In defense of owning 14 to 21 t-shirts

The charms of the stripped-down life are just about always greater in theory than in practice. Not having a computer, for instance - the stuff of escapist fantasy, but as I learned the week mine was out of commission, in practical terms it makes getting things done just about impossible. And having lived both with and without air conditioning and a dishwasher, I'd have to say that having both is better than not. By all means only use the a/c when it's super-hot out, or the dishwasher when it's full, but abandoning these amenities for the heck of it is not so rustically delightful when the sink is piled up with dishes and you've got a 100-degree kitchen to wash them in.

Another luxury I don't see the point of denying one's self is the ownership of enough t-shirts or tank tops to allow for a clean one every day for the duration of a laundry cycle. Permitting themselves only fresh underwear and (and this I really don't understand) limitless accessories, a group of women and token men are restricting themselves to six items of clothing for a month, and referring to this as a "diet". This is some groundbreaking reporting from the Times.

As with any attempt by first-world types to lead a simpler life, this round is all about some minor sacrifices being made, mimicked, and publicized. No electricity! All local foods! But only for a set period of time, after which the proceeds from book sales will fund an electric conveyor belt connecting the author's home to the kitchen of his or her preferred McDonalds.

Anyway. Shirts, especially in an especially hot summer, start to stink. I suppose if the wearer simply goes from air-conditioned house to air-conditioned office and back again, a shirt could last a bit longer, but that loses something of the anti-consumerist message. Or maybe they just wash the shirt every few days? Isn't this the cloth-versus-disposable-diaper debate all over again? And I suppose of these "dieters" are, as the article and images suggest, stunning blondes who exude wealth and have an eye for choosing basics, people in the room probably just assume the stench is coming from someone else.

But seriously - one shirt? Or is "underwear" being loosely-defined so as to include everything but outerwear? Because if that's the case, and every garment that touches more skin than it does clothing falls outside the rules, then what's the point?

The commenters are great. They're appalled that anyone might dress in more than a burlap sack, and seem convinced that only the hoitiest and toitiest own more than one pair of pants. They've been surviving on six items or less "for years." The exceptions, those who believe owning clothing is not a major sin, are self-righteous in their own way - they point out either that they grew up poor and/or deprived by their parents/school uniforms and now enjoy variety, or that the six-items experiment wouldn't work for people with Real Jobs, for whom "jeggings" are not a corporate basic.

But I especially like this comment: "I bet there are people in this country and around the world who would like to have six items of clothing. Food for thought." A comment that finds an "echo," if not several. There really needs to be a disclaimer on the front of every Styles section, warning that the articles below will not be about starving children in Africa, accompanied by an address to write to if you want to complain about the section's very existence.

Or maybe I'm just particularly enamored of clean t-shirts, even by first-world standards. With the Soldes ever more impressive and the laundry at the laundromat costing as much as the shirts at Petit Bateau, these are dangerous times.

But it's Jewish chlamydia!

One aspect of Birthright Israel I found especially perplexing/distasteful was the emphasis on hooking up with a fellow trip participant during those ten days. The anti-intermarriage indoctrination was one thing, but the implicit and sometimes explicit requests to get it on with any-Jew-will-do made it seem as though we were endangered zoo animals - pandas perhaps - who needed to be artificially fused together to propagate ourselves. (Also, it might have been nice if the powers that be accepted that some in the 18-26 range are already in committed relationships and are on the trip for the Zionist propaganda only.)

How this was distasteful is, I think, self-evident. But it was perplexing because it was this full-on embrace, so to speak, of The Hook-Up Culture. Normally, right-leaning adults with an agenda for The Youth discourage casual sex. On Birthright, the idea was somehow that if both people are Jews, whatever happens, however impulsive, is to be celebrated. As though any gonorrhea contracted in the name of keeping the "shiksas" at bay was somehow For A Good Cause.

I was reminded of this by a much-reported story about an Israeli woman who successfully accused a man of rape for claiming to be Jewish to get into her pants. Do the Israeli courts so fear intermarriage that they, like Birthright, make a distinction between "mixed" hook-ups and those only Jews are involved in? Honesty's great and all that, but this is almost as though being Arab - or simply non-Jewish - is being equated with having a sexually-transmitted infection, something one must disclose because of a damaging, potentially life-altering impact on even a one-night stand. I don't know if it's right to think of this as being about anti-Arab racism, though, because it would not at all surprise me if a Western European or North American non-Jewish man went through the same charade, he'd be in the same boat. But I could be wrong.

Given how many Israelis don't even want to live in Israel, let alone diaspora Jews (except, it seems, the French), maybe, maybe, Israel could consider approaching its populationist concerns in ways that aren't so destructive and coercive. When really, what Jews, particularly in Israel, ought to be doing is taking advantage of the fact that this is an era, unlike just about any other in recent memory, when not only are non-Jews interested in marrying Jews, but some are even ready to pose as Jews to get sex with Jewish women. People want in! I'm not saying send out missionaries, but converting in should be both doable and, once done, recognized. I mean, imagine that - make more Jews without resorting to natalism or bizarre hook-up legislation, simply by recognizing the Jews who already exist.

The French art of romance

Walking home from the train this evening, a someone stretched out a leg as though to trip me. I turned around, to see who the leg belonged to, and the man whose leg it was somewhat lasciviously blew me a kiss. Charming. Who knows what women who aren't clones of Liz Lemon have to put up with in this city.

A not-uncommon sight in Paris

Europe, you baffle me

French cellulite ads, NSFW, depending how Francophilic your office is, after the jump (or, for the time being, by clicking on the post).

The French are intellectual and unaffected by American cultural imperialism

Enfin!

Le Boulanger des Invalides, where I intend to sign up for a meal plan.

Pastry and coffee served in same place, check.
Pleasant indoor and outdoor seating options, check.
Reasonable prices, check.
Croissant made with butter and noticeably superior to what would be found on a random corner in NY, check.
Non-croissant options available as well, check.
Open all summer (!), check.

Slight disadvantage: not anywhere near where I'm living, or will live, or any of the libraries. But if a dome-shaped attic apartment were to fall into my lap...

Pretty ugly*

There's an entire category of fashion that gets labeled different ways ('ironic,' 'clothing men don't like,' 'fashion victimy,' etc.) but that amounts to the same thing: clothing that's intentionally ugly, yet worn by women who want to look pretty. Think Chloe Sevigny. Think one-pieces with harem-pant bottoms. Think... think absolutely any garment, worn on a woman who clearly pays a good deal of attention to her appearance. If styled in a way that implies This Is Fashion, or put on a model (see: why "models off-duty" is a useless concept), it's all fair game. Unitards, high-waisted jeans with pleats, men's workshirts, flannel...

The latest installment: Jessica Grose, a Slate writer, discovered German orthopedic sandals, which she's been wearing "for years," and which can now, and I've seen it myself, be found in trendy shoe stores in the US.**

Here's where things get tricky. Grose writes: "I don't know about other Worishofer owners, but my love for them is earnest—I genuinely think they are attractive." And yet! For the "grandma sandals" look to work, the wearer cannot herself be of grandma age, just as for the "boyfriend" look to be that and not simply "butch," the wearer must (go out of her way to) give off the vibe of someone who'd have, well, a boyfriend. This is the difference between menswear-as-trend and crossdressing. And these are fine lines, so to speak. Grose may believe she genuinely likes these sandals, but she first noticed them on a stylish (and presumably sub-80) friend. Indeed, she refers to the shoe's "under-40" wearers. What happens at 40?

Because the effect is in the contrast - pretty-young-thing in outfit intended for someone far older - or far more masculine. It all hinges on the visible non-membership of the wearer in whatever category of person one imagines the garment or look to be for. Straightforwardly pretty (or chic, or sexy) clothes, meanwhile, are quite obviously intended to enhance the appearance of the wearer. The message sent by pretty-ugly clothing is that the wearer must be the following to pull that outfit off: 1) naturally beautiful, 2) unconcerned with how she's seen (aka not trying too hard), 3) you get the idea.

