Paris has beaten the mid allegations
No, a bed bug did not write this. Lilly did.
I struggle to think of a city more mythologized than Paris, except for maybe New York. It’s the city that LC would always regret not going to, the capital of love, cheese, and fashion, the setting of the series finale of Sex and the City, and one of the most popular honeymoon destinations in the world.
And every few months, it seems, someone (usually American) goes viral online for saying that it is overrated and not worth the time or money.
My husband and I were just one couple of the thousands who visit Paris each year for their honeymoon, though we only spent a few days there after starting our trip in Switzerland. There, atop Mount Pilatus, we bumped into two young New Yorkers who were traveling Europe together. They echoed the comments I’d already seen before online: “Just know, the food is mid,” they said, laughing. “All we did was eat and go to cafes, but it was too expensive, and we didn’t really like any of it.”
We wondered, but didn’t ask, what they had been eating. Mostly, I was interested in seeing it for myself.
As it turned out, my experience of the food in Paris left me feeling that it was decidedly not mid. We started each morning off with freshly baked baguettes loaded up with brie and fruit, lunched on escargot that tasted of decadent, garlicky pesto, stumbled upon a patisserie that could’ve been straight out of a movie — which also happened to be entirely gluten free — in between sight-seeing, and dined on fish and meat so fresh that knives became obsolete to us.
That’s not to say the trip was perfect. We couldn’t get close to the Eiffel Tower without paying because they fenced it off, so we chose to take our photos from a few hundred feet away. The Louvre was almost completely sold out for weeks in advance, and my husband (who had been to Paris once before about a decade ago) waited outside for an hour after I bought the last ticket and did a speed run to the Mona Lisa. Many of the museums and sights we tried to go to were closed, whether due to a strike or renovation or, believe it or not, a high-wind warning, and it rained more than once during our stay. But honestly, as we walked down cobblestone streets (often while snacking, as Americans love to do), none of this left a bad taste in my mouth. Everything was forgotten as soon as I had a sip of coffee with milk in the morning or a bite of an eclair. In the same way that New York and Boston have done for me many times, Paris delivered on the romance I felt it had promised me — despite the hiccups.
When I think about moments that broke this illusion, though, they’re mostly related to people trying to capture this romance on camera. By a reflecting pool near the Louvre, I accidentally walked past a woman’s tripod as it was recording her looking wistfully at the water. After I ran out of the way, I watched her reset and refilm from three more angles. More than once as we tried to cross the street, we brushed up against people photographing their friends fake-walking down busy intersections. Phone flashes went off in intimate dimly lit restaurants, and during a late-night river cruise of the Seine, the couple next to us nearly missed seeing the Eiffel Tower light up on the hour because they were photographing their table.
In many ways, it all reminded me of the Instagrammable pop-up craze of the mid-2010s, which involved transforming storefronts or warehouses into museum-like spaces with backdrops and lighting that were fine-tuned around what would look best in a photo online. I remember passing by one often in the spring of my senior year of college. It was called The Happy Place. Inside the vibrant yellow walls of this usually nondescript storefront on Boylston Street, the photographed flashed big smiles as they pretended to play in a small ball pit or threw their arms up in front of a camera in the “confetti dome.” I wondered how long they actually stuck around after paying the $30 entrance fee, and how many of them “found their happy” like the pop-up’s website advertises. (I’m sorry, but if I had to read that marketing copy, so do you.)
In a 2018 video for Vox, Christophe Haubursin investigates the effect of Instagrammable pop-ups on art museums. For some, he reveals, they create the expectation that art should be interacted with and photographed, and they put pressure on museums to create similar experiences for publicity.
While Haubursin draws the conclusion that these pop-ups bring their patrons closer to experiencing art, and are therefore a net positive, I’m not so sure.
Instagram was king in the mid 2010s, and the current trend of Casual Posting was unheard of. Influencing was becoming a viable career path for a lucky few — who proved that to be successful on the ‘gram (as we regretfully used to call it) was to post highly produced, high-res images that looked more like ad shoots than anything else.
