In season four of "Gossip Girl," episode "Belles du Jour," Blair is approached at the musée d'Orsay in Paris by the Prince of Monaco, while she’s admiring her favorite painting by Manet. The first time watching this scene elicited a whole lot of “if only that was me.”
Two years later, in the Louvre, making my way down to the Islamic Arts section. Having been raised by Muslim parents who grounded me to this deep, deep love for Islam, I was naturally drawn to the old, Arabic script present in the “basement” of this musée. Lost is the closest I can get to describing my demeanor. Lost in the practicality of life so long ago, in the source of inspiration for the mosque being built near my home in San Jose, and for the appreciation of a larger part of my identity. I wanted this to be sacred: wandering, lost in a petit section of the Louvre.
Towards the end of my time in the Islamic Arts Section, a man who seemed to be in his early 30s approached me. He had a name tag, so I listened to him ramble in French. As an intern at the Louvre, completing his Masters degree, he claimed that he had assembled the collections I had been ogling at. What a steal! This man was willing to explain his reasoning behind his placement for every artifact.
Halfway through his explanation on a door consisting of symmetrical wood carvings, his tone switched, and the phrases I was picking up in French made me shake my head. Maybe I had misconstrued his explanation on the door? No, he wasn’t talking about the door anymore, he was talking about me. “Couldn’t help but notice... très belle!” He insisted on grabbing a quick drink and I barely managed to blurt, “Non, merci; au revoir!” storming out of the Louvre.
Looking back to Blair Waldorf and the connotation that museums have in movies and modern day series, my experience would have been romanticized. How many of your friends have been hit on in bookstores? The arts are so closely intertwined with love that we accept these situations and sometimes even aspire for them to occur. How many girls leave for Paris hoping to stumble across a man? After all, it’s the city of love!
If I had been Blair Waldorf, I would have proceeded to grab coffee with him. But can we think for a moment, why she was standing in front of a Manet? To admire a painting, an object. The result? Being admired. Isn’t it funny that women are objectified everywhere, including the spaces in which they are standing next to what can be openly admired, what was specifically made to be admired by mankind?
As I traverse through my life, I acknowledge the unfortunate truth: this wasn’t the first, and it wouldn’t be the last of these experiences. This truth stretches past me. It’s universal. This is frustrating, because after knowing this and thinking I knew everything there was to know about it, I had uncovered yet another facet of the media in which women have been duped! At least I was fooled, watching that episode, waiting for it to happen to me. And when it did, I realized that it could never be what I wanted all along.
