I’m not going to lie; I moved to Paris for all the cliché reasons – the sophistication, the culture, and the grandiosity that can make anyone feel just a little bit royal. Of course, there’s also Paris’s beauty – in its cityscape and in its people. So when I decided to explore global beauty standards for my docu-series, Pretty, Paris was the first place I started. In a nutshell, Pretty is a look at beauty everywhere. I’ve been traveling to cities across the globe, namely Paris, Milan, London, Tel Aviv, and Casablanca, speaking with women about their country’s and city’s beauty ideals and their own relationship with beauty.
Beauty in Paris
Effortless. If you ask almost anyone in Paris what it means to be beautiful, the word effortless will surely come up, which was exactly the case when I spoke with natives Sonia, Carole, and Sarah. They each explained that French beauty is very natural and inconspicuous. Even if you spend a lot of time on your appearance, you have to look as though you didn’t. In terms of physical characteristics, Sonia explained that the ideal French woman is tall and thin with somewhat regular features.
Many Parisians sum up this archetype with a commonly used expression: “la petite Parisienne” – a woman who acts as though her appearance doesn’t matter but pays attention to every detail of it. She wears Adidas Stan Smith sneakers with oversize coats and drinks red wine. However, despite looking beautifully understated, locals know that she’s got a number of beauty secrets in her arsenal. Thankfully for us in the States, Sonia, Sarah, and Carole shared some of theirs.