Thursday, July 5, 2012

L'Amour



In her short essay, Love Without Reason, Carolyn Weber writes of her time living in Paris after graduating Harvard with an undergraduate degree in French literature.  At the time, she admits she was not even sure she liked French men because, based on generalities, she is tall, they are short; she is well-toned, they have flaccid muscles; her teeth are perfect, theirs are stained yellow from smoking too many Gauloises.

But she tosses those prejudices aside and embarks on a whirlwind romp through the city taking many French lovers. A friend calls her "a one-woman band of seduction." The only problem, as she eventually discovers, is she keeps changing herself based on what she thinks the current lover wants her to be: an intellectual or one who is up on current events or in an attempt to be tres chic, buying Chanel and Hermes at second-hand designer clothing shops.

I had molded myself, time and again, into the woman I thought they wanted, and then was shocked to discover they had no interest in the woman I was.

Well, ladies, one doesn't have to go to Paris to learn that lesson, n'est-ce pas?

No comments:

Post a Comment