Ever since moving to Europe three years ago, and particularly since launching this male-objectifying exercise of a blog, I have been repeatedly advised – no, instructed – to go to Scandinavia. I’m talking about friends, coworkers, readers, you name it, all promising me some sort of cathartic experience in the land of herring and Ikea, complete with the discovery of my own 7-foot tall Bjorn Ironside with superpowers in the sack.
It is relatively common knowledge that the French have transformed doing nothing into an art form, one that takes on a whole new meaning once the summer rolls around. Weekends are long, workdays are short, and the office entrance is blocked by a small mountain of overnight duffel bags come Friday morning. Around 5:00 p.m., the scramble to make it to the next TGV train down South begins in a shift all too reminiscent of New Yorkers’ collective race to the Jitney.
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Once in awhile, I get a (worrisome) sign from God that I’m progressively becoming French. This time around it came in the form of the Backstreet Boy, a character who merited his nickname via his fly Mohawk and tight, cuffed Levis that took you straight back to the days when 5 man-children would croon “I want it that way” through your Discman headphones. Anyway, more on his formidable style later. Lets start with how we met.
When I was little girl and didn’t know that I would be one day meeting men on Tinder, I always dreamed of meeting the love of my life on an airplane. Exhausted after a business trip to an exotic locale (my vision of the future also involved a career as an international diplomat), I would slip into my first class seat, only discover a Don Draper lookalike ready to divulge his innermost secrets over dirty martinis. Granted, we would be an item by the time the plane touched the ground.
I think it was Mark Twain who said “Children and fools always speak the truth.” I will go ahead and add teens to this equation. I always find that spending time with my 17-year-old niece is an invaluable experience that allows me to see life through a simplistic prism and reaffirms the notion once so effectively conveyed via Mean Girls: real life mirrors high school. This time around, the kid hit a nail on the head while volunteering a description of a guy her friend was dating: “He’s just one of those Basic Douchebags – he is used to always getting his way and f*cking girls over, so once he finds somebody who can play his game, he’s like “she gets me” and decides he’s finally found his equal and he’s in love.”
Dear loyal readers, you will have to excuse me for my recent laziness. However, I have a valid excuse, as I am currently in New York City, experiencing an ongoing case of FOMO x ADD. From foods made out of alien super food ingredients, to clothing from every brand under the sun, to a seemingly insatiable pool of men in (occasionally poorly cut) suits, New York presents a land of endless options that make focusing on just one thing damn near impossible.
