Hi I’m Lucile! I make videos about living in Paris, the French culture and traveling the world 🙂
A few things about me: - I live in Paris with my American boyfriend Bobby, we spend a lot of time in the US visiting our friends and family there - I used to live in NYC, which I consider my second home - I love to travel and I’ve already been to 60 countries and lived in 8 of them!
These stereotypes are actually humiliating french people living abroad! The number of times I’ve heard that I sound « sexy » with my accent while having a normal conversation; or when previous colleagues gave me a loud « ohlala » when I wear a lipstick…. and these are considered « acceptable » behaviours. I’ll send this video around, as it well explains the issue ! Thanks for this !
I think it's great when your country has a positive brand image. At the same time, it's possible that it will overpromise and underdeliver. When I was in Paris, I liked D'orse museum and didn;t like the Louvre that much. Also I liked Defense area and didn't really like Champes Elysee. :)
When she was about to mention the language app i swore i thought she was gonna say Duolingo 😂 i panicked so hard for some reason like "crap the bird found me again" 😂😭
On peut ne pas aimer une partie de la réalité, mais bon, çà existe quand même... et finalement taper sur des stylistes, des marques, qui vendent ce qu'elles vendent vraiment... après c'est certain que Paris n'est pas qu'une réalité, elle en est de multiples mais ce qu'il faut expliquer c'est le brassage qui rend libre d'être ce qu'on veut, donc aussi cette image... Après le sacerdoce d'expliquer la France républicaine, construction politique, et non plus ethnique, à des américains... bon pourquoi pas... j'ai perdu 15 mn cela dit! Bonne continuation!
I am so grateful to have visited Paris (twice) before the height of popularity of Instagram and TikTok. I feel that, while the Parisian girl stereotype was alive and well back then, it wasn't that spread between the tourists. Also, people weren't treating the city like a theme park back then, at least that I saw.
Thank you for sharing! I definitely think Emily in Paris (especially Sylvie) has propagated this stereotype. It’s a nice aesthetic but it completely detracts from what Paris and its inhabitants truly are ❤
I agree with you on almost everything, except on the skinny part 😅 I lived in 4 different countries and I live around 18 years in France, this said, I need to say, that French people, not jut women are watching their weight 😅 they always say.... ohh I cant have another piece of chocolate, pain au chocolat or cheeses ..etc...it is not good for the weight. I have never been shamed of eating, the way I was shamed in france for loving food 🙈 I always get the sentence... ahh la gourmandise... I need to say that, I am tiny slim person who doesn't gain weight. This said, I love living in france and I love my French girlfriends and I have nothing against French women, but they do watch their weight and watch what they eat.
as someone that lives in France with a similar size kitchen, the size of the fridge is absolutely a choice, she has plenty of room to have a bigger fridge/freezer, they make them with the same width as the one she has that can go to her height or even up to 200cm, she chose (or the landlord chose) a fridge that small because maybe she's in a situation where she has the time and can buy things fresh everyday, not everyone here in France is like this, there are MANY of us that only go shopping once a week 'cause that's all the time we have and we tend to like bigger fridges, we don't have much space usually either, so we buy fridges that go UP, like really up, lol
I get it with Paris but i find this alot with most destinations now. Everyone seems to be going to the same places to take the same photos. You can't move for people posing for photos over and over and getting annoyed if you need to get by. No one seems comfortable anymore. have to be wearing the same thing to post photos in the same way everyone else has. Im not massively above it and trying not to be massively judgy, but it's all so contrived and boring. My fav days in cities in just to get lost and mooch. See so much more. Find hidden gems. Affordable places. Meet the locals etc. Of course you like to visit all the big spots but can we all just show up as ourselves and be mindful of the fact that this is a real place with real people trying to go about their daily lives too. I dont know. Has it always been this copy and paste? Maybe. Social media has definitely made it so much worse though
Im watching this looking at you thinking how Parisian stereotype you look 😊. I appreciate your video. It really is all about sales and making us feel bad about ourselves. Keep up these videos
I don't know, man. I just like the aesthetic, and having this keyword makes it easy to find inspo. Of course I didn't go to Paris expecting to see the stereotypes walking around. Also, random, but I do bike in heeled boots on the regular tho it's completely fine haha
Hi there! I moved to NY from Eastern Europe a few years ago, well, this place is nothing close to Sex in the City and is much bigger than Times Square and the Central Park 😅 The few positive sides of the “French girl” stereotype is the ability to buy European skincare in the U.S. and having “boring” feminine clothes in stores as they complement my body shape.
This stereotype is so pervasive that when I was size 14 (Australian sizing) I asked my friend (who has been to Paris), "Are there women my size in Paris?". I have grown up with images of French women who are only thin, and book/article titles like "Why French Women don't gain weight", etc, to the point where I really believed all* French women are thin.
When somene makes small talk, it doesn't mean he or she is using it as a precursor to a more important subject. That person is just being pleasant, so won't take kindly to being snubbed. // What you are basically saying, after that, is unless a person is introduced, he or she should go away. Now that IS unfriendly!
