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Intrigued by my friend Lindsey’s tales of Parisian gym culture, I have asked her to write a blog post about it. Here it is:
From a very young age my mother instilled in me a certain logic, if you can call it that. There were clothes that could be worn to school, to friends houses, out to dinner and to events and then there were what she called “play clothes” – clothes for hanging around the house, playing outside or engaging in any kind of athletic activity. They were not to overlap. From the minute I would get home from school I was told to go upstairs and change into my play clothes before doing anything else. I never found this to be unusual since the only time I would see my mother in anything but her play clothes (jeans, a sweatshirt and slippers) was when she’d run errands or go out to dinner with my father on the weekends. It was an irritating habit but not something I perceived as abnormal.
Although I had many friends whose mothers did not maintain such an approach to dressing, I grew up buying into this notion that there was a time to get dressed up (aka make an effort to look good) and a time to be comfortable. In my experience, this is very American.
I didn’t realize how American it was until I came to Paris where looking good is an art form, an innate ability that we sartorially inferior beings lack. It goes far beyond good grooming and fashion sense. Nowhere was this made more obvious to me than at the gym in Paris (the French are late adopters, fitness being no exception. Indoor exercise is a relatively recent phenomenon).
To a certain degree I can understand how looking good for your workout might contribute to a positive body image. I refuse to believe, however, that I should be spurned because I left the house in running shoes, stretchy yoga pants, a t-shirt and a trace of the previous night’s mascara. I’ve been a member of a fitness club since High School in a culture where, unless you go to the gym straight from work, you arrive in sneakers and fitness gear without thinking twice. This falls into the “play clothes” category of dressing. However, looking sporty in Paris is a major faux-pas, one that provokes looks of disdain steeped in judgment – as if I’m not only inferior but about as stylish as a bag lady. The only context in which athletic-wear is permissible is for running outdoors but let’s be honest, this also confuses some Parisians. Why would anyone subject themselves to such sweaty torture?
I was immediately astounded by the get-ups women would sport to the gym, women that I would quickly learn were either stay-at-home trophy wives or stay-at-home mothers. Even at 9:30 on a Sunday morning, these characters would show up to the gym in heels, skinny jeans or a skirt, a painted face and an aroma that could only come from an entire bottle of perfume, and not the pleasant kind. All of this just to head straight for the locker room, gossip with their girlfriends, change (into what can only be considered in appropriate gym-attire) and, presumably, sweat off their liquid foundation.
The first time I saw some of these women I thought I was stuck in an 80’s horror flick, convinced that a crazed killer was going to storm through the gym and ravage one of them. Leotards, fishnet stockings, brightly colored spandex, scrunchies (gasp!), jewelry, lingerie, converse sneakers – all have made up the Parisian interpretation of athletic-wear. Yet somehow, in my City Sports Philly tee, yoga pants, pro running shoes and a slicked back ponytail I am the evil-doer, the one who merits the looks. And when I head to the weight lifting room where the smell of sweaty socks fills my nostrils and hits me like a brick, I am the outsider among virtually all men. Some hopelessly scrawny nerds, some beefed-up meatheads, some flirty homosexuals in short-shorts that leave little to the imagination and a lot of excessive staring. As a female, I breach the male-dominated muscle fortress the second I sit down on the hip-abductor machine. Because of this, these surly representations of French masculinity feel the need to comment on how I use the machines, remarking that muscles aren’t attractive on women. Luckily, I have perfected my look of death and am able to shoot them down without even opening my mouth. I have also learned not to take this personally and have concluded that French men are merely unaccustomed to seeing women with a little meat, muscles and tone (aka real).
Yes, these seemingly bizarre clothing choices and social behaviors could be attributed to a difference in culture (didn’t their parents ever teach them not to stare and judge?) but it really speaks to a much larger issue in the Parisian gyms, the idea of spectacle and prestige. It’s all for show – the outfits, the blatant yearning for perfection, the condescension, the visual competition – a great number of these Parisians are not there to lose weight, get fit or stay healthy (besides, any health benefit is negated by the smoking the moment they leave the gym) but to socialize and show off. Chalk it up to American Puritanism but I find it quite uncomfortable when women of ALL shapes, sizes and ages lead full-fledged conversations in the nude, often while oiling down.
This approach to fitness wouldn’t necessarily be problematic if it weren’t for the scowls and looks that scream “you’re inferior, you don’t look good, you have no style”. I’m not sure which is worse, their occasional blatant disregard for my existence or the more frequent looks of disgust likening me to a hobo.
