It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single American, upon arrival in Paris, must be in want of a hot French date.
This is the premise behind the latest American-produced stab at exploring the expat experience in gay Paris, this time in the form of a reality TV series from Bravo. If the network’s housewives are real, The Girlfriends Of Paris, which premiered earlier this month, may be even realer.
“Cheers to new and long friendships! May they be as long as the d*cks we – nevermind,” toast Adja Toure, Kacey Margo and Victoria Zito, newfound friends and three of the show’s six lipgloss-loving cast members in one of the pilot’s early scenes.
To be fair, the girlfriends have set out to achieve some other goals in their new city, too. Kacey from southern California wants to make enough money as an English teacher to make ends meet in Paris – a noble cause. Victoria, having escaped her “very Christian” background in Texas, has come to Paris to make it as a fashion designer. Meanwhile, Margaux Lignel, who has grown up between New York and Paris, is supposedly seeking financial independence from her wealthy French father, starting by living on a meagre 2K a month rather than the 10K she has grown accustomed to. Her father says he wants her to want to make it work, and she confirms that she really, really does. It’s all very inspiring, yet the project feels doomed in advance, like a modern, ultra-vulgar take on an Edith Wharton novel.
Sidenote: Margaux’s perfectly deadpan French father is the only true Parisian in the pilot. He marches into his daughter’s apartment and lovingly insults her dog, her choice of scrambled egg seasoning, and her glaring inability to open French windows – or make a living. He is the perfect antidote to the saccharin orgy of over-effusive compliments that go on in the dinner party scene later in the episode.
Said soirée, thrown by art and culture theorist Anya Firestone, is the crown jewel in the pilot’s frivolous plot. The evening is clearly intended to demonstrate the height of Parisian sophistication to Anya’s new expat pals, who are duly impressed on arrival. Having struggled for days to find recipes for a low-carb Thanksgiving dinner, the immaculately turned-out intellectual of the group answers the door in the most figure-hugging pair of shiny copper trousers anyone has ever seen.
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The cast of Real Girlfriends in Paris.
Bravo
Yet her dinner’s posh tone is quickly lowered as the gang begins discussing their favourite topic. There are last-shag surveys, double entendres about “stuffing”, braided pubic hair allusions and, spoiler, a declaration of bisexuality. Ooh la la does Anya look unimpressed by all of this. Frankly it serves her right for attempting to serve Thanksgiving dinner without carbs. Newsflash: real Parisiennes, like real people everywhere, eat carbs, though perhaps in smaller portions than their American counterparts. Other newsflash: French people love talking about sex. So they’ve got that one right at least.
On the whole, if you’ve come to Real Girlfriends for some proper insight into Parisian life, you’ll be disappointed. You could plop this gaggle down in any city “abroad” and the storyline would pretty much be identical, minus a shot of the Eiffel Tower or two. If, however, you’ve come for the fun of some unashamedly awful reality TV à la Bravo, you’re in luck.
And there is something strangely refreshing about this. Naturally, comparisons will be drawn to Netflix’s Emily in Paris. While there’s a real Emily here (namely Emily Gorelik, Anya’s greatest wide-eyed admirer) and similarly bad blow-drys abound, the crucial difference is that Girlfriends is what the French might call “bien dans ses baskets” (literally, comfortable in one’s trainers, or accepting of one’s own identity). While Emily in Paris attempts to grapple with profound cultural differences and conflicting waves of feminist thought, Real Girlfriends just ploughs blindly ahead, bulldozing down the avenues while embracing the utter cringiness of its jokes and being totally upfront about the fact that the protagonists are kind of desperate. Whereas a prime array of Paris’s most eligible hotties fling themselves at Emily Cooper from day one, the real girlfriends are brilliantly honest about the fact that nobody wants to date them… yet.
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