by Garance Dore
Bad news. Even in New York, there is no such thing as a supersonic nail dryer.
3. LEARN TO TIP FAST, AND WELL.
The moment will come, in the middle of having your nails done (after the little hand massage but right before the application of the nail polish), when you will have to tip (yeah, you don’t want to be looking for money in your bag if you have fresh polish, you fool non–New Yorker).
And right there, girl, you’d better tip. And you’d better tip well. And you’d better tip IN CASH.
Remember, they still have your nail-polish destiny in their hands!
4. ALWAYS REMEMBER.
It’s so easy to get addicted to perfection (or nail perfection anyway). You end up going to your salon every week, with the smile of the winner, feeling like such an accomplished New York woman.
But I give you no more than six months to discover that, under your shiny cherry-red manicure, your nails are a war zone.
Because of the buffer that makes them soft, the cuticle cutting that makes your skin rebel, and the chemicals in the nail polish that smother your poor little nails.
I have three solutions for you.
Learn to say: “No buffer! No cut cuticles!”
Learn to do your own manicure. It’s so easy! And then when you find yourself on a desert island or, say, in France with no chance of a nail spa on the horizon, who’s gonna be the girl with the perfect nails? You, of course.
Learn to take a break from perfect nails once in a while. Try moderation.
Or go completely crazy. Be different. Go bare.
PERFECTION IS A REAL LIFESTYLE HERE.
STORY OF MY LIFE
As a teenager, I was perfectly fine with my body. I loved exercising. I was a dancer, a swimmer, a windsurfer, a real tomboy; I was more interested in competing with the boys than with the girls.
I left my body alone, which was actually not so easy. At fourteen, like a lot of teenagers, I gained a bit of weight. I personally hadn’t noticed it at all, but I can assure you that people around me made sure to point it out.
My mom, who is on a perpetual diet, wouldn’t let it go. It was painful—it suddenly put my body into the category of “things I have to worry about if I want to win at life.” I went on my first diet. Of course, I failed.
My mom must have seen herself in me—I was the one in the family who had inherited her curves. The problem was that with a few ill-considered words, she had taken me with her on her lifelong crusade against calories.
Had I taken after my father, I would be taller and naturally slender, like my sister and my brother. And maybe I would have had a much simpler relationship with food, as they both do today.
My curves never really bothered me, though. In the grand scheme of things, I was a really healthy girl who loved to move, to dress up and look cool. My boyfriends loved me the way I was, and I laughed about it over endless conversations with my friends, who felt just like I did about their bodies: Who doesn’t think they have five pounds to lose?
When I was a teenager, the icons were women like Cindy Crawford and Elle Macpherson, girls with real flesh and bodies, and I could somewhat identify with them. Kate Moss was considered extremely skinny and more interesting-looking than attractive.
I didn’t know that this type of body was about to become the new normal.
And also, I love food.
I come from a family of Italian chefs on my father’s side (I can cook a fantastic lasagna) and a long line of passionate Moroccan cooks on my mother’s side (you should have seen my grandmother preparing couscous. It took her three days). As for my mom, don’t judge her about the diet thing—she was an amazing and very modern cook. She cooked vegetables like a queen, and we had the best, most balanced diet at home.
She would fix delicious lunches, simple and healthy (we lived so close to school that my brother, my sister, and I would go back home to eat). And every evening she would prepare a fantastic homemade green soup, with a piece of bread and a yogurt to finish the meal. Special dessert would be a beautiful strawberry salad with a little bit of whipped cream. She taught us to love fresh vegetables and fruits. My dad, being a chef, wouldn’t cook at home as much, but when he did, we were in for a treat. He makes the best fondant au chocolat in the world.
In a nutshell, I loved food, I had a pretty good relationship with it, and I was fine with my body the way it was. I simply felt bien dans ma peau, as we say.
As I hit my twenties, I lost interest in sports. I took the occasional dance class with my friends (usually spent giggling at the back of the room), but in the exercise department, I’ll admit, I couldn’t have been more French. On one hand, making an effort to exercise seemed like a pretty incongruous, heroic, bizarre thing. On the other hand, I would walk everywhere, dance all night, lived in a fifth-floor walk-up, and always remembered to tighten my butt cheeks at every step I was taking.
Living on my own for the first time, with roommates or boyfriends, I had time to cook, and was all about fresh, easy, Mediterranean food. Okay, maybe I had an impossible sweet tooth and I couldn’t live without my four o’clock tea and cookies and/or chocolate. But all was well. Even as I moved to Paris and felt the pressure mounting.
Parisians with their tall, slim silhouettes. Meh, what could I do?
I had more important things on my plate than thinking about my weight. I needed to figure out how to live in that crazy-expensive city without a euro in my pocket. I might have tried the occasional half-day diet for good measure, failing miserably as usual. But, really, it was nothing to worry about.
And then I moved to New York. All of a sudden I was living in a totally, completely, intensely different culture. The first thing that struck me when I arrived was the complicated relationship many New Yorkers have with food and their bodies. A few months after my move, I was observing and mocking it all.