I'm torn. On the one hand, I support all trends that permit women to wear the hot new thing without cutting off circulation or stumbling into train tracks or what have you. On the other, I don't like this whole 'let's not look pretty, yet in doing so show off how pretty we really are' strain of fashion, either. All of this brings me back, boringly enough, to the straightforwardly this-looks-nice gamine look so easily procured in Paris, and so conducive to wearing flat shoes and otherwise comfortable attire. Breton stripes and narrow (not "skinny") jeans, ballet flats, feels a bit costumey when actually in France, but basically, problem solved.

*Not to be confused with "jolie laide," which is French for either, this young woman's ugly but has rich and famous parents so we have to say something nice, or, this woman's all-around attractive but has 'ethnic' features that prevent her from fitting the Bardot standard.

**A well-kept secret is that some of NY's best shopping is on residential and untrendy West 72nd Street. Those sandals included, although in that locale it's a fair bet they're being worn unironically for real.

Stereotypes confirmed:

-Nearly every food establishment I passed by on my way back from the market (itself stereotype-confirming by its very existence) is either already closed for a long vacation or about to be. (Add to the "Frenchwomen don't get fat" files: one month per year of semi-starvation can't hurt.)

-A man sits enjoying a beer and cigarette at an outdoor café. My first thought is that it's so early I have yet to have my first coffee of the day. The second is that he's sitting there with his baby in a stroller. Not Park Slope, this.

-Passed a newsstand where there was a magazine with Napoleon III on the cover. The magazine is entirely devoted to the Second Empire. As in, this is something people who aren't necessarily studying the topic read about for enjoyment. I do notice on the Metro that just about everyone - punks included - is reading Literature. At first I thought this was just that I was deceived by the aesthetics of book covers here, but glancing at the titles, there really does seem to be less interest in Heidi Montag's attempts to get a H-is-for-Heidi-cup chest, or in some French equivalent thereof.

-The bureaucratic procedures needed for me to look at a couple library books ought to be providing a large family from some politically-controversial country with papers to live here.

-It is always, always, always cheaper to get wine, whatever the alternatives.

Stereotypes challenged:

-I used the bathroom in a French home without causing controversy or offending my friend whose home it is.

- A different Real Life French Person friend came by wearing flip-flops and shorts. These are supposed to be the marks of the American male, but it turns out, contrary to stereotype, that French men are allowed to acknowledge summer weather and leave home in something other than evening-wear or skintight jeans. (French women, so long as they're thin and burqa-less, can pretty much wear whatever.)

-But wait! Ever since the article about how French women eat nothing, ever, I've seen many obese locals, along with the usual hordes of skinny-rich American girls on study abroad. I also saw - and this I've never seen in NY - a young man get up to give his seat to a woman simply because she was so obese that she looked like she needed to sit down. Clearly not pregnant (putting the 'should I get up but what if she's just fat?' dilemma into perspective), not elderly, not (otherwise) disabled. Was this woman, in Frahnce, offended? No! She happily took the seat and looked relieved.

Elusive libraries

-If you're already going to a library for weeks, why do you only then learn that all this time, you were supposed to be a fee-paying member to do so? I paid (and am saving the receipt, since I'd say this qualifies as a grant expense), but am not quite sure what this changed, since it's a still-greater fee to take books out.

-If you've reserved books at a library (a different one, whose fee you've paid and card you've received) for both Friday and Saturday, and find out once you see your Friday books that they're not what you need, and you check online and see that the Saturday ones have arrived, theoretically you'd be able to start on the Saturday books on Friday, perhaps eliminating the need to come back Saturday? Non. Pourquoi pas? Not a question worth asking.

In defense of the French-women-age-well article, up against the NYT commentariat (will the NY-Paris comparisons never end?)

-Yes, it's annoying, especially if you are French or study France, that The French are forever conflated with a) French women (are there men in France?), b) Parisian women, c) wealthy Parisian women living in a few neighborhoods, and d) Catherine friggin Deneuve. But seriously. This is a NYT Styles article! There's an implicit comparison being made between Parisian women in the 16th and 7th Arrondissements and their equivalents on the Upper East Side. It's an act of great inclusiveness for an article in that section to go beyond the lives of wealthy NY women. And save the outrage: the neighborhood my grad-student stipend allows me to live in is roughly a pre-trendy Prospect Heights, and virtually no one is obese or in sweats. Paris is, for better or worse, a more aesthetically-minded city than NY, across class and racial lines. The author might have mentioned this, but at any rate, that it wasn't in the article doesn't mean, as it happens, that the article only applies to women of immense privilege.

-Yes, it's a shame that women are so judged on the basis of looks, and I wish that men were judged a bit more and women more than a bit less in that regard. And the fact that people tend to look their age (says this Madame) should not be understood as some kind of disaster that half of humanity must battle. But if women are going to be judged on the basis of beauty, aren't the sort of good looks that can be achieved through overpaying for skin creams and accessories better than that which results from continuous exercise plus liposuction? It's a tough line to draw, but female beautification rituals can be divided between the miserable and the guilty-pleasurable. As in, shoes and neon nail polish, fun, elliptical machine and fat-free yogurt, not so fun. Yes, it's oppressive from a gender-norms standpoint that these women are expected to be ultra-feminine, but their American equivalents are expected to shun The Frilly, The Fancy, and The Schmancy, yet have flawlessly toned upper thighs. I'll take peer pressure to buy a scarf over the sort that would have me surgically deschnozzified. The comparison, then, is between older women feeling they have to look 16, and older women feeling they will always have to care about looking chic. There's an obvious answer to this question, even from a feminist, lesser-of-two-evils, perspective. Regardless, the issue isn't and shouldn't be framed as "natural" versus "artificial," because it's all artifice.

-If it were really true that Frenchwomen ate only subatomic particles of fromage, that would be a problem, but people here strike me as being more not-fat than what would, on the Upper East Side for example, count as "thin." Aside from Paris's fashion models, who for reasons and by mechanisms I don't understand are half the width of their NY equivalents, the intentionally emaciated are few and far between. There's absolutely without a doubt more social pressure on the average Frenchwoman to be thin than on the average American woman. But if we're talking snooty urbanites, the never-thin-enough attitude of the community I grew up in does not seem to be mirrored here.

On not changing teams UPDATED

Last night, while waiting to meet some friends for Bastille Day, I found myself in the middle of a free concert. That concert turned out to be a meeting of a pro-Palestinian Communist student group. What can I say? They convinced me.

Nah. I'm off to buy a handbag (convinced by my mother, who thinks my $15 early-college-era H&M standby has to go, and by Amber's ode to quality leather goods - no details on this particular bag's price other than that it is to a grad student what the bags discussed at Prettier than Napoleon are to a corporate lawyer) and then to study at the library of a proto-Jewish-nationalist organization. Zionist and bourgeoise as ever around here.

UPDATE

Amber asked, and I'm answering:



Image from the Valérie Salacroux website.

Size may be tough to picture, but it's good for a wallet, book, phone, keys, etc., but is not, nor is it intended to be, a backpack replacement. I wasn't sure about the long strap at first, but it turned out quite comfortable. It's not the most expensive thing I own (that's what I'm typing on) but it made a change from H&M.

New York vs. Paris, the Jew Edition

I know, I said no more comparisons, but before that, I promised an explanation of why I suspect that cultural Judaism lives on here in a way it doesn't back home.