Paris is not only the capital of fashion but of the thin ideal. Sure, it underwrites almost all messages diffused by American fashion media as well, but you can feel the yearning to be thin and stylish on and off the runway in Paris. For the most part, the women don’t have “play clothes” because, well, you never know who you might run into on a quick trip to the market or pharmacy so looking your best is imperative. I’ve had to completely change my habits and approach to dressing and I fear my American nonchalance is being quickly replaced by Parisian snobbism. But as much as I become more French in my style, I will always follow my mother’s logic and wear my “play clothes” to the gym. I can take the looks.
Note: I have since joined a different gym which seems to welcome a more Americanized fitness crowd, serious about exercise. I think it voids everything I have just written. I’ll report back in a year.
Lindsey is the creator of Lost In Cheeseland: Musings on food, love, life and struggles in Paris. She is a Paris transplant from Philadelphia, married to a Frenchman and on a permanent quest to understand the idiosyncrasies of the French. Having battled food and body image issues, she has struggled to find a balance in Paris where food is ubiquitous and bodies are tiny. In real life, she is in charge of Marketing & Communications for an online boutique. Check her out!
This past Saturday I had an anxiety attack: sudden sense of panic, difficulty breathing, head spinning, stone cold hands… the whole deal.
It happened during an afternoon of shopping in Paris. And I can attest with absolute certainty that it was provoked by the painful awareness of the power of patriarchy. I thought of it as my first feminist panic attack. Or, alternatively, my first sartorial panic attack. It was real. It was a bit scary. At first it filled me with a deep feeling of sadness and resignation, which quickly turned into outrage.
Rewind << My Armor
My ideal work “uniform”: crisp shirt, v-neck sweater or vest, scarf, and a classic Banana Republic blazer over jeans and flat shoes.
I have grown to love wearing blazers because of the sense of authority and seriousness they immediately confer. And I could really use that, especially in France, a country with rampant ageism and sexism. I experience condescending and patronizing attitudes from men – and some women – on a daily basis. I’m still getting used to it, since my experience in the U.S. and even Italy had always been quite different – the opposite, actually. But for a female, under the age of 40, this is standard fare in France. Even more so in the film business. Some aggravating elements: I tend to look younger than my age. I have long hair, and the exact body type of my grandmother: your typical Italian hourglass figure, with a large bust and wide hips. Not exactly the body of your token film director.
To compensate, I have always dressed in a modern Jane Austen fashion: classic, elegant, a bit preppy with a modern twist. But above all, Victorian (always proper and covered up, that is).
Working in a creative environment, I never had to don a real business suit. Still, the discovery of blazers was almost earth-shattering. Because whenever I wear them, most often paired with jeans, I feel like I’m wearing an armor, giving me strength and respect in the eyes of others: age and gender boundaries melt away a little. And in sexist/uber-feminine/ageist Paris, I have noticed a distinct change in the way I am treated whenever I wear my blazer uniform.
Since I’m currently having loads of important production meetings for The Illusionists, I thought it would be a good idea, with the weather getting warmer and all, to add a couple of vests to my wardrobe. (Because long sleeved sweaters under a blazer in the summertime indicate a propensity for masochism.)
So last week, on two different occasions, I ventured out looking for a very specific item of clothing: a cable-knit vest (preferably navy blue, crimson, or mauve).
Play > Me vs. French fashion designers
In my experience, after Tokyo the city of Paris is the one offering the richest experience in shopping for clothes. There is so much variety: all the world’s best known brands, along with obscure French designers. Galeries Lafayette and Printemps, on Boulevard Haussmann in the 9th arrondissement, are shopping Mecca with hundreds and hundreds of brands spread out over two entire blocks / seven stories up.
And there I went last Thursday evening. And then again on Saturday afternoon.
To cut the story short: after hours and hours of walking, scanning, browsing, and pulling clothes off of racks, I came up empty handed.
Everything was ULTRA-feminine, almost in a caricature sort of way: skirts, dresses, frilly tops with plunging necklines. Think: Hawaiian vacation more than a day at the office. EVERY SINGLE BRAND had a slight variation on this ultra feminine theme, but no one offered an alternative. There was simply no choice.
I stared in horror at linen (LINEN!) blazers at Galeries Lafayette.
A ray of hope came from the Italian brand Benetton, which offered one short black blazer and a few shirts (long and short sleeved). But no vests.