Seriously! Have you ever had lunch with a New York woman? Even up close, they are fantastically put together, from head to toe, all the way to their nails. They have perfect hair, perfect skin, and their outfits, even if they’re vintage, seem brand-new. And they are really, and I mean really, skinny.
Okay, for full disclosure, I should probably say that when I first arrived in New York, the women I met all worked in fashion. Later I met lots of other people, and I can say that not all New Yorkers are this way, phew.
But women in fashion in New York, they’re not just skinny. They’re New York skinny, meaning thin to the brink, yet with super-long, lean muscles from Pilates, Anna Wintour style. Muffin top? Sorry, what?
Have you ever had lunch with Parisians? Well, all right: Have you ever had lunch with me?
Lunch in Paris usually involves a glass of wine, one or two desserts to share; no need for an appetizer, but stuffing your face full of half the bread on the table is totally okay. Finish with a coffee and twelve cigarettes, saying that “No, hehehe, it’s no good, oh, but so much fun.”
It was cute to be the only Parisian at a table of New Yorkers at first. They would watch me rip off another piece of bread, order a glass of wine and a dessert, and ask me my secret to staying slim despite such a devastating diet.
And I’d just laugh and say that everyone in New York is just too skinny, that they have to live a little, and that, no, I don’t work out at all, because I have so many other fascinating things to do with my life.
And also that I’m perfectly fine with my little muffin top, thank you.
This game went on for a little while. It was fun.
Then I started giving in to some of the conveniences of the New York lifestyle. Eating out, ordering in. Never ever cooking. Jumping into cabs and elevators. Walking around with my latte. Snacking at any time of the day.
Until, actually, my muffin top took on a mind all its own. I swear, I couldn’t get my skinny jeans to button, aka disaster.
All of a sudden I stopped being so smug at lunch. I had gained weight. And I had gained weight like I’d never gained weight before.
That’s when I started to understand some of the big differences between eating in Paris and eating in New York.
THE LIFESTYLE
Yes, Parisians have more fun when they go out. But they’re also ten times less likely to eat out. And in Paris, there’s no ordering in—you cook. It’s simple cooking, really: You can have five friends over, create a fast, delicious pasta with zucchini and mint. Or you just buy cheese, figs, wine, and call it a night.
In New York, your social life happens outside the house. You have meals out. All the time. The only time I had “cooked” since moving to New York was making crepes to show just how French I was.
THE PORTIONS AND THE PACE
In Paris, everybody breaks for lunch. In smaller French cities, people even go back home entre midi et deux (between twelve and two) to sit and eat. Whether you have a little salad at the brasserie, or a meal prepared at home and eaten in the park with a few friends, or alone while reading a novel, you really take the time to appreciate the break. You eat slowly and consciously.
Imagine my angst when I saw my employees eating in front of their computers. “Hey, guys, there is a table here; please make me happy and eat at the table!” They would look at me with wide eyes. Eating in front of the computer felt like sacrilege to me.
Oh, and the portions—remarkable, like everything in New York. You understand right away the doggie-bag concept that makes everyone laugh in France.
I’D JUST LAUGH AND SAY THAT, NO, I DON’T WORK OUT AT ALL, BECAUSE I HAVE SO MANY OTHER FASCINATING THINGS TO DO IN MY LIFE.
THE FOOD CHAIN
Bigger country, bigger industry. Not to say that everything is perfect in France (it’s really not), but the laws on manufactured food are very strict—it’s difficult, for example, to find fruits when they’re not in season. GMOs are forbidden (we, of course, walked the streets to protest against them), and the label “organic” is extremely tough to obtain. It’s not the same in the United States, where it feels more difficult to trust the food you’re buying. Hence the success of places like (the extremely expensive) Whole Foods.
These are just a few of the things that can make for a complicated relationship with what you eat—and drive you to extremes. Gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan, Paleo…
France is hardly a paradise of health and self-acceptance. We still smoke like chimneys!!! But it’s certainly less about extremes, and we don’t think that you’re either perfect or a total disaster. We’re fine with okay.
So there I was, stuck between New York–skinny, my relaxed French attitude, and the pounds that kept adding up behind my boastful smile. And the way I saw myself changed—instead of thinking that these people were skinny, I began to think that I must be the one who was fat. I didn’t feel “normal” anymore. I started questioning my lifestyle…and looking at myself critically in the mirror.
Stripped naked, we’re always beautiful. Our man loves us just the same. And our friends couldn’t care less about a few extra pounds. And we really can be just as happy. I mean, really, nothing changes when we get a little plumper.
Okay, that’s almost true.
There’s that moment when you see a photo of yourself and you suddenly feel like you’re about to pass out.
Or the jeans that don’t quite button and you pretend to forget them in some dark corner of your closet.
And there’s that quiet discomfort. It’s hard to explain to the skinny ones, but those few extra pounds…You wear them.