My first inkling of this came the first night I was here, when I attended a movie premiere for an Israeli romantic comedy. The film was supposed to be premiered somewhere else, but that theater decided a boycott was in order and replaced it with (what else?) a Rachel Corrie documentary. The movie itself - A cinq heures de Paris - was nothing special, but the rally that preceded it left me with plenty to think about. The whole event was organized by a French-Jewish student group, and the speakers included prominent students, film directors, how many of each I can't remember what with having basically just gotten off the plane. Anyhow, what I noticed was that, while the speakers made a big and very French fuss about the importance of Art and Cinema, and about the universalist (French) values, they were very clear that they believed the boycott to be motivated by... anti-Semitism. Yeah, they said it. American Jews, in my experience, go through the motions of making it clear that they wouldn't in a million years accuse anyone or any institution of that. I also found that the energy of the crowd, particularly on the topic of the climate towards Jews in France, was such that French Jews - or at least those in this particular packed theater, who did not seem especially religious for the most part - feel a) that the Jewish Question (for lack of a better term) is a current one, and b) that the state of the Jews in France is something up for discussion. For all kinds of historical (Vichy) and present-day (Middle East policy) reasons, secular-ish American Jews do not, again, in my experience, gather to discuss whether or not America is a good place for Jews. This much is taken as a given. Anyway, it's tough to gauge 'types' in a new place, especially on no sleep, but my sense of the crowd was that these were people who, if American, would not be at an event like this. I personally felt much more in sync with this set than with any group of Jews in NY, but felt odd about applauding after the speeches, given that, in a sense, their fight isn't mine. In another sense, it is.

Next, French-Jewish radio. When my computer was kaput, I'd run out of podcasts to listen to while cooking dinner, and ended up with something called Radio Shalom. The programs were everything from secular literary discussions to fairly middle-of-the-road (to American ears) discussions of Iran, but the ads! The ads were directed at an audience either about to move to Israel or living half of the year in that country. One in particular was a Jewish Mother chatting with her Nice Jewish Son (yes, stereotypes can cross the Atlantic) about whether he'd prepared his family for their aliyah. The ad was for some kind of Francophone health services in Israel, and ended with the mother asking his son if he'd eaten yet. ("Oui, maman," he says, exasperated.) I don't know of any secular yet aliyah-oriented Jewish radio station back home, but I can't imagine the demographic it would be addressing.

Finally, there's the persistence of Jewish neighborhoods. New York kind of has this, but typically far from the city center and very religiously-focused - Orthodox or, in the most-equivalent case of West 96th Street, Modern Orthodox. My sense - again, only a sense - is that, whether because of more recent immigration or who knows, culturally Jewish areas exist here in a way that's not quite present in NY. There are places like the UWS (below 96th)* or LES, which were once Jewy but are now just yuppie. A possible equivalent to N. African Jews here would be Russian Jews in NY, but my sense - again, again, I haven't researched this - is that they see themselves and are seen more as Russians than as Jews in New York (as in, what does "Brighton Beach" bring to mind?), whereas there's little sense that Moroccan Jews here are undifferentiated Moroccans.

Basically, the disclaimer that's the undercurrent to all of this is that I don't have a clue, and have barely just arrived.

*This happened: an American couple was having an argument with a security guard at one of the Jewish museums here in Paris. All I overheard from their argument, which was in English, was the (possibly Israeli, possibly French) guard telling the couple, "This isn't a supermarket." The man was wearing a hat and shirt with the orange Zabars logo. Never have I felt such a sense of Jewish peoplehood.

Import/Export

Paris needs from NY:

-Cold-brewed iced coffee. (What I've attempted with the French press here half-works, but what I'd give for some Think or Third Rail.)
-Garlic scapes.
-Air-conditioned public transportation.
-Real sales. None of this 20% off nonsense.
-Shake Shack.
-Places it's possible to sit and read a book with maybe a coffee and a pastry around 4pm. This would seem to be the very essence of what Paris is about, but cafés at that hour are in fact intended to sit with six friends in, consuming only beverages. Fun, but not conducive to dissertation writing. There are salons de thé, but these seem to be places where, for the low low price of 24 euros, I'd be in for far more than, say, an espresso and a macaron.
-Dermatologists. It's not permitted here to ride the Metro if you're not currently picking at a very active skin disease of some kind. I'm not a dermatologist, but if even I can think of roughly what creams need to be prescribed in these situations, imagine what a professional could do.

NY needs from Paris:

-Signs on the subway with when the next and the following train will arrive.
-Cheesewinepastry, obviously.
-Beautiful buildings everywhere.
-The Seine. (Sorry, Hudson, East River.)
-Creative alternatives to leggings-as-pants. This would be the weather for super-casual attire, so the fact that I'm not seeing leggings-as-pants must mean it's not a trend here.
-Women with their original noses. Or just generally, women who, though rich and attentive to appearance, do not appear to have accounted for every square-inch of their bodies, the way the women of the Upper East Side or Tribeca have, with some combination of exercise, diet, and surgery. Here, I get the sense that women just slap on a (placebo) cellulite cream and focus on what really matters, such as clothing and accessories. That said, the cosmetic alteration one does see here is typically over-the-top - cartoon inflated lips, breasts, and so forth. But it's unusual.

But overall, these two cities are so similar, it's easy to forget which one's which. Crowded subways, tiny apartments, a skinny and racially diverse populace, French-speaking shoe-shoppers, Uniqlo bags everywhere (and no, I have not - yet - visited Paris's flagship), the potential to do or buy virtually anything, the knowledge that there are always streets you haven't seen... In terms of compare/contrast, I think this may be all you're getting for a while.

Bizarro security

Normally, to get into and out of a research library requires some variant of opening your bag to show a security guard. If the library in question is Jewish-themed, add to that the possible x-raying of said bag, if not a frisking with a metal detector. This is the general rule, which is why I was so surprised to find that one of the (seemingly infinite) French-Jewish libraries here has nothing beyond the usual signs warning you that you're under video surveillance. You just walk in, nod to the guard, and, at least assuming you look like someone who's spending the summer researching Jews, or look otherwise unthreatening,* off you go. There's no bag-checking, no food-and-pen policing (although I haven't seen anyone eating in the place, but it is France), no procedure of any kind.

That is, until today, when, as I was leaving - as opposed to entering - the library, I noticed the door wasn't opening. A guard who isn't the usual guard asked me if I worked there. I explained that I was doing research in the library (can't have been the first time this had happened) and had been for a couple weeks, and was then asked if I was on The List. There's a list? I gave my name, even though I knew I wasn't on any list, and it was confirmed that I'm not on the list. The guard then asked me again if I worked there and, because I hadn't to my knowledge been hired at the place in the past thirty seconds, I explained that I was just at the library to do research. This, this time around, was deemed acceptable, and the guard unlocked the door for me.

What I can't figure out is why, if there's going to be security, it would be at the exit, rather than the entrance. Normally, the fear with Jewish libraries is terrorism, not book theft, and at any rate none of the guard's questions had anything to do with books, nor did he have any interest in looking in my bag. Is there some kind of interrogation chamber you get sent to, rather than being allowed out, if your response is not adequate? Or is the punishment an overnight stay at the library? In which case, sign me up - the place closes at 6 normally, so this would mean extra, air-conditioned, hours with my sources.

*The most surprisingly pleasant thing about Paris - and a point in favor of travel - is that here, I'm, if not tall, then average height, and in platform sandals, taller than many men. And, without the usual population of broad-shouldered former high school athletes (French Women Don't Get Ripped), I'm not especially small here all-around. What this means is that I command more respect in public places than I do in my own native city. By this I mean, I don't have to step aside on the sidewalk for people whose line of sight doesn't register my existence, and I'm not crushed to a pulp on rush-hour trains. I could get used to this.

"What does the Gap in Rome have that the Gap on Broadway doesn't?"

