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| Credit: @sabinasocol |
Let's set the stage: It's around 10 am on a quiet Saturday morning. I slept wonderfully (a benefit of not drinking), woke up to the cutest cat cuddles, and made myself a cup of coffee. I settled onto the couch and, as if led by muscle memory, immediately opened Instagram on my phone. Quickly after watching some Instastories I was bombarded with the images of Friday night fêtes of some French it girls I follow "for the fashion inspiration" (but really for the lifestyle porn). You know what's never missing from these images? WINE.
Wine is such a symbol of the stereotypical Parisian lifestyle. When I visited Paris, getting a small "solo" bottle of wine was cheaper than buying a bottle of water. This made both the environmentalist and the party girl inside me happy. Paris was great because you could start drinking wine at noon with lunch and then not stop until you went to bed. How did they do it? How were they not drunk all the time? How did they not have little wine bellies they poked at when it rolled over the waist of their skinny jeans?
According to the approximately half million interviews with "French girls" on the internet, the answer is moderation. If you can believe this, I read that one girl would skip fruit at lunch if she knew she'd be drinking wine at night, because they're both fruits. I actually couldn't believe this. She must come from the same line of journalists claiming drinking red wine will kill cancer thanks to its antioxidants.
It sounds like the same kind of mental gymnastics I'd perform to validate my excessive wine-drinking. "I'm being chic, drinking red wine after work," I'd say. "The French drink wine. I'm just being like my French idols." Of course, I wasn't emulating my French idols when I was throwing up red stuff or crying alone in my room listening to "Breathe (2 A.M.)" from Grey's Anatomy on repeat. What I was trying to achieve with that glass of red—that eternal chicness, that "talking about art and books and philosophy at dinner parties"-ness—would never happen. Not because I wasn't getting invited to chic dinner parties (which was true), but because wine wasn't the thing to get me to that place.
This all reminds of a rather clever advertising campaign by a Paris agency. They created an Instagram profile for this chic French girl, Louise Delage. Louise lived an exciting, French girl life. She went out to all the chicest cafes and coolest clubs and vacationed in the tropics all the time. She had perfectly tousled hair and perfectly smudged red lipstick. And in every single post on her Instagram there was alcohol. Yes, here was the kicker: our perfect French girl Louise was a closet alcoholic.
The campaign was incredibly clever, and did a great job with its message that addicts can be hidden in plain site (It's true, we are! Send help!). But what really stuck out for me from this campaign was just how fucking chic alcohol is when it's dressed up just so. A glass of wine in a perfectly manicured hand stops being a beverage and starts being an accessory. A glass of wine on a small cafe table you're sitting at stops being a drug and starts being the key to that je ne sais quoi. And I fell for this trap just as much as the next person. I already idolized these Parisian girls for their fashion, hair, skin, lives. And if it seemed like wine was a part of that, so be it. I already loved it.
Now, five months on the other side of sobriety, I still struggle with this thirst trap (ha!)—separating alcohol from chicness. I do the old CBT practice of taking that thought and breaking it down. That what I'm truly craving isn't wine, but the camaraderie of a warm, rowdy dinner party. Or the perfect smudged lipstick. Or talking about books until the wee hours of the night.
And luckily, I'm starting to learn that alcohol doesn't need to go hand-in-hand with those things for them to exist. That, in fact, I can talk books at a dinner party until the wee hours of the night while wearing perfectly smudged lipstick without a drop of alcohol in my system. Because wine mouth isn't a flattering make-up decision. And because I become less intelligent the more I drink. So, leave the wine behind, please. I'll have a cafe au lait instead.
BONUS CONTENT! Here's some other French girl life aesthetics I can seek out sans alcohol:
- Baguettes, croissants, crepes, and other carb-y things
- Fresh cut flowers
- Delicious (hot!) coffee all year round
- Going to museums and gallery openings
- Wearing a beret or a cute neck scarf
- Owning a cat
- Excellent personal style
- The perfect red lip
