Parisian life is full of surprises, sometimes bad, sometimes good. It’s generally a question of attitude, but let’s be clear: I’m speaking in a personal capacity and I’m in no way placing my personal experience on others.
My life and personal story have made me a particularly combative and happy human being. The adult that I am made peace with the sad child that I was, but the sad child that I was quickly decided to fully take her place in a world that she already considered to be tormented.
This perhaps obscure sentence perfectly describes the woman that I have been for three decades now, the one who walks with a blissful air in the streets but who stays unbothered (“I’m a kind person but don’t fuck with me”, in a nutshell – pardon my French).
And as a matter of fact, the number of people who regularly ask me for directions in the street is incalculable.
As a matter of fact, no one has ever catcalled me or attacked me in a public space.
As a matter of fact, I am very upset when a mother at school tells me that she advises her 10-year-old daughter to look down when she walks alone in the street.
Upset, because I am deeply convinced that little girls and women must, willingly or by force, take their place in the public space. They must be proud, strong and walk like warrior queens. This is, again, very personal, but I do believe that predators (whether it is hissing or worse) sense prey around. And that’s why women must therefore embrace the idea that they are proud, strong, walk like warrior queens and that they are in no way potential prey.
It’s easy to say, much less easy to do because many women carry within them a personal history, an education, female examples or a family history which will have potentially reduced them to the state of prey. Also, it is difficult not to behave like prey when an entire society reduces women to the rank of second-class citizen, objectified and sexualized.
Deconstructing a state of potential prey requires real personal work and a good understanding of the society in which each of us evolves. Because education unfortunately still often weighs solely on the shoulders of mothers (even in couples where the parental role is ultimately only on the mother), it is up to the mother to switch for herself and for her daughter – because the mother’s behavior determines that of the daughter (as we said here).
It is the mother who instills in her daughter that women are not casual prey, because the mother does not behave like a prey. The child never does what the adult tells to do. The child always does what the adult does.
When my youngest was born, I had a terrible sentence: she was two days old, I looked at her and said “you will be a man, my daughter”. She is 10 years old today but this sentence was a monumental error. First of all because she is not a man, she is a woman in the making (well, a priori, and if she decides otherwise, we will discuss it at length). Also because my anathema was implicitly recognizing that men are strong (which is what I wanted for her when I said these unfortunate words) and that women were weak. Finally, because I realize today that this anathema, combined with the limitless adoration she has for her older brother, makes her a tomboy.
(I feel like I’m one of the fairies in Aurora’s cradle in “Sleeping Beauty”. Joke’s on me but the weight of words is sometimes… terrible, one’s has to be careful).
Today however, this is is no way problematic: my daughter claims the freedom she suspects in being a boy in this society, while fully embracing the pleasures linked to being a little girl. She wants the best of both worlds, and she’s right.
As far as I am concerned, I was lucky enough to have an “accepting” mother. She always applauded my actions, my thoughts – in a word, she always accepted me as I was, even if I was very, very different from her. I too have always wanted the best of both male and female worlds in a society that is ultimately quite divided.
You may be wondering what this has to do with Parisian life and asphalt.
Wait for it.
These last days of September 2023, I was walking with my adoring mother. We were going to the Petit Palais museum, because I wanted to show her the portrait of Sarah Bernhardt by Georges Clairin.
On the Alexandre III bridge – my favorite bridge with the Debilly bridge – we start taking some photos which you will see below.
A little further on the Alexandre III bridge, a photographer was taking pics of a wedding couple. His assistant quickly came to ask me if the photographer could take pictures of me.
(“Why not?” was my answer – in English in the text).
It was one of the good surprises that sometimes, often, happens on the Parisian asphalt. I published here the photographer’s photos which perfectly illustrated a text written a long time ago on the film “Waterloo Bridge” that I love so much – but what amused me the most was to see my mother overtaking the photographer with her own photos (with a iPhone, and illustrating this article) – so proud and so happy to be there at that moment.
Oh. The love of a mother.
April 5, 2024