This question, which Puddy asks Elaine after their failed European vacation, or a variant of it is a Major Question of our Age. One of the highlights of travel is the chance of finding something you can't get back home. This is true of stuff you buy for yourself, all the more important for gifts - if you're getting someone something from France, it probably shouldn't be from H&M. Or Uniqlo. Or... If you live in a major city, and are shopping for others who do as well, or even if not given the existence of the Internet, you're unlikely to find a whole lot that can't at the very least be mail-ordered domestically.

I thought I'd found this bastion of only-abroad French basics, a brand called (of all things) American Vintage, available in Belgium as well as France. I somehow had the sense these t-shirts were not to be found back home. Then a longer look at their website revealed:

USA

Flying A
169 Spring Street
New York NY 10012
Tél 00212.965.9090

Yaso
62 Grand Street
New York NY 10013
Tél 00212.941.8506

GC William
111 West 72Nd Street
New York NY 10023
Tél 00212.873.2314

TG-170
170 Ludlow St.
New York NY 10002
Tél 00212.995.8660

Basic Basic
710 Broadway
New York NY 10003
Tél 00212.477.5711

Wink Nyc
188 Columbus Avenue
New York NY 10023
Tél 00212 941 7078

Olive and Bette'S
155 West 72Nd Street
New York NY 10023
Tél 00212.712.0473

Atrium
644 Broadway
New York NY 10012
Tél 00212.473.3980

One of the stores is literally right outside the subway station I take to campus every day.

The same is true, occasionally, of sources. I constantly have to check that sources are, in fact, only available in France. If they're at the NYPL, JTS, CJH, Columbia library, Bobst, or on the Internet, what's the point?

The tape here is rouge

The aspect of adulthood that I most dreaded growing up was bureaucracy. To be an adult meant, I realized, having to fill out your own forms, make your own appointments, make phone calls that lead to getting put on hold, not only paying bills in the sense of needing to earn money but also, more horribly, having to keep track of account numbers and receipts. All of this has turned out to be an accurate assessment of adulthood, although in retrospect, the makework homework of childhood, added to the forced socialization with other kids on account of you're the same age, you must have tons in common, meant that childhood was not such a free life-stage either.

Somehow, despite not being terribly much a fan of red tape (is anyone?), I decided to study France. This was all well and good until I started to study France in France. The amount of fuss required to do research on the one hand makes the moments when I'm actually sitting with a text all the more delightful, but on the other makes me wonder if spending my entire stipend ordering appropriate text from French Amazon and, if necessary, antiquarian bookstores and doing the whole thing from NY wouldn't have been the worst idea.

But! The cheese!

But! The complete and utter lack of cultural germophobia, such that every time you hold onto anything in the Metro, it's a safe bet that the person who did just before you coughed into that same hand, and/or picked at a scab with it.

But! The wine! The flan!

But! And so it continues.

Hot in France

People often romanticize the idea of not being on the computer. One imagines a hammock, a New England cabin in which novels are being written by typewriter or fountain pen. But I have to say, it hasn't been all that romantic to finally get to the primary sources I came all the way here to consult, and to take notes on what I've found by hand. Also, not being able to communicate with friends, family, and work, this too lacked a certain charm. It's one thing if you're going off the grid in order to get away from it all, but this happened during about the worst week for all categories, when I really most needed to be in touch.

But! Apple fixed the thing, so onto usual bloggery, which is to say, unsolicited observations about life in Paris.

-I'm here to study intermarriage in 19th C France. Which is probably how I was primed to notice that the most frequent mixed-race coupling one sees here in 21st C France is black women with white men - these couples are to Paris what East Asian women - white men couples are to New York. As in, there aren't nearly so many couples the other way around (black man - white woman). The couples appear to be young and old, hip and dorky, rich and poor, and so on, suggesting the pairing is not specific to any one demographic.

This information ought to be shoved in the faces of the sort of racists who claim that the breakdowns occur on account of which ethnic groups are 'inherently' more feminine or masculine. (I have specific racists in mind, but no links.)

I can't begin to understand why pairings occur in the proportions they do in the places they do, but I have a couple ideas. One is that in France, The White Man symbolizes, depending who you ask, Vichy or torture in Algeria, but not slavery (in metropolitan France) or Jim Crow. This might make for less tense black-white relationships, given how many other Others here have at least as much reason to be wary of the unhyphenated French. As in, it's not as though there's no past or present of racism against blacks in France, but that's not the racism here the way it is in the US. Another - and this one's a bigger stretch - is that whereas America has brought us "shiksappeal" and France the "Belle Juive," the two countries are simply opposites in terms of ethnic fetishization. Whereas in the US, black and Jewish women are the two groups whose sex appeal the culture most often denies, these same forms of difference were/are eroticized. The final, and most likely, possibility is that people here are in some ways less racist than back home, and that there really aren't so many black women with white men, but rather there are so few back home that to me, here it seems frequent.

-Cultural Judaism seems to exist here in a way it no longer does - or does, but barely - in New York. A full post on this to come.

-The obligatory French-Women's-Heft-or-Lack-Thereof comment, to get this out of the way: One can get the sense that Parisians - across race and class lines - just plain don't eat, and that all the food in the city is a function of the tourism industry. I'm almost always stuffing my face (such as: today's flan, yesterday's macarons, or the previous day's molten chocolate cake à emporter), but I'm American and this is my birthright. Generally speaking, no matter what the (often extensive) menu - brunch, Italian, Tex-Mex, regional French - you can pass a non-tourist café at just about any hour, even what I've been told are the meal times, and it will be filled with people having nothing more than cigarettes, coffee, wine, or soda. Upon further reflection, I suspect that Parisians do eat, because if they're not fat, they're not vastly thinner than, say, New Yorkers, whose food consumption is plenty conspicuous. Parisians, I figure, must just eat at home. Groceries here are much cheaper than in NY, and even "cheap" restaurants much more expensive. What this means is that dining out isn't so much about convenience as it is about an evening activity, hours spent with friends, 90-plus % of the time drinking something, 10% or less actually in the vicinity of food. My sense from the few times I've ventured beyond espresso and Cahors is that food is not really the focus, at least not at places I can afford, with one exception - and a climatisé one at that.

One final point on the subject: There are Surgeon General-type warning labels on ads for food, including what look to be healthy, balanced meals, from something called Manger Bouger, basically warning you that if you're going to mange (eat), you'd better bouge (move) in compensation. It's like, 'if you must eat, you ought to know what you're getting into,' as though eating were an activity human beings could altogether eliminate. I mean, for all I know maybe this is something entirely possible, but only if you're French. Which would, of course, explain what I've observed in the cafés.

-I'm bouging constantly, what with the Metro transfers my apartment necessitates and the stairs up and down and up and down each transfer must entail (and if the Metro itself were air-conditioned...), so mange I must. This leads me to another pastry dilemma. Paris is known for croissants. What I can't figure out is why, whereas in NY at any place even remotely claiming a French influence, croissants are presumed made with butter (and lots of it), here, bakeries offer two croissant options: butter and regular. What's regular? At best, a tasteless croissant. Meanwhile, all pastries that aren't croissants will only come in the regular option, which is to say, a pain au chocolat, unless it's from one of the special bakeries like Poilane or Dalloyau, will taste pretty much like greasy bread with chocolate in the middle. So my question is: the price difference of the regular versus butter croissant will be something like ten centimes. Once you've made the leap to get breakfast out rather than, say, dip into the bulk oatmeal, it's hard to imagine the inferior product being worth saving the ten cents. So is the issue something understandable - veganism or lactose intolerance? I sort of doubt this, both because the French tend not to recognize dietary restrictions, religious or otherwise, and because I'm not entirely sure what non-butter source of fat goes into the regular croissants, and would not rule out something not-so-vegan. So why are butter-based pastries so tough to come by?