For a relatively small fee, pop-ups like The Happy Place gave regular people the chance to get closer to the influencers of yore. These spaces were less art and more step-and-repeat, in my opinion. Less experience and more simulacrum.
Now, given how TikTok has sold the idea that anyone can become an influencer if they only try for long enough, these spaces have expanded — and now they’re in public. A few months ago, another viral video that caught my eye was one in which an influencer stitches together a series of clips of herself trying to film an “aesthetic” video at a London transit station. She throws her arms up or makes a frustrated face as, time and time again, commuters walk into her shot.
Typically, aspirational travel content on TikTok involves cutting together montages of perfect images and, hopefully, making the viewer forget that they are watching a highly edited and produced video at all. I find this video interesting because, in it, the subject actually reveals how isolated she is from the rest of the world around her by the act of filming — a fact that is usually cleverly obscured.
I don’t have any ill will toward her; as much as we love to hate influencers, she’s just doing her job. But watching dozens of tourists around me remove themselves from the experience of the city around us, through filming, made me painfully aware of how increasingly devoid of reality our world is becoming. It also made me think: It’s no wonder so many people come home from this performance, only to realize they forgot to actually have a good time.
Those of us who have traveled to Paris or London or New York or any of the other most photographed cities in the world are incredibly, stupidly lucky. We’ve watched what seem like just photo backdrops — the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, the Empire State Building — come to life, complete with the sounds of buzzing conversations and street vendors and excitable tourists. We’ve found what’s hidden in between the landmarks we know so well from photos. We’ve created our own stories to tell. So what if someone stood in the way of our perfect shot or there was a long line to get into a museum or a spot didn’t look like a TikTok had promised?
While there’s nothing wrong with taking photos or videos to capture memories — I, of course, took photos throughout the trip — I do think it’s important to be intentional about separating our experiences from the photos we took of them and to be careful about which we value more. Otherwise, when we seek to travel and grow and learn, and come up against places around the world that look much closer to home than they do to Disneyland, we’ll end up missing all of the best parts of them.
While Paris is no Happy Place, and no match for the myth that we’ve created, it’s much more than just mid.
And no, a bed bug did not write this. — LM
Hunter-gatherer corner
What we’ve read and DMed each other about lately — our internet bounty is below!
“Stop trying to have the perfect vacation. You’re ruining everyone else’s.” by Rebecca Jennings - Vox — I was greatly inspired by Jennings’s essay on why Americans make bad tourists from a package on travel published earlier this year when writing this piece. She tackles the uniquely modern “obsession with getting everything right” when traveling, as well as the expectation that travel be a frictionless experience for consumers. — LM
“Looking for My Brother’s Ghost” by Shelley Sinha - The Cut — This personal essay is heartbreaking, haunting, and moving, even if you don’t believe in the paranormal. — MF
“Click, Pray, Chat” by Erica Berry - Dirt — Another incredible essay, this one about loneliness and connection online, focuses on Chatroulette during the early days of the pandemic. It’s especially timely, published a week after the shutdown of Omegle, one of the earliest parts of the internet wild west that I can remember being conscious of. — MF
Why Not?
Why Not? is our biweekly list of recommendations. Think recipes, gift guides, podcasts, clothes, and anything we consider to be generally chic. Have a suggestion? Let us know!
“Baby’s First Simulacra” - Binchtopia — I always love the Binchtopia podcast, but this episode couldn’t have come at a better time. This past week, hosts Julia & Eliza discussed how eerily close we are to living in a simulation through the lens of mommy bloggers and family vloggers. The finale to a two-part series on monetizing kids and the lack of child labor laws around influencing, this is a must listen!! — LM
King Zoo - Fetty Wap — You probably forgot abut Fetty Wap, but I could NEVER forget his impact. His latest release from prison makes up for his 2021 flop project The Butterfly Effect by a lot. I do think he’s probably missed his moment, but just close your eyes and pretend it’s 2016 again. — MF
If you liked this issue, you’re the girl who did go to Paris! Tell us your thoughts in the comments or on Instagram (@lilly_milman | @melindafakuade), and share it with your favorite travel buddy.
Cafe au lait 5ever.