I really tried to be cool about it, and the people around me were always very nice: “You look great!” I would smile and joke, “No, look here, I’m fat!” but inside I wasn’t feeling that confident. I was just so profoundly annoyed with it all. I knew I had to do something, but I had no idea where to start. That’s when something weird happened. I started thinking about food and weight constantly. What I had eaten and what I shouldn’t eat, what I was going to eat in the next hour compared with what I had eaten the hour before, and what I should be eating, this instead of that, or that instead of this. All. The. Time.
I would spend all day putting myself down about my weight—not only useless and completely egotistical, but on top of that, I was miserable. And I hate taking myself too seriously. I was not me anymore. I was sad, obsessive, boring, and getting heavier every day. I was in a downward spiral and something had to change.
One night, I broke down. It happened when I was traveling for a shoot in Australia, far from everyone and everything I knew and loved. I looked in the mirror in my lonely hotel room, and my eyes were so sad and empty. I heard a little voice inside me ask, How long is this little game with yourself gonna last? ’Cause this is taking you down, and fast.
I cried it out, called my boyfriend, my best friend, and my shrink, and felt sorry for myself one last time. And then I decided it was over. It’s like when you finally decide to quit the job that is killing you or cut ties from that toxic relationship you’re in. I had had enough.
I decided to stop intellectualizing everything that passed through my lips and to do what came naturally. I started to do some yoga to help quiet my mind. I also decided to stop speaking to myself negatively and to stop beating myself up about gaining weight. If it was my destiny to become round, well, then why the hell not? I knew tons of amazing people who happened to be curvy. And it wouldn’t hurt to have another point of view in the fashion world.
I lived that way for a few months, and it felt better. I had found my smile again. But feeling bien dans ma peau with that extra weight proved to be more challenging than I thought it would be. We don’t all put on curvies like Christina Hendricks.
Life, you bitch. How was I ever going to get it right? Find a balance?
The answer came to me one day, as I was sitting at the Café de Flore with my very Parisian friend Sophie. We were drinking rosé and I was watching her munch down frite after frite. She was savoring each one, as usual, and as usual her figure was perfect.
I was telling her my life story, and seeing her so relaxed around food, I decided to confide in her about my struggles with weight.
“How do you do it? How do you stay so thin even after forty!!?”
She told me every single one of her habits. And something clicked.
It’s not what she ate that inspired me. No, what got me was that she had figured out how to really nourish herself. With her tastes, her desires, and even her lifestyle. How she wasn’t giving up the things she enjoyed, like including the Flore menu in her diet, as she was spending so much time there. How just eating fruits in the morning would allow her a heavier lunch. And also…
“Of course, desserts are juste pas possible. You forget that the word ‘dessert’ ever existed.”
My first thought was no. That’s not possible for me. No, no no no. I have my rules. And my rules, they’re ironclad…. They’re things like:
Life isn’t worth living without a goûter. And a goûter is defined as a treat you can dunk in your tea.
Every meal has to finish with something sweet, otherwise it’s not a real meal and therefore not real life.
No self-respecting woman would exercise, because exercise is not cool. Have you ever seen Charlotte Gainsbourg exercising?
And yet when Sophie talked to me about the way she feeds herself, her simplicity and groundedness inspired me.
I took a long hard look at my “rules” and realized that a lot of them were pretty stupid.
I decided to change things.
I started with giving up bread. Not completely, mind you, but remember, I used to be the girl in the restaurant who finished the entire basket of bread before the appetizers arrived. I stopped eating desserts. Not all desserts, mainly cakes and ice cream. I wanted to see what it felt like to end a meal without something sweet.
It’s a little tough in the beginning, then you get used to it, and you end up completely forgetting to look at the dessert menu. Right away, I felt positive effects. And not only on my muffin line but also on my self-image. I could eat
differently without being totally frustrated. My old “rules” were nothing more than bad habits to hide behind. I finally understood that if I gained some weight, it was my body telling me that it was tired of absorbing my excesses.
Encouraged with my progress, I read books on nutrition and applied some new principles that seemed to work for me. I wasn’t following a diet. Or counting calories. I knew I couldn’t do that. And I wasn’t giving up what I love to eat. I was harmonizing my way of eating with my tastes and my lifestyle and using moderation. And that’s really personal. No one else can do that for you, and it would serve no purpose whatsoever if I told you what I was eating. It suits no one but myself.
I started walking again, everywhere, and kept up with a little yoga and Pilates—and I always used the stairs, even though there was an elevator to go up the five floors to my apartment.
And I lost weight.
I’m far from being New York–skinny and that’s not at all my goal, but I got back to the weight I knew and the weight where I feel most myself. I accept fluctuations and try to adjust as I go.
Now my friends ask me to be their weight-loss coach. They say that they’re inspired by me….
And it just cracks me up.
Seriously? Me? A weight-loss coach? Non, c’est juste pas possible.
Knowing how to style your brows can change your whole face, giving it more character and style. A simple brow powder will do, but I also love the Brow Zings eyebrow kit by Benefit.
Danielle Kosann
I found my perfect smoky eye after years of practice. It takes a while, but once you master the smoky eye, the rewards are amazing. Now it’s my everyday look and I couldn’t go out without it. A smoky eye is magic: it makes anyone more beautiful and mysterious.