-Why did I think Paris in summer wouldn't be ridiculously, near-NY-like, hot? Why are the libraries I need clustered around the Soldes, which would be tempting enough even if I didn't have the fantastic excuse of having not brought enough clothes for a sweltering summer in a country that 99% of the time doesn't believe in air conditioning?

The finest words in the French language

"Votre macbook est prêt ! Le changement de disque dur est fait."

Thank you Genius Didier

For precisely zero euros, I should have a working computer within a week. Till then, don't expect much in the way of WWPD.

Les bienfaits de la colonisation

A short walk or even shorter Metro ride from the library is some truly excellent Vietnamese food. Pho I expected, but I'd somehow forgotten about the existence of Vietnamese iced coffee. Yes, coffee, with ice, in Europe.

In other news, I do miss having a working computer. French Mac Geniuses, my ability to take legible notes is in your hands.

Computer kaput

While I seem to be adjusting to life in Paris just fine, the same cannot be said for my three plus year old laptop, which chose an inconvenient moment to stop working altogether. I am going to visit with the Paris "Geniuses" to see if they can fix this, but it may be a while till I leave nineteenth century France.

Clash of the micro-generations

There is a phenomenon I've noticed over the years, among a small but significant minority of my slightly older acquaintances (but thankfully none of my friends, and thankfully not recently, perhaps because I'm now old), that goes as follows:

Forgetting that they too, at 18 or 23 or whatever were single, unmarried, or childless, they act as though people they meet who are a few years younger are somehow behind in things, or making some kind of counterculture statement, by not having already settled down, "settled down" as defined by whichever criteria they happen to have met themselves. (As in, if they're cohabiting, you're odd for being single. If they're married, you're odd for just monogamously dating. And so on.) As though you, the younger person, don't have it together enough to have three kids and a house in the suburbs, when the relevant fact is that you're, for example, a junior in high school.

Why this happens, I think, is that when interacting socially, people 16 to 30 (give or take) can feel, in many ways, like about the same age. You connect over whatever you have in common, which makes you assume you're basically coming from the same place, which makes whatever differences you do discover seem like they stem from personal quirks, rather than from life stage. Life stage can be especially tough to assess in the recent-college-grad years, when technically one can be married with kids without this being scandalous, but not too many are. Another possibility is that 18 looks awfully appealing (to some) at 30, so pretending as though an acquaintance's failure to be settled down at 18 is a character flaw and not evidence of youthful freedom is some kind of compensation. Really, who knows why it happens, but it does.

I was reminded of this phenomenon by Daniel Engberger's Slate piece saying one must allow plus-ones at weddings, whether or not those plus-ones are known long-term partners. I agree with him, but for a slightly different reason. Reason being, to a couple about to wed, the relationships that slightly younger friends (or, and I should have made this clear above, friends the same age but for educational or personal reasons at a slightly different life stage) are in seem, by definition, casual. The more serious a person is with a partner, the more fleeting and hook-up-like others' non-marital relationships appear. And it seems trashy and wasteful to invite a fling to a wedding. Meanwhile, "fling" is in the eyes of the beholder. If brides-and-grooms-to-be remembered that their own situations did not, except among the very traditional, begin as "serious relationships," they might realize that the youngsters who they can't believe want to bring a date are nothing more rebellious than younger versions of themselves.

Faire du shopping

Since Cheapness Studies is looking kaput, here goes:

During my first week in Paris, I've managed to acquire two new striped shirts; one pair of canvas slip-on sneakers; and just one book.* This is not counting cheese purchases the number of which I've long since lost track of; flans (same, including a 3€70 flan from Dalloyau, which I ate on the street as the haute bourgeoisie looked on in horror); one delicious and under-three-euro bottle of Cahors that will probably, at this rate, last me long enough to merit the "I am not French" tag to this post. (Or the visit to the nearby A.P.C. outlet store, where I tried on an outfit that made me look, if not Hasidic, then something more hardcore than Modern Orthodox, and probably enough so that I could wear it to assess the current state of anti-Semitism in various Paris neighborhoods. I left empty-handed.) In other words, I've done a bit of shopping. Nothing earth-shattering, but more than a typical week in NY.

I'd known on some level that The Sales had not yet arrived. But I recently met up with a fellow NYU grad student here who informed me that they're about to start and that Petit Bateau, where the striped shirts are from, is among the participants. My first thought was, what I fool I am. That pull marinière was pricey!

My second was to once again remember that one of the libraries I use is near two of the Grands Magasins, and that it's a good thing I haven't yet swung by Bon Marché, either. Depending how serious these "sales" turn out to be, I may come back a much chicer grad student. That is, at any rate, the plan.

*Lest this destroy my already slight intellectual credibility, I should point out that my first thought after a long stretch at a library (and I was at a library every day since I've been here except both Sundays and Friday) isn't that I've run out of reading material.

BNF day one

Why did I bother with Starbucks? The French national library not only has a café (several), but one with something called "flan gourmand." And the clear bag they lend you to carry around your belongings is like some kind of plastic Birkin, chic enough that I opted to use this (which is, apparently, an option) when I went out for lunch, rather than The Backpack.

That said, I spent more time figuring out how to enter and exit the building; connect to the (very much non-wireless) internet; find the books I need; and (surprisingly complicated) locate the restroom than I actually reading anything. I'm trying to think of a way to describe the layout other than the overused "kafkaesque," but until another word is coined for a bunch of confusingly interconnected rooms governed by a bureaucracy, there you have it. But a kind and helpful bureaucracy. I'm the sort of person who, if given a choice of more than one route to take, will inevitably choose the wrong door, take the wrong turn, and so forth, so I appreciated the willingness of everyone I encountered to point me in the right direction, tell me where to swipe my card and when. That said, I made sure to point out, whenever I asked what promised to be an especially dumb question, to mention that this was my first time using that library. I suspect, however, that I'll make equally embarrassing mistakes my second, third, fourth...

The most exciting, however, was a trip to the rare books room. While I'd already checked everything but my wallet and computer, in this room (which is Salle U but you have to go through Salle T and up a little elevator), you have to check everything except the laptop, and you get a little locker for the clear Birkin. Then, as is often the case in such rooms, you get a little velvet bed for the book. However, as compared with equivalents in the U.S., there's very little fussiness or lecturing about how to handle the materials. Given that they've made sure you're not coming in with, say, a flan gourmand, I suppose they figure anyone who's bothered to look up something obscure enough to make it there isn't about to destroy what they've made it all the way there to look at. Even though, in the end, the "rare" book turned out to contain much less interesting information that a merely "research" one I'd been reading earlier, it was fun going on a whole mini-version of the process I'd gone through just to enter the library in the first place.

The obvious point of comparison for me is the New York Public Library. Both can seem to have everything, yet each presents its own set of challenges. The good and the bad of the NYPL is that it's centrally located and very much open to all. You can go there to find some document that they and they alone possess, and you'll be surrounded by people with entirely different concerns. Meanwhile, the BNF research library is out-of-the-way geographically, requires a card you have to both interview and pay for to use, and encourages you to reserve a spot ahead of time online. And, in the French Paradox department, getting around the library, unless you use a wheelchair, requires an immense amount of walking. All of these factors discourage non-research-related visits, and make it so that once you make it to one of the café areas, the clientele looks like everyone's fantasy of French intellectuals, minus the black turtlenecks. Which is mostly a good thing once you're in, but is time-consuming to enforce, and keeps out not only tourists and raving lunatics, but also anyone without the social capital it takes to figure out how to make it inside from using that library.

My Parisian vacation

At the library of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, it occurred to me that the best way to keep track of what I did when research-wise was to keep some kind of brief log of what I do when. Et voilà.

