Femme à Paris

I was assigned to write a short essay on my experiences in Paris, and although I would have loved to talk about the Luxembourg gardens, the cafes en plein air, and the Notre Dame,  what really kept troubling me was the amount of harassment I experienced alone and even in my group of 10 or so classmates and teachers. Are the Parisians just touchy? Am I just a prude? Should I ignore it?

Please enjoy my response to the walks I took in Paris where harassment has been become a normal activity for the society of the city of lights.

Let me add before this comes off as an entirely hateful post: Paris, j'adore!

Le petit part un:

Paris at any hour has been so highly romanticized that any tourist believes he or she will walk out into the grand boulevards and nothing can touch them. In Paris, however, the city of light does go dark, the bars close early, and suddenly the taxis turn on their red lights. What must the tourist do when the metro closes and the cold musty air begins to penetrate your skin? On va en pied, of course.

         I must admit my one weakness as a traveler and explorer: I am a woman. Traversing a city alone at night defiantly as a woman makes me an uncommon species: une femme contre la monde. I tell myself, I am a woman when I am dragging my luggage through a busy metro station, and I am a woman when I am standing alone under the glossy glow of the street lamps. However, my woman-ness surprises even me when I yell back at the cocky men at the Saint Lazare train station, because it would be too shameful to say nothing. “What were you thinking?” my elders say, “Walking around in Paris at night by yourself!” What they do not know is this is how a woman earns her stripes. Why, in the jungle does not the lioness hunt? We lionesses are not given enough credit. As I walk away triumphant from yet another verbal battle, I feel like a Roman gladiator. As I succeed in walking alone in Paris at night I tell myself, I made it out of the wolf’s den unscathed. Because my true strength is being a woman.

Le part deux:

I sat cautiously on the metro. From the green line at Saint Lazare I began avoiding interaction by staring at the boxes of aqua fluorescent lights and crossing my ankles cagily as I waited to switch trains to the blue line. I walked in between the trains with the knowledge of those uncomfortable eyes on me. Why does a man think because you are walking you must be strutting for him? But we, the weaker chromosome, are told a woman must not turn back and stare, a woman must watch what she wears, a woman cannot handle herself alone. I marched determinedly towards the green line with my eyes glued to the wall. My heart dives as I view the advertisements objectifying women and perpetuating sexism. I blamed it on the normalization of sexism in Europe until I ran into the ads for American movies that inculcate the tasteless sensibilities of sex from my own country. Suddenly, I locked eyes with a man in a shiny leather jacket, he thrusted his hips at me and I felt it like a punch to my throat. I wanted to look away from this unpredictable man but I held my gaze as if it did not bother me. He flicked the back of his hand as if to say, “You’re not worth it, anyway.” Out of breath, I thought to myself, how could I stare back into those awful dark eyes?

Once I arrived at Pigalle I became enthusiastic about the night ahead of me when I heard the distant vibrations of the bars. There were dozens of people around Pigalle ready to fall into the dark night, ready to escape into another reality of alcohol, music, and anonymity. Les gens de la nuit rushed into every dark avenue like water being squeezed from a rag. I wanted to throw my body into this deluge, yet I remembered I ought to be careful. “I am not going to wear anything glamorous,” I told myself before I went out that night, but as I looked around Pigalle and at the rest of the fashionably dressed women I wondered why. Was I hiding under my loose fitting jeans and oversized sweater? Was “glamorous” just another internalized euphemism for “slutty?” My androgynous clothes purposefully served to make a confusion of and protest against “girly” fashion. Sure, it was probably not going to work and men were still going to continue to bother me. However, I preferred to think that my outward expression of rebellion would at least warn them of my demeanor.

My enthusiasm drifted down the avenue ahead of me like warm rays of the sun, and I was left underneath a dissonant grey sky shivering with chills of hesitation. I could not turn back now. I forcefully pulled down my sweater and checked that no one had seen me appear nervous.

At the crosswalk I was untrusting of the pushy cars and rogue motorcycles. I watched as the Parisian women walked coolly across the avenues, in four-inch stilettos no less, and I gazed in amazement as the last steps they took were just inches away from the oncoming traffic. And I knew at that moment that we were different types of women. They know how to handle this environment and I, on the other hand, was just beginning to be indoctrinated.

Since in France sexual harassment on the street is not a crime, French women have shown me how they “handle” these instances. “I just ignore them,” one intelligent French woman told me. When I questioned why she did not say anything back she replied, “They are not going to act on it, but it does make the city feel unsafe at night.” I was very sad for this French woman because she was allowing these men the right to harass her. The fear she felt was always going to be with her at night, perhaps even in her home.

The other resolution I preferred was what I like to call Fallopian, or assertive. Let that sink in. This use of the female body in a positive way may make one queasy because society has constructed an ideology of femininity to represent weak character, i.e. “Don’t be a pussy,” or “You throw like a girl.” If society allows the use of men’s testicles to represent boldness and masculine power, i.e. “ballsy,” then why should the female anatomy be too messy of a subject to transform into a point of empowerment? So, Fallopian it is.

My Fallopian friend, whom I was meeting at the bar called Le Sans Souci, had once said, “I did not know myself until I came to Paris.” I remembered these words as I tried to find the bar on my own. She had given me perfect directions, but being a tourist made me instantly question my intuition, sweat profusely at the thought of stumbling into a “bad neighborhood,” and finally, every street sign mockingly turned into hieroglyphics. I did not want to pause for long on the corner at Pigalle, so I dashed hopelessly to the nearest cardinal direction that felt right. She had explained to me plainly, “It’s at the bottom of the hill, you can’t miss it!” Unfortunately the streets all looked hilly to my Oklahoman eyes that were so used to the plains and big sky. “Excusez-moi,” I asked a young well-dressed mec in frightened French, “est-ce que vous connaissez le bar Le Sans Souci?” He took his time to respond, laying an icy damp hand that had just held his beer on the back of my neck, he pointed to the next street, the one my intuition was leaning towards before I second-guessed myself. “Il est la-bas, mademoiselle” he languorously said, with his tongue drawing out “elle”. I did not know whether to thank him or slap him, however I tried to squeeze in both gestures when I flicked away his arm and turned my back to him before “Merci” was begrudgingly pushed out of my lips.

I went la-bas and ecstatically skipped down the hill when I saw the neon red cursive letters of the bar. I found my petite 5’3, fashionable and bright Fallopian amie sitting at an European style table with a beer ready for me. I told her of how I thought of her words while trudging through the rustic landscape of French sexism. “When I came to Paris from a small ville near Bordeaux,” she said reminiscently, “I was shy and men would do awful things right in the streets.” Sitting with strange men on either side of us, she spoke in stoic French because they were trying to edge their way into our conversation. “Finally, when a man was harassing me,” she said loudly, “making sick gestures, and yelling behind me, I had the nerve to turn around and say ‘I despise you!’ You bet he stopped in his tracks!”

I knew who I wanted to be at that moment. I would rather dress as I am than reject my body by hiding its beauty. I would rather cause a scene than allow a harassment to humiliate me. I would rather vocalize my disgust with the constructs of my society than allow anyone the right over my body.

Running back to the metro before the last train left, I did not look left or right crossing the busy street. I commanded my path across and did not stop until I reached the other side.

I heard someone honk, another person yelled, and it made me feel alive.

Bien à tu!

Marilyse Figueroa-Valdez