When I Look At The World

Rock’n’roll stars, rap artists, red­necks, tycoons, politi­cians, lob­by­ists, aliens… North Amer­ica has it all. But there’s one cat­e­gory that have never trav­eled across the ocean from its beloved old con­ti­nent : the nobility.

To be rich in North Amer­ica, you either have to be : a) incred­i­bly smart (cf. Bill Gates) b) incred­i­bly stu­pid (cf. Paris Hilton). To be rich in France you can try the two meth­ods above but frankly, few peo­ple will bother. Money, you have it or you don’t. And most of time, if you do, you inher­ited it.

Snap­shot. It’s 4:00 in front of a pri­vate school. A group of mid­dle age women, dressed in navy blue and bot­tle green from head to toes : padded head­bands, plaid skirts, tweed jack­ets and deck shoes. And the infa­mous Bor­deaux coat. No point in being flashy, right ? Money talks for itself. They are Bon Chic Bon Genre (B.C.B.G. for short) : ele­gant and well man­nered. They live in Neuilly, Auteuil and Passy and hang out there, between Churches (a mem­ber of the fam­ily have to be in the Roman Catholic priest­hood) , scout­ing for the kids, inter­minable ten­nis games played in indoor court down­town Paris and mil­i­tary parades. The hus­band works in finance or for the gov­ern­ment — where else ? The whole fam­ily has been attend­ing elite school since Napoléon.

They get impa­tient. It’s already 4:01 and if the kids don’t come out now, they will be late for the lit­tle trip they take every week­end. The whole fam­ily will travel to the château, the cas­tle — has been in the fam­ily for a very long time. They don’t go there for fun. Mostly because the cousins are here, them­selves com­ing from Nor­mandy. They pretty much have to get out of the city for week­ends, what would the kids do oth­er­wise ? Play with the neigh­bor­hood kids ? They are Ara­bic for God’s sake ! Talk­ing about God, they have to go to Church early this Sun­day any­way. The Father announced a very mov­ing preach last Sun­day, against homo­sex­u­als who abort all the time, des­e­crat­ing ceme­ter­ies. They don’t under­stand every­thing because the Mass is in Latin, but that’s the way it’s sup­posed to be.

Yep. In France, there sill are counts (cf. the Count of Paris, Louis XVI’s direct descen­dant), barons (cf. Ernest-Antoine Seil­lière de Laborde, the head of the MEDEF — “Move­ment of the French Enter­prises”, the largest union of employ­ers in France), vis­counts… a bunch of titles that don’t seem to mean much. France is now a Repub­lic, isn’t it ? Well, yes, but a lot of peo­ple are still liv­ing in enclaves — like Neuilly Sur Seine.

French social classes are well-defined : work­ing class, mid­dle class and upper class. After the French rev­o­lu­tion, the bour­geoisie (tra­di­tion­ally, upper-class mer­chants whose power comes from employ­ment and wealth) and the aris­toc­racy merged. They were old ene­mies but needed to sur­vive under the new Repub­lic. Big for­tunes were made dur­ing France’s glory days, and they stayed within the fam­ily : pri­vate man­sions, lands and a name, often with a “de”, the par­ti­cle usu­ally belong­ing to a noble fam­ily. It opens door, mostly golden ones. Fam­ily back­ground, edu­ca­tion, man­ners, money. You don’t get it : you’re born with it. They even have an asso­ci­a­tion : the “Asso­ci­a­tion for the mutual assis­tance of French nobility” !

The North Amer­i­can dream goes like that : start at the rung of the lad­der, add a lot of work, a stroke of luck, life tragedies and hard­ship and you could make it to the top. On paper, every­body gets a chance… even though deep down peo­ple know the Amer­i­can Dream is in a bad way. It’s worth hav­ing a go. Anyway.

In case you’re won­der­ing, I’m a no-one. I do have a very long name but it’s only because my par­ents have been hap­pily liv­ing in sin for over 25 years now, so I ended up with both names. I’m not even a bour­geois. I’m afraid I’m just a basic work­ing class/ artists/ lov­ing fam­ily brat. Sorry.

I’m glad I’m in North Amer­ica. I feel like I escaped the fet­ter of tra­di­tion. I feel like the world is mine. I feel like it doesn’t mat­ter where I’m from. I feel like I can make it if I want to.

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