My dissertation, for the hordes of massively curious, is, and has been for some time, on Jews and intermarriage in 19th and early 20th century France. I'm interested less in the sentimental aspects of the question than in the role the question and at times reality of such unions played in how Jews and non-Jews alike understood Jews' place in France. I'm also less set on getting exact figures (both because I'm not a sociologist and more to the point because France doesn't seem to have kept the sort of records that would provide the complete info.) than on figuring out what intermarriage represented and how it was experienced when it actually occurred. Finally, whereas the bulk of scholarly literature on Jews and intermarriage that I've found (none centered on the French case during these years) takes a clear stance for or against, using the past to make a specific argument about the present, I'm not going that route. I'm neither celebrating the few who married out as the only true open-minded Jews of their era, nor condemning them as the foreshadowing of large-scale assimilation to come.

So that's the general idea. The log of what I'm doing probably won't go into the nuances of whatever arguments I end up coming up with, but this gives something of a background.

6'7" blond Hasids take Amsterdam

Or something. (Via.) Why does this story make me think of this movie?

Madame

The last time I was in Paris for more than a few days was in 2003. I don't notice any major changes to the city, other than the proliferation of "bio" or organic labels. However, by some miracle, people no longer return my French with English. Either attitudes have changed, or, more likely, four years of a French PhD program, three of which I spent talking to students in French, made me a bit more convincing in my attempts to communicate in the language. I doubt if I know much more French than I did junior year of college, but I probably seem less overwhelmed by the need to actually summon this ability in real life.

Another difference in my day-to-day interactions comes from the fact that 2003 was seven years ago. Then, I was a girl. Now, I am very much Madame. Not yet 27, I am the matriarch of some implicit Parisian clan. It's not just the term of address, it's the tone used in interactions, as though I am some kind of grown lady buying cheese and pastries or whatever.

The obvious reason for this is that I look my age. Some other possibilities:

-My sense of Europe versus the US (disclaimer: major generalization) is that in Europe, there's much more of a divide between youth culture and the world of adults, and that this manifests itself largely by dress. On the Upper East Side, for example, girls of 15 dress like matrons, while women are in the hot new jeans each season. It's insulting to a teenager to imply she's not a grown woman, and to a Samantha-aged woman, to imply she's not a teen. Perhaps as a function of where I grew up, I dress much more like a bourgeoise (minus the silk scarf) than a jeune, even if technically speaking the way I dress has no particular place in this system, and is much more classifiable where I'm from. Anyhow, I discussed this with my mother, who thinks this is part of it, but who reminded me of how Patsy in "Absolutely Fabulous" added a "-oiselle" whenever someone tried to call her "Madame." Yikes.

-Size. I'm presumably the same height and weight here as I was on Saturday in New York. However, in the States, I'm small. Small gets confused with young. While I'm sometimes "ma'am" or "that woman" at home, it's not so constant. Here, however, I'm proper-woman-sized.

-Frankness among the Gauls: The likeliest possibility is that I've been looking like a Madame since late high school, but American politeness prevents shopkeepers and such from telling it like it is. This I do remember from study abroad - while French cafés, stores, etc., like American ones, offer goods in exchange for money, Parisians who sell things tend to act as though they're doing you a favor, rather than as though they're so excited to get paid that they'll fake an interest for the duration of the interaction. I see advantages to both approaches, but at any rate, this explains why my past-it-ness is more openly referred to here than at home.

Worldliness and cultivation

Isabel Archer summoned my response to the latest incarnation of the paper-versus-plastic-versus-tote debate. However, I'm far more intrigued by her two most recent posts than with the question of how one takes home groceries and takes out trash, so after quickly mentioning that in Paris, the grocery store encourages toting, the market (or at least this one market street) is all about the plastic bags, except that they're more like produce bags with handles, and are meant to be placed not in a tote, nor even in a straw basket, but rather in a fabric cart-on-wheels, onto the others. I'm meeting her contrarianism with contrarianism, although I do on some level agree with most of what she says.

First, meritocracy. I too come from a family that values education, and it seems to have stuck. (Today I finally got to see actual books in an actual library in Paris! Woohoo!) So I think I get where Archer (Isabel? How does this work with pseudonyms?) is coming from. But while I agree that the education system places far too much emphasis on well-roundedness, and that making more Archerist families has potential, I think we need to be attentive to what is, I suppose, the opposite problem: the assumption that attention to appearance, interest in getting a boyfriend or girlfriend, having social skills... that these qualities are detrimental to or incompatible with academic achievement. This is a problem for several reasons. One, it's simply false - some people win in the looks, brains, and charm departments, and we can read all about some of them in the NYT Vows. Such is life. Next, the idea that smarts and social ease are mutually exclusive is what's led to the phenomenon of the dorky kid being assumed brilliant, even when presented with heaps of evidence to the contrary. (I know Miss Self-Important has written about this, but am not quite awake enough to find where...) And finally, there's the gender-studies angle. It's far more detrimental to women and girls to demand a choice between being a primp-for-prom person and a go-to-class one. (Although for the record, agreed that it's all kinds of ridiculous to cancel class so that students can get their hair done.) Girls are correct in perceiving that life is easier with better looks, and while this can be taken too far, if all that's necessary is trading a worn-out shirt from an aquarium exhibit for something better-fitting and less dolphiny from the GAP, I don't see the tragedy. If I can conclude in a way that makes any of this make sense, what I'm driving at is, schools shouldn't demand well-roundedness, but they shouldn't penalize it, either. There are enough hours in the day to primp, study, lust, play (ugh) team sports, and so on.

Next, travel. I suspect that part of what Isabel Archer experienced as a Dartmouth student in Paris had less to do with the fact of being abroad, or of being in France in particular, than with the altogether odd experience of being an American college student on study abroad. I suspect this because my own time in Paris in college, though productive academically (as in, some of the best courses I had in college, from UChicago profs but in French), was not necessarily the best way to go about experiencing that city. We all had the option to stay for the rest of the year, attending a Parisian university (but with American tuition), but I didn't think twice about returning. To Chicago. Hyde Park.

What I've felt the first few days living on my own in Paris is a bit like what I did when, months after Birthright Israel, I returned, this time with Jo - rather than a busful of potential Jewish husbands and an armed guard - to Tel Aviv for a few days. For me, at least, travel is only any good if you have the freedom to go around on your own. Whether you're on an educational tour of cathedrals or on a bus with prospective ethnoreligiously appropriate fiancés, or even just traveling without a group, but with a very set checklist of tourist sites, if you have that sense of being shepherded (or shepherding yourself), you feel as though you're briefly seeing places or even people that look interesting, yet are being so thoroughly shielded from any exposure to the place itself, because that would be dangerous and unproductive. Going to the HEMA in Belgium, or Monoprix in France, is indeed just looking at foreign shampoo and Target-like accessories, kitchenware, and so on, but for me, stuff like that is half the fun of travel.

Which brings me to the cultural differences question. Yes, it's banal that cultures are different, and anyone who's spent any time in a not 100% homogeneous place knows this from experience without leaving home. However, there's a big difference between meeting individuals of different cultures and being altogether immersed in one. Perhaps I'm biased, because my (limited, although I realized this even at the time) impression from a few months in Paris of what it meant to be Jewish in France as opposed to the US motivated my choice of career. Yes, embarrassing as this is, My Study Abroad Experience Changed Me.

Finally, agreed 100% that traveling is not relaxing in the least.

Les flâneurs sans flan

I just took advantage of the BNF's website letting me know I wouldn't get a spot Tuesday morning to do a little grocery shopping in the Parisian manner, at least in the American fantasy thereof. What this meant was that I leisurely strolled to a market street in the same district but (I now know) not remotely nearby, stopping along the way for a pain au chocolat and the other striped shirt (the one with the red stripes) I'd been coveting. And I now have the makings of a heck of a salad. All that was missing was a straw basket.

