys on sale yet. There must be some secret store secretly patronized, as I have never seen the multitude of American-influenced styles as at this concert. It’s natural that an American concert would bring out a greater concentration of American imitators, but the difference was staggering.

In contrast to the French’s fashion hijinks—those words together look strange—Kanye West often wore European-influenced clothes and looked completely natural (he had several clothing changes, as it’s Kanye West, and he has to make a big spectacle of everything). Part of that is Kanye’s cosmopolitanism in fashion and music, but part of that is something emblematic of American culture…we find it possible to wear new clothes easily.

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Speaking of America, it came up in the taxi ride there. The girl who “didn’t” have money (actually she “only” had a ten) brought up, in a midst of a discussion about the difficulties of work and strikes, “once I’m in America, I won’t have these kind of problems.” The taxi driver, she was clearly sympathetic with her, but not so immoderate. After she left and paid with her fifty, the discussion turned to America and work once again, and she said, “One thing I like about America is that there, you’re obligated to work; in France, there are people who just sit on their asses all day.” (This is the best equivalent I think of for her addressing the lazy unemployed of France as “cons ards” amongst various other invective).

I informed her that yeah, Americans work, but they work harder and too often for less, not counting the whole health care issue. I think she was surprised by that, which surprises me; one of the prevailing French stereotypes about America is that we’re a bunch of neurotic, overly-hard workers who exhaust ourselves to depletion.

Isn’t it interesting, though, how we idealize each other? I’ve met a number of young French who speak in a similar fashion; they see America as a place where hard work can get you ahead, which is true of course. Many Americans—at least, the ones who don’t talk about “Freedom Fries” and “Cheese-eating surrender monkeys”—idealize Paris as the place to live the good life.

In terms of Western countries, America and France occupy nearly opposite ends of the possible social spectrum in many ways (the Scandinavian governments probably have more opposite social policies, but what American gives a crap about Norway aside from the blondes?). I think that’s the source of the idealization: the source of all our frustrations has its imagined cure in the opposite system. Each country has become a sort of perfect embodiment of its own system, which both is the result of and propels propaganda about that system. So because the Horatio Alger story, for example, creates the image of America as the hard-worker’s heaven, that solidifies the image and necessitates further expansion on that idea in future times, and so on and so forth. That’s how you end up with fuzzy conceptions of what a country is about, even when you have not so much as set foot on that country’s soil.

I always comment that I’m surprised by the number of French who seriously declare their desire to pull up roots and reset them in America, because I know where the soil is thin, whereas I have lived well here: my roots are not set but are well-looked after so, strikes aside, I do not know the frustrations that afflict French life and therefore cannot imagine seriously why someone would want to uproot himself from the splendor around him.

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It was Sunday today, and the streets were empty. The shops were closed and dead. The skies were gray. The sole activity in Parc Montsouris were joggers making their circuits, straining against the muck and the rain, and families making a valiant attempt at play with their heavy ski jackets. Two daughters, one older and much taller, walked solemnly in identical pink shiny plastic overcoats. It was oddly effervescent against the dull background.

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I have ceased to be informed about the strike, as has everyone I have spoken to, official or not. Instead I, indeed we, have adopted a blasé, “C’est la vie” attitude. The French utilized in the previous sentence was purposeful. Americans have gotten the most angry; by and large, the French handle the strike with equanimity. They stand, sometimes for hours on end, without complaint and without change in expression, as if this were a mere instant in their lives, soon to disappear behind them. Which, in the long-run, it is, but I always revolt against this the tiniest bit.

But I cannot know, and that’s what frustrates me most! Coming from the US, where everything is automated and archived, it’s rare that I cannot find a relevant piece of information on the internet or something. Someone will know who’s willing to say. Here it is all speculation, even on the part of the RATP. The only people who really know are the strikers, and they are not speaking out, not even leaks (although I’m unsure how much of a role the leak plays in the French press). I can do nothing, so all that is left is to adopt equanimity as best I can and march on.