This came as a surprise because a month ago I was in Milan, Italy, and I visited the biggest Benetton store in the city center. Displayed prominently everywhere were business suits, shirts and pants (along with feminine items, of course, but the business attire was there and was abundant). Why didn’t I purchase anything then? (Because I’m an idiot. And because they didn’t have any vests. I’m obsessed with vests, if you couldn’t tell)
Back in Paris: Zara, Naf Naf, Kookai, Esprit, Benetton, Sisley, BCBG, H&M and GAP for women are all about flowing, wide cotton shirts most appropriate for sunny weekend afternoons. On the male side, on the other hand, there is always a vast choice of sharp business attire: shirts, sweaters, elegant shoes. I know because in the three years I’ve been living in France, I get envious whenever I go shopping for presents for my boyfriend. There is so much to choose from – and the fabric is comparatively better. Zara for Men looks almost upscale and preppy, with a vast selection of affordable cashmere sweaters. Zara for women has cheap looking Nylon sweaters scattered on the floor. Grrrr.
So, what kind of adjectives can best describe the woman of French fashion boutiques?
Breezy.
Carefree.
Young.
Extremely feminine.
Sweet.
Sexy.
Non-threatening.
You see where I’m going?
I don’t want breezy and sweet. I want professional and serious. A quasi-unisex uniform. And I couldn’t find any of that after surveying more than a hundred different brands. I wanted a simple vest! GAP was the only store that carried one, but it was pale pink and thus too feminine for my taste.
Golfing equipment came close, but not quite. Sleeveless cotton shirts with the swoosh logo were not really my thing. Plus, if I’m in a meeting asking for film funding, I want to look like Allison Janney/C.J. Cregg from The West Wing, not like Michelle Wie.
The sportswear section of Printemps offered a few options: Ralph Lauren cable-knit sweaters, but they were long sleeved, came in hot pink or orange, and at 170 Euros a pop, they were waaaay out of my range.
The panic attack gradually set in about 5 hours later, after wandering aimlessly from a uber-feminine boutique to another. I shivered at the idea that French society would push me to adhere to this caricatural model of femininity. And so my head went spinning. And my hands turned stone cold.
Backlash
The recurring thought of the panic attack was that the pinkification of young girls has spread to older women. Society wants us to look like non-treatening child-women. And it’s starting with clothes.
While walking down rue St. Antoine, after a quick visit to the GAP (where I had seen the only vest of the day, pale pink, which screamed “Barbie girl”) I suddenly remembered a chapter about fashion in Susan Faludi’s wonderful book “Backlash.” To make a long story short, in the 1970s and early 1980s in the United States, business suits for women became extremely popular. There were loads of stories in women’s magazines about “Dressing for Success.”
A book about this issue – a survey of hundreds of women working in the corporate world – revealed that:
[Women] who wore business suits were one and a half times more likely to feel they were being treated as executives – and a third less likely to have their authority challenged by men. Clothing that called attention to sexuality, on the other hand – women’s or men’s – lowered one’s status at the office. “Dressing to succeed in business and dressing to be sexually attractive are almost mutually exclusive.”
Fashion houses started to promote in an enthusiastic way business suits for women. Open any woman’s magazine from the late 1970s–early 1980s and you will see for yourself.
Faludi then noted:
But in their enthusiasm, fashion merchants overlooked the bottom line: dress for success could save women money and liberate them from fashion-victim status. Business suits weren’t subject to wild swings in fashion and women could get away (as men always have) with wearing the same suit for several days and just varying the blouse and accessories – more economical than buying a dress for every day of the week.
Clothing sales plummeted in the 1980s. The fashion industry faced the worst crisis since World War II. And so, in the late 1980s, merchants, with the help of mass media, literally set out to kill the “dress-for-success” loudly proclaiming a return to femininity. Mademoiselle had a story about “The Death of Dress for Success” – and other obituaries in Vogue, Elle, Cosmo and other major publications followed suit.
So, it makes economic sense to keep women away from business suits. That realization managed to dampen my panic attack. It was rational. Awful, but rational, and driven by the economy, just like the beauty myth. I took the bus home and called it a day.
12-14 Year Old American Boy
I eventually found my cable-knit vest. Courtesy of Ralph Lauren. Ralph Lauren Junior, that is. The boys’ collection. I had to effectively cross gender and age lines to find something suitable.
The girls’ collection – just like the women’s – was full of dresses and frilly, sweet things. But the boys’ was Mecca to me. Lots of elegant sweaters, polo shirts, and, above all, cable-knit vests in navy blue, black, red and mustard yellow. My size corresponds to a boy, age 12-14. In the eyes of Ralph Lauren, it’s a boy full of promise: an active boy, future Ivy League graduate, on the road to becoming a brilliant doctor. I like that. I like that far better than the clothing for a submissive, dressing-to-seduce woman clinging desperately to her youth.