Yes, life is tough. I do, however, have one Parisian food-related grievance. When one thinks of Paris, one thinks ("one" = this blogger) of sitting in a café in the morning with a pastry and a coffee. And indeed, coffee and pastries are everywhere, and the latter are virtually always amazing. The issue is that it's very unusual to be able to purchase and consume both in the same establishment. (It's also very unusual to see people go the WWPD route, eating pastries on the street, on their way to or from a coffee at the bar.) What's going on? Is the coffee-and-pastry pairing a specifically American phenomenon?

I think I've narrowed it down to the following possibilities:

-The pastries are just for tourists. Actual French people either just have the coffee out or eat breakfast at home. Evidence supporting this is that while I'm living in a neighborhood that's not remotely touristy, the only places I've heard English around here have been bakeries.

-Locals run out to buy the daily croissants, then return home for their coffee, then leave for the workday. This could be, but given that buildings here tend to be walk-ups, it sounds exhausting. It could, however, explain the French Paradox.

-Pastries are served in cafés, but only during early-morning hours my jet-lag has yet to permit me to experience so far. This is the best reason I've come up with to kick the jet-lag prior to my first 9am BNF reservation.

-There is, during at least some parts of the day, an implicit BYOCroissant policy in cafés. I doubt this one's it, but it's far more likely than a BYOCoffee in the bakeries, considering that coffee's never to-go and bakeries either don't have seats or, on the rare occasions they do, also serve coffee themselves.

Paris accomplishments thus far

-Got BNF card (had the interview, paid the fee, NYPL nostalgia ensued).
-Purchased appropriate Metro tickets. (Why must the monthly begin on the first of the month? Metrocard nostalgia, of all things, ensued.)
-Attended a French-Jewish student (and grown-up) rally-slash-movie-premiere. I'd arrived the morning of, and so was only truly awake for the rally part. More on that later.
-Ate one and a half baguettes (in installments!). No, it's not so bad here, really it isn't.
-Ate flan #1 of I don't want to think about it. The woman who sold it to me referred to it as "petit," which was nice but inaccurate.
-Inadvertently happened upon the conveyor sushi place I was obsessed with in 2003. As quick, 5-euro lunches go, not bad! Is it a wise idea to eat raw fish that's been rotating probably since noon at 3pm? So far so good.
-With the help of a mall's wireless and (more helpful still) running into my former office-mate in that mall, I tracked down NYU in Paris, which is hidden away like one of those fake speakeasies. Note the following parallel: NYU's Paris location is on a street lined with a mix of mass-market and charming boutiques, many of which sell beautiful shoes, while UChicago's Paris site is... next to the giant library and nothing else. (This mall, however, was good for wireless and wireless alone. A GAP, an H&M, a Starbucks...)
-Convinced my bank that I am indeed myself, and so will not need to survive three months on the ~25 euros currently in my wallet.
-Speaking of which, there was a Petit Bateau in Passy that bien sûr took AmEx. This is mine. This is up next.
-Spoke a decent amount of French.
-Was thought to be a local by a woman in Petit Bateau, who was flabbergasted that I wasn't her vendeuse, and by a lost American family in the Chatelet metro station, whose son used his best French on me to ask directions, only to hear back, in New Yorkease, that I had no idea where it was, whatever it was they were looking for.

Still to do:

-Research! I decided to allow myself one day for bureaucracy, although I suspect parts of other days will go that route as well. The process of getting to look at a book - a book, not an archival document - at the library is, I hope, significantly less involved than it now seems. I've "reserved" 12 hours of Saturday, the first available day, for this, but walk-ins are apparently OK in the afternoons?
-Socialize with (as opposed to buy flan from) Parisians.
-Buy, or (more likely) ogle, clothes and shoes extensively. I'd forgotten this about Paris, but apparel here is like food is in Belgium - even the unexciting places are amazing. I walked down the equivalent (for New Yorkers) of Second Avenue in the 80s, or (for Chicagoans) whatever the non-main shopping street is in Lincoln Park, and one store after the next had me drooling. Part of me thinks this is a bit circular - nice clothes are defined as that-which-is-worn-in-Paris, and so Parisians seem well-dressed. But they don't, as a rule - I think many, particularly the younger ones, find the shiny ballet flats and such too bourgeois, and so prefer a pilling-oversize-black-sweatshirt-and-inevitable-scarf (keffiyah preferred) look. Meanwhile, those who want to look bourgeois dress very conservatively (think preppy minus the pastels), and don't really experiment with all the possibilities shiny ballet flats have to offer. It's more that, as raw material, the clothing in the window of Parisian stores cannot be beat.

Goals for Paris

-Minimize bureaucratic confusion-to-research ratio.

-Find something useful in all (most? some?) of the sources I know of but have yet to read.

-Meet the French Jews. Not all 600,000 of them. Some will do. Here, Facebook is, not surprisingly, useful.

-Speak tons and tons and tons of French. Meet French people, of any persuasion, who don't know a word of English. (Nothing against French people with perfect English! I'll hang out with you too!)

-Keep daily flan consumption to a one-per-day maximum.

-Limit clothes-shopping to Petit Bateau, a slightly pricey t-shirt store where I've given myself free reign (no, rein, thank you dave s.) to buy everything I see that I like, which should not, combined, exceed the 100-euro range.

-No new shoes! Not necessary! Repetto ballet flats are much cheaper in NY, and Bloch > Repetto as far as ballet flats are concerned. If I keep repeating these facts to myself, the mystique of Paris shoe-shopping won't return.

-No new books! Just kidding. Lots of new books, including but not limited to used books. But not so many I can't get them back.

-Do not become one of those Americans who had a transformative experience in Frahnce and doesn't shut up about it. If I end up returning simultaneously - paradoxically - slimmer and a better cook, that's something I can live with, but I'm not counting on it.

West Soho not what it used to be

The café best known for its brownies and second-best known for its Keanu Reeves, the one that so perfectly epitomizes The Coffee Shop, has closed. This annoys me not in a there-goes-the-homey-neighborhood way (we are, after all, talking about Soho), but in a where-else-can-you-get-best-in-the-city-brownies-in-the-company-of-heartthrob-actors one.

On knowing where your food comes from

If you're going to be a contender for most pretentious Manhattan coffee shop, and charge a dollar more for each basic beverage (drip coffee, iced coffee) than the other upscale "single origin"-type places, and you're going to not use a/c or even some more eco-friendly-yet-effective ventilation technique beyond a barely-rotating fan even on sweltering days because you're aware that there's nothing else in the area other than the bleak Whole Foods café and its clone the Barnes and Noble café (yes, I live in the suburbs), and you're going to note with pride which local dairy the ice cream in your affogato (oddly enough, or not so oddly, as we'll soon see, the most reasonably-priced item on the menu) comes from, you might want to make sure the stuff isn't very visibly being scooped out of a Whole Foods store-brand container. Does Ronnybrook taste different from 365 once espresso's been poured over it? Not really. It's the principle of the thing.

Keeping the bloodline pure

I have long suspected that members of ethnic or religious minorities are in luck when it comes to ending romantic relationships or rejecting potential partners, because they can always play the 'it's not you, it's your background' card. It's far more plausible than announcing a sudden change in sexual orientation, or than 'I'm not ready for a relationship right now', while accomplishing the same two things: convincing the rejected party that a) it's nothing personal, and b) it's never gonna happen. And an extra added buffer: the dumpee/rejectee is put in a position of feeling culturally insensitive for even suggesting they work things out. (The oops comes later, when the minority's engagement to a different out-group partner is announced.) Prudie's commenters, but not Prudie herself, see it for what it is.

Hebrew with French subtitles

Huh. A 5 heures de Paris had better be playing in Paris soon, or this Francophilic Zionist will have a fit!

