Stereotypes. I think, therefore I am.

France has mimes.

            I SAW ONE! He was in full make up and a striped suit. He was miming to music and luring the change out of children and tourists alike. While this was a terrific moment for me on this trip, as I was standing there watching him, I couldn’t help but be a little freaked out. His makeup was almost joker-esque. This reminded me of a favorite Family Guy joke, “Nice effort Brad, but let's remember our performance hierarchy: legitimate theatre, musical theatre, stand-up, ventriloquism, magic, mime.”

 French men are romantics.

            They are, indeed. It’s a generality that applies to most of the countries with “romance” languages. There is a certain old school mentality of the relationship being about the woman as long as she pleases her man. Some restaurants even have separate menus for women without prices. There aren’t many of them, but I didn’t even know such restaurants existed. Romanticism lacks some of its perceived daintiness, however. Many of the men, accustomed to being proactive ones in the dating, tend to blur the line of appropriateness (according to U.S. customs) in aggression. You won’t get bothered on the metro, mostly, but walking around at night, or wearing a skirt or shorts that fall above the knees is almost guaranteed to garner you some attention.

            Tuesday night, a few of us went to a bar. There were about 8 women and only 2 guys. What happened? A nice young Frenchman hit on one of the two guys. He bought us all drinks, and I had my first beer at a bar. It was gross. I drank it, but wanted to puke the whole time. Well, here’s to experience. The men at the bar (there were no women there aside from us) were a lot of fun and liked to sing a lot. They seemed to all know the same song/cheers and knew exactly when they were appropriate. None of them spoke English very well, but by god that didn’t stop them from wanting to be our best friends. Nor did it stop the girls from wanting to talk them up and squeeze drinks out of them.

Girls don’t get horny.

WRONG. A group composed of 80% women traveling around the city of love breeds the worst kind of starved libido I’ve ever seen. Many of the girls clearly came with a purpose that supersedes journalism. While everyone speaks make-out, the language barrier here has become more of an issue than initially suspected. As a result, the guys on the trip are getting themselves a stocked pond. Attractive, horny, desperate, and reckless girls, ready to give it all away in the romantic throws of France. For me, and a few others not in said mindset, we watch an interesting series of soap operas. Most of them involve estrogen and alcohol. Lethal when mixed in high doses. I’m not used to this many women in the same place. I need some testosterone. I’m going to weep, faint, and birth a baby if one more girl complains about “I need new boots” “It’s too cold here” “I can’t find any good food”  “I’m bored.” God, I’m so thankful that my parents beat the brat out of me. I hate women.

French hate Americans.

            Not true. We stimulate their economy. They don’t mind us. Most of them like us in fact, especially the younger people. They just have the same kind of joke relationship with us as we have with them. They associate fast food and obesity with the U.S., as well as the dumb cowboy. The past few years have given them reason to see these things. They also tend to think Americans are weirdly friendly. This is because of how afraid we are to offend them when we don’t speak their language, so we smile a ton and scare them with unwarranted friendship. Many also believe American women to be super-easy. If you reference my findings in the last paragraph, you could easily see where the evidence for this would be.

The French don’t hate Americans. They just have certain images in their heads, same as us.

Only once has my patience been tested because of someone’s judgment of me, but I quickly realized where he was coming from. I visited Notre Dame on Mother’s Day, hoping to get some pictures closer than I had before. I went during a church service, unintentionally, but it turned out to be quite beautiful. The pews were roped off for parishioners, but tourists were still allowed to come in and take pictures around the service. While it felt rude, I went in and took pictures anyway. I tried to make myself discreet, unlike many of the other onlookers. I had just gotten to the front of the church, against the wall where I leaned to look at the last picture I took. A man approached me with his hand out and said something in French. Initially I was startled, because I was alone and didn’t expect anyone to speak to me, but then I became scared because I thought he was upset at me having a camera. He continued to hold his hand out and repeat himself and I drew my camera away, telling him I didn’t understand what he was saying. He threw his hands up and walked away, but then turned and came back. He said to me, clearly frustrated, “Don’t forget you’re in a church.” I was offended immediately. I was angry with him for assuming my ignorance and lack of appreciation for the church. There were plenty of obnoxious tourists in there, why did he pick on me? Well, it was only after I watched him walk away that I saw him begin shaking other peoples’ hands. That’s all he wanted. The priest must have said the magic, “greet thy neighbor” and I looked at him with concern and recoil. Now I understood. I was still resentful that he didn’t give me a chance with the language barrier, but at least he wasn’t picking on me.

The French Armed Forces suck.

            Not sure. But they are extremely intimidating and well equipped. While on our way to the bar, we got a bit lost and found ourselves near a giant protest at the Bastille (yep). I think it was to protest the unrest in Sri Lanka, but I’m not absolutely sure. Well, accompanying these protesters were 20+ French SWAT team vans filled with armed men. A few got out and paraded their armor, weapon and shield before us and made us shit our pants a little. We asked a local woman how to get where we were headed, and she thought for a moment, before marching up to the driver of one of the vans and asking him how to get to our bar. We were immediately humiliated. He used his van’s GPS to show us how to get to our bar, and we sheepishly thanked him and melted away, before laughing at how irrelevant our needs were. It was happily recorded though- the French Special Forces gave us directions to a bar.

Listen to Green Fields of France by Dropkick Murphys