you’d probably choose Paris

Le sigh.  J’aime Paris.  J’aime baguette.  Ça va? Ça va bien! Il y a un portmanteau.  Je voudrais un croque melba.

So goes the amount of French I can summon on the fly at present, but it’s true.  I do love Paris.  I do love baguette.  I’m also doing pretty well right now and want a croque melba, if you’re offering.

Maybe it’s a tad presumptuous to even claim a love for Paris, seeing as I’ve only been for three days, but man did we get along.  I don’t think I had to struggle with my hair any of those days, and every single place we ate at had delicious bread.  Bread, nice hair days, and damn fine lighting. What more does a girl need really?

Well, apparently love, because while watching one of the later episodes of Friends today, I had to watch Rachel doubt whether to move to Paris for an amazing opportunity with Louis Vuitton, and like so many women before her, she did the inevitable.

This whole post is basically a spoiler if you’ve never seen Friends, Dawson’s Creek, or Sex in the City.  I’d stop now if you truly care about being surprised, though this blog post title pretty much ruined it already.

Let's start with Rachel.  Rachel got a position after being fired from Ralph Lauren, then being offered more money later on because of Ross’ interference and bribery using dinosaur skulls.  Rachel’s boss thought that they’d be cool to impress his kid.

Rachel herself said she learned everything she needed to from that job, and she was excited at the prospect of leaving, “scared in a good way” she called it, like when she ran out of her wedding to live in New York.  And we all know how well that turned out.  Really well (I realized that that sentence could’ve been read with an eye-roll, when I really meant that it went amazing)!  She made friends and she worked her way up from being a waitress to working for a major fashion line!  That’s what dreams are made of Rachel.  You need to listen to that gut!

She also planned on bringing baby Emma with her.  How cool would that be?  Baby Emma would be a posh international kid, the one that would come back extremely collected and cool, wearing weird clothes because she’s just too cutting edge for America.  She would be the very adventurous cousin to Monica and Chandler’s twins.

But no.  She chooses Ross.  She’s close.  She actually boards the plane and gears up to go, but she calls Ross and ends up at his apartment.  Granted, it’s not said where the couple decide to live together, but it’s pretty well understood that they’ll have to live in New York.  Ross just got tenure at the college.  He has a job for life.

But, it's okay Rachel, apparently smart, savvy girls just seem to choose the boy over Paris, like Capeside’s resident know-it-all Joey Potter.

In the first season of Dawson's Creek, before any of them even learned to drive yet, Joey was faced with the decision of whether to go to Paris or to pursue her budding relationship with childhood friend Dawson.  Poor lovesick Joey wanted his attention all season, but Jenn just had to come striding into Capeside with her sweet blonde looks and her New York no-nonsense.  That's practically kryptonite to a film-buff romantic like Dawson.  So Joey goes on with her life, applying for this trip to France, until--What? Dawson wants to get with this now?

Joey, your reply should've been, we live in the same town and go to the same school.  We'll have years to get to know what these feelings between you and I are.  I'll see you after this trip abroad.  Or maybe, hey Dawson, I'm sorry you just now realized that I'm a catch, despite my obvious pining for you all year, but I'm going to go carry on with every Pierre, Etienne, Louis overseas and become worldly.  I already bought a beret.

She ends up staying and debating for a really long time, well into the next season at least.  I think she ends up deciding to "find herself," instead of pursuing a proper relationship with him, and Dawson ends up with a stripper.  So maybe, we can technically say that she didn't choose the boy over Paris, but she took too long to decide it, so she loses the trip.

This brings us to Carrie.

Despite my claimed annoyance with Sex in the City, I did see what happened to Carrie in those final episodes of the series.  Carrie, unlike Joey or Rachel, actually got to go to the city of lights when she said she would.  She went with her current boyfriend at the time in pursuit of love and believing in the romance of the city and that sad, sad relationship.  However, Carrie wasn’t really happy in Paris, despite how nice her hair looked and despite having really nice outfits as she patrolled the streets.  Hey, she even found a friend and a small group of fans who wanted to talk to her about her books!  Because, as if she didn’t have enough of the Parisian wardrobe, the Parisian hair, she also had to have the Parisian book club who wanted to talk about books in a café.  She just needed a poodle.

But Carrie ends up getting rescued by Big, some guy who apparently meant a lot to her throughout the series I think, and he takes her back to New York.  What a waste, Carrie Bradshaw.  Paris was right there for you.  You even took the opportunity to go, but you couldn't carry it out.

In an ideal world, she would've went, ditched the bad relationship, and kept on with her gorgeous outfits and walking the cobblestones in heels.  In this ideal world, she would've found a Parisian big and had salons with her book club.

Now, I get it.  Paris is a symbol of over-romanticism for female ideals and Paris won't necessarily fix everything, but Rachel, Joey, and Carrie have all missed an opportunity to live outside a comfortable sphere.  I will give credit to Joey for finally going in a later season, but no one really watched it by that point, right?  And Rachel and Ross could've made it work for a while, right?  They've been doing it for a good many seasons at least.  And Carrie had it in her to have a bite of the city, but she gave up.

Bravo men.  You win this round, I guess, but if I'm put in any of those situations, ever, it's Paris, every single time.