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BY MAKI SOMOSOT

In print | Published September 23, 2010

Certain cultural stereotypes survive simply for the reason that they remain true at their base. Of course, this grain of truth is often lampooned and exaggerated beyond recognition into the shallow caricatures of popular culture.

However, I’ve quickly discovered that the stereotype of Paris as the most romantic city in the world is much, much closer to the daily reality that I experience here than you would think.

The City of Love transcends its name. Paris is a city brimming with lovers full of hopes, dreams, and most of all, raging hormones, regardless of age or appearance. It is a living, breathing panorama of publicly, and often flagrantly, displayed affection.

In every possible direction, couples are making out and touching each other in the name of love. I once witnessed a sophisticated twosome in the Jardin des Tuileries indulge in a public, half-hour long enlacement, wrapped in each other’s well-tailored coats, murmuring sweet nothings and exchanging kisses.

This stereotypical Parisian scenario never ceases to delight tourists, even seasoned voyeurs like me. But it is actually considered a banality here, due to its frequent occurrence in the Parisian landscape. Coupledom reigns supreme in Paris as a daily reality, just like the Eiffel Tower and the Notre Dame Cathedral.

The French have apparently learned en masse to acculturate to this romantic spectacle since birth.
The dynamic propensity for PDA in Paris has also birthed les drageurs infameux, eager to express their declarations of love to complete strangers on the street. Roughly translated into “infamous flirts,” this description refers to Frenchmen on the prowl for naïve foreign women who stroll around Paris alone and unaccompanied.

Paris is best discovered by hours of aimless wandering through its streets, but adventurous females doing so remain vulnerable to unwanted male attention.

The most stereotypical incident of this nature happened during my first ever excursion in Paris.
One splendid Parisian afternoon, I sought out some well-deserved alone time to read for a class project at the beautiful Jardin des Tuileries. The Jardin is located right next to the Louvre, which guarantees a tourist population — and therefore drageurs — in the same overflowing abundance as the flowers, fountains and marble statues.

In a quiet, shaded spot under a tree, I was busy reading about the geopolitical divisions of the French capital when a voice blasted through my happy bubble. The conversation went as follows (verbatim):
“Excuse me if I’m disturbing you, Mademoiselle, but I find that your face is just so beautiful; I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” the man ventured in accented French.

“Merci monsieur, but I’m busy here working. Good night,” I replied ineffectively, too stunned to remember that the best expression to ward off such men was ‘Laissez-moi tranquille,’ the equivalent of ‘Leave me alone’ in English.

Sensing my shock, the man would not be deterred.

“I don’t want to disturb you, mademoiselle, but I just want to get to know you. Can I please sit down next to you just for five minutes?”

“I already told you that I’m busy, and I have a book to read for class. It’s not possible,” I retorted, but then made the fatal mistake of laughing and smiling at him. The man pouted, misreading my smiles as reciprocal flirtation. “Can I please have your number anyway?” he pursued. Only after shaking my head numerous times did he finally process the rejection and walk away.

While flattering, the novelty of the situation soon wears off after encountering even dodgier types of the Frenchman drague. Barely two days later, I experienced something that could be classified as sexual harassment by American statute and something that apparently happens often for no reason in French elevators.

One night, two guys and a girl who were smoking and bantering among themselves entered the same elevator that I was in. For kicks, the one smoking then proceeded to turn off the meager light overhead, plunging the whole elevator into darkness. I turned on my cell phone light to re-establish some possibility of vision, but he promptly snapped it shut.

Seconds passed until I felt a hand from nowhere grasp my neck and start stroking my chin. Maybe he somehow mistook my face for the light switch. Meanwhile, their female companion had miraculously found the actual switch and had turned the lights back on with an angry look on her face.

“Laissez-moi tranquille!” I finally timed the comeback right, wishing that he would choke on his cigarette. Cigarette Guy smirked but recoiled in his corner.

So far, this had been the most blatantly tactile act of drague that had ever been attempted on me. I was left unimpressed by my close encounters, whose utter heights of absurdity surpassed even my strongest psychological barriers.

My cultural stupefaction was shared by most of the other foreign students in my program. An American friend was also having trouble staving off male interest from several mecs chelous, otherwise known as “sketchy” men, who lived in our dormitory. She was continuously bothered for her cell-phone number, hounded about her romantic availability and propositioned to participate in dubious activities.

A certain Hershey (name changed for obvious reasons), with whom I also had the pleasure of a personal encounter, urged us to “never hesitate to pass by his room,” if and whenever we were “in need” of something.

Another rule of thumb for foreign women sojourning in Paris: Never engage in a conversation with a friendly, talkative stranger at night, as much as you want to practice your French and forge new local acquaintances. In other words, do not expect that your conversational tendencies will translate so fluidly across cultural borders. If you fall prey to this situation, you will more than likely find yourself followed back to your dorm in the dead of night by a stranger claiming to want to get to know you.
Another well-meaning American friend of mine, thrilled with the prospect of practicing her French with a real flesh-and-blood Parisian, had engaged in this kind of nocturnal conversation on the Metro. Much to her horror, the friendly stranger, whom she found she couldn’t evade, followed her all the way back to her dorm at three in the morning.

A possible antidote to this situation would be to feign an inability to speak French, or a much better solution, as I’ve found, would be to ignore the attention altogether, which doesn’t require any interaction with the mec chelou concerned.

These anecdotes don’t disprove, or much less, deconstruct the stereotype; however, they are nevertheless veritable accounts. It has been refreshing to find the wholesome few Frenchmen in Paris who can keep their hands to themselves. Through random encounters, I have made the acquaintance of several male college students who do not live up to the mec chelou stereotype. Far from being drageurs, they are nice and sweet and frequently invite us out to socialize with the French university crowd.

Whether I will continue to meet more of this blessed non-stereotypical kind remains to be seen. All hope is not lost.

In the meantime, I am going to seriously reconsider my partiality toward taking the elevator over the stairs in this city.

Maki is a junior. You can reach her at msomoso1@swarthmore.edu.

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