Stop Smiling, You’re in Paris!
America is a country of smilers. There’s the traditional, stereotypical portrayal of honey-laden Southern hospitality, but even in the North, smiling is not just encouraged, it is expected. When I worked as a waitress, I was constantly being told by my manager that I needed to smile more, that I needed to be smiling at all times. But it goes beyond the service industry. The smile is baked into every aspect of our culture, especially when interacting with strangers. Even just passing someone on the street, you feel an obligation to smile.
Doing this in Paris will result in completely different interactions. In French culture, smiling is reserved for close friends, family, and loved ones. So smiling at that stranger on the metro? Or that waiter that you’re clumsily practicing your French on? That’s basically a pickup line.
I was told this over and over again throughout my dialogue. We had a whole cultural adjustment seminar, and they stressed “don’t smile” so much that by the end of it everyone’s faces had turned into stoic, frowning masks. And I kept that mantra in mind throughout my daily life, but it was completely impossible for me not to smile at people.
I think this is partially because I have a history working in customer service. But primarily, it’s due to culture difference. Everyone on my dialogue had this problem, finishing our interactions at the bakery with the grins that had been baked into us since our childhoods. This problem only grew if we were hanging out together. In the U.S., people tend to be very loud and boisterous when they’re in groups, and while this may be seen as obnoxious, it’s generally regarded as normal and expected. In Paris, people don’t tend to be so blatantly cheerful in public, not even with their best friends. Even if we weren’t speaking English (we sometimes didn’t, to try and practice our French) I felt like we were marked as obviously American just from the tone of our voices and the fact that we couldn’t. stop. smiling.
As time went on I was able to drop some of the smiles out of my daily life. The half-second grins exchanged between strangers were the first to go. The typical thing to do among Parisians is to mumble a quick “bonjour” so it was relatively easy to exchange one tic for another. I was also able to eventually get rid of the smiles that begin and end transactions at stores and restaurants, again swapping them with “bonjour” and “bon journée” respectively. The one thing that I was never able to stamp out was the instinctive “smile in an awkward situation” response. And due to not being a native French speaker, there were a lot of awkward situations, followed by a lot of awkward smiles.
We as a group also never quite got over our cheerfulness. We did quiet down to more acceptable sound and laughter levels, and were pretty good at realizing when it was time to be absolutely silent. But we still retained a level of obvious “Americanness,” and still got side-eyed on the metro. I don’t think that this is a bad thing. When you’re struggling to adapt to a new culture, it’s nice to have aspects of your own to hold on to.
