It turns out the City of Love doesn’t always live up to its nickname—and that’s part of the appeal.
According to social media , the best way to get over a dissolution is toflee to Paris . One TikToker set out aseries of vlogswith “ A day in the life of a brokenhearted American live in Paris . ” Another , using a backdrop of a Parisian balcony , writesa niggling post heartbreak poem : “ POV : You get your heart broken and hightail it away to Paris . The espresso and wine heal your someone , and the city of romance reminds you that making love still exist , just not for a man . ” And yetanother , set to a recording of Jennifer Anniston as Rachel Green inFriends , has over 70,000 the like . The accompanying hashtags — among them # breakuptiktok , # breakupglowup , and # parisdiaries — say it all .
But the idea that a woman could jettison her current romanticist reality and run away to the so - called City of Love on her own is nothing raw . In fact , one might even call this detachment vacation platitude .
Film and idiot box have done a deal for the figure of speech of a forlorn womanhood walk down the streets of Paris , carrying freshly baked baguet in her arms or stuffing her face with a larder crescent roll . In the Season 6 close of the originalSex and the City , a ball surgical gown - clothe Carrie Bradshaw finds herself desperately alone in a opulence pâtisserie , while her beau , Alexander Petrovsky , is busy working on his artistic production exhibit . In Season 3 , Episode 11 of 2007’sGossip Girl , Blair Waldorf offer some words of teen Wisdom of Solomon to her best champion , Serena van der Woodsen , who has just break up with her young man : “ If you ’re gon na be sad , you might as well be sad inParis . ” And following in her sulking predecessors ’ designer footsteps , Emily Cooper ’s trajectory in 2020’sEmily in Parisis fuel by her Episode 2 dissolution with her painfully average Chicago fellow .
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It ’s all over the big screen , too . In Noah Baumbach ’s 2012 indie darlingFrances Ha , the titular type have a spur - of - the - moment , financially inexpedient trip to Paris in the hope that it will mend her dreaded professional prospects and tilt shackle with her best supporter , Sophie . As she ramble around the Haussmann - lined streets , she realise that nothing is quite working out : Her French acquaintance wo n’t answer her calls ; the bookshop she ’s interested in is closed ; her lighter wo n’t illumine .
Some of these leading gentlewoman find solvent in Paris ( oftentimes in the form of Gallic romantic pardner ) , while others deal with unmet expectations . But regardless of the outcome , the urban center serves as a portal through which a heartbroken American enters , wipe out some adust goods , and finally emerges with a renewed common sense of herself — or at least a new position on her love life .
But why has Paris — a.k.a . the City of Love — become so synonymous with a deflated single fair sex ’s bumpy route to worked up retrieval ? The answer may be settle in very real ill-tempered - cultural misconception . In 1989 , Nipponese head-shrinker Hiroaki Ota strike the term“Paris Syndrome . ”He remark that upon visiting Paris , a number of his patient role experienced utmost form of culture shock stem from the disparity between the ways in which Japanese civilisation romanticized Paris and the metropolis ’s coarse-grained reality . The symptom were alarming — among them accelerated heart rate , shortness of breath , hallucinations , and vertigo — triggering feelings of disillusionment and dashing hopes that often broadcast the tourists packing for home .
While Dr. Ota ’s theory has since been challenged as just another form ofStendhal Syndrome , a condition in which the body overreacts when confronted with new introduced items of great beauty , there has long seemed to be something in the Parisian atmosphere that creates a rush of rip to the head and inspires a visitant to alter their life ’s row . Before the notion get to predominate chick - illume novels and rom - coms , it permeated 20th - 100 literature . Ernest Hemingway incarnate the idea in his posthumously write memoir , A Moveable Feast , which chronicle the source ’s predicament as a struggling expatriate in Paris during the 1920s . The Word of God , which also feature the ilk of fellow literary whale Gertrude Stein , James Joyce , F. Scott Fitzgerald , and Ezra Pound , later served as inspiration for Woody Allen ’s 2011Midnight in Paris .
As Hemingway ’s title suggests , Paris itself has the power to satiate both the consistency and mortal . In one prospect , the generator recounts skipping a meal and live to look at some Cézannes alternatively . That sinking feeling in one ’s stomach — one soul might call it hunger , another , heartbreak — can easily be soothe by all the city has to offer , whether it ’s a show at the Louvre or the easy reminder that sadness breedsgreat poetry .
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In other words, ‘The Lizzie McGuire Movie’ is the Roman Empire for girls.
Hemingway padding around Paris in an effort to feed in his melancholy , modernist masterpieces hearken back to the concept of the“flâneur . ”The fodder of nineteenth - century Gallic literary figures like Honoré de Balzac and Charles Baudelaire , a flâneur is defined as a man who leisurely explores the city by invertebrate foot , idly absorbing all the aspects of forward-looking urban life . And while the build of the flâneur has traditionally been associated with gentleman , Lauren Elkin orient out in her 2016 book , Flâneuse : Women Walk the City in Paris , New York , Tokyo , Venice , and London , that distaff flâneurs did in fact exist . “ To propose that there could n’t be a female version of the flâneur is to trammel the ways women have interacted with the metropolis to the waysmenhave interacted with the urban center , ” she writes .
So perhaps these fresh - out - of - a - breakup TikTokers are — with or without realizing it — embrace their inner flâneuse . In the spirit ofromanticizing one ’s lifespan , the undecomposed way of life to start the healing process is to lean into it as if you were the lead in a2000s read-only memory - com , or an former 20th - century novel . And , as advocator oftaking yourself out on a datewould intimate , there ’s no proficient plaza to fall back in love with yourself than the City of Love .
