"What Americans Think French People Look Like" aka my Halloween noncostume

Most years I am a huge fan of Halloween. I really love a good play-on-words costume and usually I spend days trying to think up the perfect one, months ahead of time. This year, not so much. I'm not sure why but I just couldn't get in the mood and get my shit together. I had convinced myself that I was fine with this until my daughter started giving me that super disappointed look that only a teenager can give. That was the moment, at 4pm on October 31st, when I gave in and started frantically pulling things out of my closet. What we finally ended up with can barely be called a costume since I wear all of the items in normal non-Halloween settings quite regularly (just not all together at the same time). But I got plenty of compliments and I am positive that people knew exactly what I was supposed to be.

Because....

cropped black pants + striped shirt + black scarf + beret + any Sartre book = what every American thinks French people look like. 

It just really is. Admit it, you glanced at the photo at the top of this post and thought "she looks so French", right?

I personally have never, ever seen a French person who looks like this (though there is that one girl in that one Goddard movie...oh wait, she's American). But that is how stereotypes work, n'est-ce pas? 

Regardless of all of that, I was so pleased with my caricature of a Frenchie that I couldn't stop myself from walking around the house drinking red wine, insulting everyone's costumes in a really bad French accent and reading particularly existential quotes from "L'existentialisme est un humanisme" (while simultaneously being in awe of the notes that a former version of me, who I can no longer even begin to relate to, had written in French in the margins of the book). I have learned well what Frenchness is supposed to be like. Not from observing French people who act like this, but from witnessing Americans doing their mock impersonations of French people as soon as they find out that I am part French.

Maybe next year my costume will be "What French People Think Americans Look Like". Hmmmm...better start working on that one right away. I probably won't find those clothes in my closet.

Photo credit goes to my daughter who decided to turn the tables on me this year and torture me with the camera that I normally get to hide behind while she humors me.