Croissant aux amandes is the best (I buy it every other day, from several patissiers in Brussels). But is very, very hard to find a great one. Thanks for the tip, curious to try the ones in Paris 😍
Then people associate everything to Paris or France simply because that's what they are more exposed to. Like the Paris Syndrome which in fact happens everywhere.
Same with the slim French woman stereotype. We as French roll our eyes when we hear about it because obviously the French women come in many shapes sizes etc and they aren't particularly slim, just normal if we base on the general BMI. But again we need to understand where those people come from. In some countries the norm if you walk down the streets is to see obese or noticeably overweight people. So when they arrive somewhere it's not the case, for them people are remarkably slim.
The beauty products have been popular for aeons. Again all is a matter of perspective. To us it's ridiculous to see tourists rushing to parapharmacies because we see them everywhere and they are normal products you can find anywhere. But to them they are rare products they can't find everywhere and which are very expensive in their countries. So it's actually smart during a trip to France to buy as many as possible especially that the parapharmacies often make big discounts. Rare are the countries which have a long strong tradition of quality beautycare products. In most countries we can't even find such products at all unless we buy from the luxury shops. Even in Japan which has a strong and massive beautycare industry and drugstores everywhere like in France, to get that quality range of beauty products even among the Japanese brands we need to go to luxury shops or big department stores. You don't find them in the regular drugstores. That's the thing with the parapharmacies in France. Maybe what can surprise us is why such products which are "basic" to us and not even luxury products are so well known abroad. Some do indeed advertise a lot like Nuxe but most of those brands we find mainly in parapharmacies don't. So while to us they are just the everyday product, for many tourists that's the perfect present of a certain value to bring back home and that's definitely a bargain compared to what they would have to pay in their country.
They simply compare with their reality. You also have countries where the local style is to wear heavy garish make up. So when they see the French with no make up at all or just a sunscreen or light make up to them that's a distinctive style they naturally associate to France. I get it for the French it doesn't make sense. This is just what it is, there is nothing special about it and not wearing making up or only just a little for the daily routine isn't a style but a personal choice. But really if we base on other people's contexts it is. In many countries, for instance in several Asian countries, women have a very big social pressure and never go out without heavy make up on. Even when you believe that they wear a nude natural make up that's in fact heavy make up which took an hour to get that result. In Japan my girlfriends often ask me if it's OK if we meet even if they don't wear make up. We're among women only not even some guy to try to impress. From a French perspective it sounds crazy to ask such question because we don't care about that and we don't have to tell people how they should wear and look, but from a Japanese perspective you can be lambasted or bullied as a Japanese woman if you dare showing up without make up and if you do you may even be called rude. One of the top reasons why they wear surgical masks isn't to not contaminate other people when they are sick at all. It's to hide their face for instance when they don't wear make up. So to them not caring about make up is a distinctive cultural trait. In other countries, the Parisian attitude toward make up and clothes is to be seen only among a certain social class. The upper class. So naturally they associate that style, mindset and manners with something stylish, chic etc. So of course it's bizarre for the random Parisian or French to be called chic and stylish when in her mind she didn't even bother dressing up and wears only basic clothes. But it helps when we think that it's not about the French woman really, it's about them.
That girl isn't a stereotype and you can see her everyday about everywhere in Paris. The only thing is that she isn't the norm, the Parisians are very diverse, she is just one of the so many Parisians. So she shouldn't represent the Parisians more than the others. Moreover like we saw in your video she isn't even Parisian. You find her all around France and even more so in other cities and areas than in Paris. And she isn't French either. You find her all over Europe. But you need to read that Parisian girl stereotype from the context of those people. What they call the Parisian style or sometimes even the European style can be very different from the norm for example in the Anglosphere or in Asia. That's why they call it a style when from a Parisian perspective there is no particular style here and nothing to rave about. The Parisians don't really dress up and they tend to all wear the same types of clothes and same 4 or 5 cold colours. Something efficient and discreet. But that's the thing, they wear "low key" "timeless" simple things which look stylish and effortless in other countries. Like "simple is more". What was funny in your video is how you were mad at those people commenting on how the French girls looked etc. But you did represent their stereotype of the effortless Parisian beauty. You said that you only wore a sunscreen! But the point is that you don't realise that to get that simply natural result in some countries they spend an hour applying a heavy layer of make up. That's the context behind what you call a stereotype. To them it's not. Of course this isn't something specifically French, in many other European countries it's like that. You could be Portuguese, Albanian, Italian...
I am opening up a french dining bar in Seoul and gave been searching for authentic french food. Your channel is so informative and helpful in every possible way for me. I wish I had known your channel before my one month stay in Paris last year. Anyway, thank you a million!!!!
Hahah right right . I’ve been thinking about how they eat so many bread and stay skinny . All people are the same , we gain weights from eating a lot of carbs . Also I didn’t see people wearing a beret 😂 in Paris . But these accounts of the Parisian girls make my eyes happy . I like this esthetic.