They like my early stuff better

Once again, a big-blog has linked here... to a post I wrote years ago.

But seriously. They can't ban crush lists! They are if anything the opposite of the kind of youth sexuality adults should find disturbing. Rather than a bunch of 13-year-olds actually having sex, this is a bunch of 17- and 18-year-olds meekly admitting they found people attractive - but failed to act on it - months or years prior.

All kinds of wrong

Within just one article (and some wild accompanying video), we have:

-The creepy solicitation of schoolgirls as young as 13 for what it's not entirely clear isn't at least partly about something even worse than dead-end attempts at becoming a supermodel.

-The exploitation of poor families.

-A racism so open that it demands specific amounts of specific ethnic blood, using genealogy as a guide. German blood, at that, with a teaspoon of Italian as some kind of eugenic self-tanner.

-All that fun body-image stuff. (Note the "don't feed the models" sign in the model holding pen in the video.)

-The journalistic technique of baiting readers with tragic yet titillating stories the face of which is a pretty young blonde. (See also: missing persons.)

************

Tangentially related, the Helen Thomas Palestine remark. What struck me about it - aside from the obvious - was the same thing that strikes me when reading works about The Jews by non-Jews in France, from the 18th and 19th centuries (and I suspect the same goes for earlier, but need to have a look myself to verify, something I intend to do once finishing up an unrelated academic project, aka my dissertation). Which is (and this is long-winded, but bear with me), for all the talk today about Jews' connection to the land of Israel as something Jews a) always cared about, or b) decided, with the advent of modern Zionism, to care about, or c) began caring about after the Holocaust, what's lost is the popular conviction among non-Jews that a) the land that's currently Israel was quite literally where Jews came from (and I'm not talking proto-Palins who may have believed in something apocalyptic, although of course this is an understanding of history influenced by the Bible), b) the "Jewish Question" was the question of what to do with a foreign group that was foreign on account of coming from somewhere else, and that somewhere else was Palestine, and c) the Jews' finest, most noble hour was when they had a land of their own. Which is to say, the notions that a) Jews are best as a nation in the geographic and political senses, and b) this nation is located in and around Jerusalem, were, historically, not specific to Jews. The classic example of this phenomenon, the anti-Semitic cry we don't hear so much these days of "Go back to Palestine," is telling, but it fails to capture that even kinder, gentler Gentiles (Montesquieu and Grégoire come to mind - I know I've seen this elsewhere but am not going through my notes for this post) understood Jews to be a people dispersed from the land of Israel. Of immigrant origin, as it were.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying that now that it's unpopular to suggest Jews belong in Palestine, now that the (re)placing of Jews in Palestine has turned out not to go 100% smoothly, it's like, who were those Jews to demand this? It must be their fanatical religion, telling them that some random bit of land is rightfully theirs. It's easily, easily forgotten that non-Jews also thought that Jews came from Palestine, and were sometimes if anything more convinced than Jews were that Palestine was the Jews' home in a way the European countries could never be. Not to generalize, but Jews were frequently more convinced than others that a Jew could truly be at home in this or that European country. It's not merely that Jews were amorphously unwelcome in various countries at various times. It's that Jews were understood to be unwelcome intruders from a specific geographic locale. It's not, "There was anti-Semitism, which Jews for some quirky reason decided to respond to by colonizing the Middle East." It's that anti-Semitism was intrinsically related to the belief that Jews belonged in the Middle East.

All of this, meanwhile, is a roundabout way of saying not that I personally believe that Jews today all have a traceable, historical connection to the Middle East. (My own family heritage, as far back as I know, is utterly Pale.) My point is that if Jews were/are deluded in thinking they belong in Palestine, if you're going to call Israel a great big mistake (which, for the record, if this hasn't been clear enough, I don't), the blame for this ought to fall a teensy percent to the Jews, for taking their religious texts so damn literally, but the bulk of the guilt falls on the people who actually ruled for all these years, who were in the majority, and who in effect determined the "truth" about who Jews were and where they came from. For supposedly educated, informed non-Jews today to throw their arms up and ask what the heck these white-as-white Jews were thinking, setting up shop in the Middle East of all places, is, on a historical level, disingenuous.

Miniatures

Rocket, Battery Park.


Satellite, same.


House, World Financial Center.


Houses at the base of an apartment building, Tribeca.


Duckling, Battery Park City waterfront.


Poodles, Park Slope.

Is there hope for a conservative critique of academia?

Robert Weissberg has written one of the latest from-the-right essays on what's wrong with college today. The piece so perfectly exemplifies what a good conservative critique of academia could be, as well as where the genre inevitably goes wrong, that I had to respond.

Within the article are two potentially-separable strands. One is the classic, the requisite, the bitter, the Conservative Critique of Academia. We learn of colleges that "prescribe birth control devices," that through a "university-funded identity group one can reaffirm one’s homosexuality or blackness." We learn, "Instilling dependency is especially evident with academically struggling African-Americans. If there was ever a category of students who might benefit from acquiring self-reliance, it is this one." (Blacks should work harder! Gays should be more discreet! Wimmin should stop with all that premarital whup-di-do!) It is this portion of the article whose sheer predictability immediately repels 99.99% of people with anything to do with academia, including those with some conservative leanings.

Which is a shame, because if you isolate the other strand, a reasonable argument emerges. One I don't find entirely convincing, but one that merits a discussion. That argument is: How far should colleges go beyond offering courses and hosting libraries? What tragedy would befall us if dorms were replaced by students either living at home or in rooms or apartments near campus? If the parallel transportation systems some universities provide that precisely mirror existing public-transportation options were eliminated, and students were forced to take the oh-so-frightening M14 if they wanted to get from Avenue C to Union Square without exercise? (Not that riding the purple trolley isn't awesome in its way.) What if, rather than eating in dining halls, students had to learn how to procure ingredients and prepare meals? What if (and this one's my pet peeve) the ever-present landscaping services at elite universities, the ones that involve digging up and replanting what looks like the same exact thing each season, were eliminated (to be replaced by... concrete? student volunteers interested in planting an organic garden? does it matter?), and the tuition went down accordingly. Because whatever you happen to think of any individual beyond-classes expenditure (sports facilities, College Republicans, gay-identity-affirmation clubs, etc.), the end result is higher tuition, tuition beyond what many students could even think to meet on their own, without at least some parental assistance. This assistance, in turn, makes the default situation of a motivated 21-year-old "dependent." (Default, insofar as students at expensive colleges whose parents can't or won't pay any of the tuition need to alert others to this fact.)

I'm not so sure conservatives would like the results of a bare-bones university overhaul. What it would do, in effect, is shift adulthood up a couple years. College students would simply be adults living in Town X who happen to be taking classes. The safety net would be gone. (See item 2 in this post for a good explanation of the hands-off versus hands-on conservative visions of the academy.) The whole mythology of the College Experience would be gone. The insistence that students share rooms with other students so as to build character, the taboo surrounding undergrads dating anyone who isn't also an undergrad... The end result might be a conservative-friendly situation, with married, financially-independent 20-year-olds who are also getting BAs. Or maybe the very young would just enter the big, scary world prematurely, in-loco-parentis-less, and with a tougher time tracking down potential marriage partners. The "medieval" model ("When I tell my students that medieval universities only offered lectures, they are dumbfounded.") exists today, but among the less-well-off (community colleges) and residents of socialist-scary Western Europe, groups whose mores conservatives don't necessarily want middle-to-upper-middle-class Americans emulating.

But all in all, it makes sense that a more hands-off university would encourage responsibility, and that this is something that can be argued sensibly from the right, that could be a useful conservative contribution to discussions of academia. All I'm getting at here is that we have, once again, an example of a reasonable enough, definitively conservative, suggestion getting lost in a sea of knee-jerk sameness veering on offensiveness.