Charlie Brown goes to Paris

by David Benjamin

“I wore only black socks, because I had heard that white ones were the classic sign of the American tourist. Black ones though — those’ll fool ’em.”
― Doug Mack

PARIS—Hotlips has asked why I bother to compose formularies for American tourists in Paris who might—if offered the right advice—prefer not to look like American tourists in Paris. She regards this as a fool’s errand catering to other fools. Indeed, Don De Lillo has described tourists as “an army of fools, wearing bright polyesters, riding camels, taking pictures of each other, haggard, dysenteric, thirsty.”

Hotlips and De Lillo have a point hard to dispute. I share their disdain. I’m disinclined to lend succor to anyone in the slo-mo procession of sightseers who clog the street where we live in Paris. However, having been a tourist, both here and elsewhere, I feel a grudging sympathy for these bunglers in a strange land. I contend, to m scoffing spouse, that these neophytes would enjoy Paris more and partake more readily of its pleasures if they weren’t so blatantly alien and clueless. There are, I insist, good reasons to avoid comic conspicuousness in the swirl of the world’s most seductive city.

Foremost among these motives is pride. To be pegged as a naif, smirked at by the natives, is to be transported back to the first weeks of ninth grade, when you began as the undermost of underclassmen, mocked and jostled by members of the in-crowd, when you studied the look, the style, the argot of those cool kids, when you were desperate to fit in.

An even better reason to—in the word of Mona Lisa Vito—“blend” is a matter of personal security. When you stand out from the natives like a roach infesting the salade Niçoise, you become an object of interest to the legion of scammers, dippers, grifters and slitpurses who patrol the tourist vortices of Paris. There is no easier mark than a mom from Nebraska, her iPhone poised and handbag gaping open, while she laboriously poses her fidgety four-year-old in front of a candy shop on the rue St. Séverin.

I’ll never forget the sight of a seemingly distraught and exhausted gypsy woman on the plaza of Notre Dame plopping her swaddled infant into the arms of a surprised tourist who was decked out in a luau shirt and brand-new Panama hat. With gibbering laments of poverty and woe, the gypsy “mother” held the baby-laden sucker’s attention while her “son” deftly slipped wallet from hip pocket and darted into the milling throng.

I might have tried to chase the kid down and save the mark the ordeal of canceling his credit cards and applying, when he got back home, for a new driver’s license, but I had this defeatist sense of the inevitable. If he wasn’t fleeced at Notre Dame, it was going to happen at the Eiffel Tower, or queuing up for Berthillon ice cream on the Ile St. Louis.

I’ve always been puzzled by middle-aged white men who wear grownup clothes to serious jobs in America and then wander Paris dressed like Charlie Brown—in t-shirts and shorts, sneakers and tube socks.

Now, yes, there are Frenchmen who wear t-shirts, but they tend to be under twenty-five years of age, in t-shirts so tight that they serve more as body paint—color-coordinated with their jewelry—than clothing. Most of these guys are either gay or queuing up at the door of the disco club.

I wear t-shirts in Paris, almost always accompanied by a jacket or vest, and never in a café, bistro or restaurant. I dress not elegantly but respectfully when I dine out here. “Respect” is the operative term. In Paris, you are being served by the most professional waiters and waitresses in the world. You don’t enter their domain looking like a gone-to-seed reincarnation of Stanley Kowalski.

As for shorts, well, I’ve never seen a self-respecting French male in pantalon that did not tastefully conceal both legs from crotch to insteps. The exception, of course, are those maniacs in Spandex on bikes in the Tour de France. I picture the typical American male tourist in similar gear and I get the shakes.

Of course, the shorts-wearing sightseer has upgraded his look from plaid Bermudas to those baggy cargo jobs that hang almost down to the top of his socks—unless he’s going socksless, a rakish variation that places him at the cutting edge of doofus fashion.

Oddly enough, sneakers are no longer exclusive to American tourists. Influenced by U.S. pop culture, the Nike marketing blitzkrieg and the allure of comfortable shoes, Paris has succumbed to the low-top, with a special affection for Chuck Taylors in “designer colors” like mauve, fawn, taupe and tangerine.

Likewise, a baseball cap is no longer a dead giveaway. Frenchmen, not Frenchwomen, can be seen on the street in ballcaps, the most popular versions stitched with the Yankees’ logo—although I doubt most of these New York “fans” could tell Bambino from burrito. The cap-wearing tourist will eventually expose himself by entering a Paris restaurant and chowing down with his hat on. The French cling stubbornly to a sentiment once expressed by Jimmy Stewart, “A man who’ll sit down to eat with his hat on is goin’ nowhere in a hurry.”

If you’re listening, I have a few other wardrobe tips that will protect you against instant recognition—and likely exploitation—as a rube. Foremost among these: Empty your hip pockets. If you’re carrying your wallet, your phone or anything else of value on your ass, you won’t have it for long. This precaution applies to all pants, cargo shorts, loose jackets with slash pockets and any sort of purse, handbag or fanny pack not fully zipped. Paris is a city of light fingers, where mugging is regarded as gauche but where the deft dipper is deemed a sort of proletarian Pink Panther. The safest refuge for your wallet is the front pocket of a pair of jeans or chinos that are fairly snug.

By far, the most conspicuous and useless wardrobe accessory for the American sightseer in Paris is children. There’s virtually nothing in Paris than can appeal to an American child under the age of twenty-five. Bringing kids along is expensive. They distract you constantly, exacerbating your vulnerability to pickpockets. The only food they’re willing to eat is pizza, and Paris is lousy at pizza. Leave the mozniks behind in Topeka, ideally in a kennel.

Go ahead and buy that University of Paris or a J’Aime Paris t-shirt, sweatshirt, stocking cap or an Eiffel Tower motif scarf, but don’t wear it proudly in Paris, the way you would in a Crimson Tide jersey in Tuscaloosa. Nobody in Paris is impressed that you went to Paris, and the Sorbonne doesn’t have a football team. Save the shirt to show off back home and you might save yourself from the condescension of the maitre d’.

Above all, notwithstanding the temptation that emanates from every tchotchke shop, do not give in and buy the beret, especially that Emily-in-Paris red job. As you affix the bright flannel disk atop your noggin, you might feel as though you have captured in one classic item of headgear the look, the feel and the timeless spirit of the City of Light. But, bummer. Times have changed. The last dying exemplars of the Paris beret (besides tourists) are octogenarian geezers who shuffle the cobblestones, gnarled hands clasped behind their backs, reminiscing gummily to themselves about the good old jours of Napoleon III and Maréchal Pétain.

One other clue: If you want to pass as someone who “belongs,” buy a baguette. Don’t eat it. Just carry it around, as though you’re on route to your atelier, to nibble on it while sipping Muscadet and painting the lovely Grisette in the nude.

There’s no better defense against Parisian hauteur than a simple loaf of bread.