Liberte, Egalite, Yoga Pants

There are so many things I miss about Paris...the baguettes, the pastries, walking along the Seine at dusk (or any time, really), the organic markets, the cafes.

You know what I don't miss? Feeling like I can't leave the house without looking like I'm going to a black-tie gala.

You'll note I say "feeling like", as this is a rule I often flouted but not without a smidgen of shame (plus, anyone who ever joined our troupe for the Smithsonian Young Benefactors' Galas knows what I look like at the end of a black tie event). It's bloody true, French women don't get fat, and they always look fabulous. If I left the apartment without blowing out my hair, coordinating my jewelry or putting on mascara it was usually with huge, dark glasses and a baseball hat a la Star Magazine "look how grody Nicole Richie looks when she picks up the drycleaning!" If I looked particularly bedraggled I may have even pretended to be a tourist, squinting at my Paris Pratique and exclaiming "Where IS the Arch duh Triumph?"

Before moving to Paris I skimmed the compulsory expat read, Almost French. In the touching memoir of an Australian journalist who moves to Paris to live with her French lover, there's a scene – yup, you all know the one, girls–in which the lover chides our heroine for wearing "track pants" (Aussie for sweats) to the boulangerie. I touched on this in an earlier post, but truly, in the minds of these merchants (who, granted, studied and worked extremely hard to attain the necessary licenses to serve you these delectables) you, the customer, are in essence entering their homes, and thus should be dressed in a way that indicates respect (this applies more to women; somehow men are able to get away with all sorts of outlandish looks, like orange pants and Converse All-Stars).

Where does he think he's going?

People have said, "well, you lived in New York..." implying that my 10023 zip code required I leave the door looking fresh off the set of Gossip Girl. In New York, really, anything goes. You're as likely to see someone roller-skating in Central Park in an evening gown as you are shopping in Bergdorf's in hot pants and rainbow suspenders. Work at a PR or advertising firm and you'll get that first-day-of-summer-dress-code e-mail: No flip-flops. No shorts. No tube tops. Tube tops, really? Well, the bosses have to draw the line somewhere - this is the burgh that spawned both Jennifer Lopez and the Naked Cowboy.

I don't think I'm surprising anyone when I say that yoga pants, as I prefer to call them, are a staple of my wardrobe. As a new mother in Nyack I often stayed in them for most of the day – much to the chagrin of my always impeccably-groomed mother, who was raised in the Paris of the East, Grosse Pointe – mostly because between a freelance job and an infant I was never sure when I'd get a free forty minutes to run out and exercise. In fact, when said sainted mother fell whilst staying with us and helping with newborn Josie, breaking left ankle AND right wrist, I whisked her to Target for clothing we could pull over an air-boot and temporary cast without too much difficulty. Even in her intense pain, my mother was gesturing limply towards tailored separates, but I stealthily steered us into the pajama section, convincing her the very comfy and highly elasticized eXhilaration PJ bottoms were yoga pants. I might have even called them Pilates trousers for extra plausibility.

But I digress... when I joined the gym in Paris, I thought finally, this would be my get-out-of-jail-free card. Because surely the French women sweat, like everyone else, and thus sport the appropriate gear to Club Med Gym. Oh, but I was wrong. The locker room was filled with leggy blondes in eighty-euro La Perla camisoles, blow-drying, nail-filing, eye-lining, and lip-glossing. Few were showering, not too surprising since none of them appeared to actually sweat in the cardio room. When Parisiennes exercise they look like this:


And the gym isn't the only place you're supposed to look fabulous. As my friend MJ has wryly noted in one of her witty posts about mothering in Paris, school pick-up apparently necessitates a manicure, chemical peel, and a swing through Gerard Darel. And not only the Parisian women believed the hype; I'd been to many a play date at which American/British/Kiwi mothers were dressed in skirts and knee-high boots.

Well, here in the UK, I'm as schlumpy as I wanna be! After all, we have much better role models on this side of the channel.



















I drop off Josie at nursery in my gym clothes, I grocery shop with hat-head, I go to the dentist in my bathing suit, it's all very liberating.

I'm off to see The Man from Stratford – with Simon Callow, better known as Mr. Beebe in Room with a View and the subject of the Funeral in Four Weddings and – a new play about William Shakespeare, at the Theater Royal this evening. As Jeff is still traveling home from Amsterdam, I am squiring my upstairs neighbor, T (of the Friendship Circle). Yes, I will wash my hair for T, and perhaps even put on some mascara. I always try to look my best for a first date.

Lots coming this weekend as well! The Food and Wine festival here in Bath, and of course, the Fourth of July which –worry not – will be celebrated with gusto by the Americans on Great Pulteney Street (along with some Brits, Aussies, Kiwis, and even Argentines!). See you on the other side of sparklers, boxed chardonnay, and (urp) Ina Garten's flag cake!