So, underneath a Ralph Lauren vest made for a 12-14 year old American boy is a bra, and underneath that bra is a heart, still yearning for the big dreams and aspirations of a young girl, now a grown woman. She was never told by her parents that, because of the genitals she was born with, she had to settle for less. And she won’t.
Scarlett Johansson just wrote an article for the Huffington Post, speaking out about the media’s obsession over celebrities’ weight loss (and gain):
Every time I pass a newsstand, the bold yellow font of tabloid and lifestyle magazines scream out at me: “Look Who’s Lost It!” “They Were Fabby and Now They’re Flabby!” “They Were Flabby and Now They’re Flat!” We’re all aware of the sagas these glossies create: “Look Who’s Still A Sea Cow After Giving Birth to Twins!” Or the equally perverse: “Slammin’ Post Baby Beach Bodies Just Four Days After Crowning!”
According to the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA), as many as 10 million females and 1 million males living in the US are fighting a life and death battle with anorexia or bulimia. I’m someone who has always publicly advocated for a healthy body image and the idea that the media would maintain that I have lost an impossible amount of weight by some sort of “crash diet” or miracle workout is ludicrous. I believe it’s reckless and dangerous for these publications to sell the story that these are acceptable ways to looking like a “movie star.” It’s great to get tips on how to lead a healthier lifestyle, but I don’t want some imaginary account of “How She Did It!” I get into and stay in shape by eating a proper diet and maintaining a healthy amount of exercise. The press should be held accountable for the false ideals they sell to their readers regarding body image — that’s the real weight of the issue.
(emphasis mine)
Full article here.
The Media Education Foundation is one of my favorite organizations: they produce and distribute “documentary films and other educational resources to inspire critical reflection on the social, political, and cultural impact of American mass media.”
Generation M, a documentary about misogyny in media and culture, touches a lot of my film’s themes.
Check out the film’s trailer on the official Generation M page at MEF. Highly highly recommended.
From The Frisky:
Women’s magazines weren’t always a medium for recycled, superficial news, nor were their readers always in the market for it. They used to be (dare I say it?) thoughtful, provoking, political … something completely different from what we pick up today. So since when did scouring the literature in the checkout line become a guilty pleasure rather than an intellectual pursuit? When did the literature turn guilty?
Believe it or not, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, and Good Housekeeping were all once the epitome of social activism and sophistication. Teddy Roosevelt himself used to be a Cosmo Girl, so to speak, contributing lengthy stories to its pages before they were filled with frills and celebrity fanfare.
At the time of its incarnation, Good Housekeeping was about more than putting women back in the kitchen. It advocated for pure food at the turn of the twentieth century, leading to the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. It started an anti-cigarette campaign twelve years before the Surgeon General’s warning was even printed on cigarette packs, and endorsed the Ludlow Amendment in the 1930s, which required that any declaration of war—with the exception of an invasion—be ratified by a direct vote of the citizenry. Today, however, its readership is used largely by businesses as their primary target for consumer studies. While it’s not fair to stereotype all Housekeeping subscribers as apron-clad homemakers, the magazine’s history of political activism does feel far from the headlines we see on its covers today—dominated by baking and how to entertain houseguests.
Full article here.
One of the main reasons why I started working on “The Illusionists” is my disdain for double standards – the fact women are judged first and foremost on their physical appearance, whereas men have it really easy in that department. But more than that, what truly irks me is the physically painful, expensive, torturous things women put themselves through to adhere to alleged “standards of beauty” (corsets in the 1800s, Brazilian bikini waxing today, to cite a couple of examples).
High heels are also on my list of annoying things: I understand that they make women look taller, and that they give the illusion of looking thinner. I get that. But over the long run, they also create many physical problems to the feet and back. And in case of emergency, high heels may be quite dangerous:
Feministing reported, some while back:
Two California women were killed in a freak train accident. Police believe the high heel shoes they were wearing may have hindered their escape from a car stuck on the tracks, the Los Angeles Times reports.”
And the blog also carried this image, taken from The Washington Post:
Sarkozy and Berlusconi aside…
… if high heels were actually acceptable for men, do you think they would put themselves through the torture of wearing 4 inch stilettos in the name of fashion? Mmm… methinks not. I know what you’re thinking: “Men wearing heels? That would be ridiculous!” That is exactly my point. Why do we, as women, have to put up with such ludicrous things as Manolo high heels, that make us walk like ducks?
Jezebel had an interesting piece on heels – they dug up a 1930s article by a male journalist, who suggested women should ”ignore the new trend toward high heels and find a ‘non-barbaric form of footwear.’”
If only they had listened…