If I were ranking each decade of my life, my 40s would have the top score. It’s a comfortable place of knowing myself better than ever before, and full-blown adulthood is an achievement that brings rewards previously unimagined. It’s a strange time of contradictions where I give fewer shits, but care more deeply. I still feel outrage and anger, but find that it isn’t channeled the same way, and is focused on different targets. I’m wiser, but am still learning and pay attention to the lessons with greater awareness. I’m better equipped to know which battles to fight, and which to let go. And why.
In 2003, the couple living next door began calling me “Barbie” soon after we met. I’m like a Barbie doll, they say. I shake my head, and tell them they’re wrong. I love hanging out with these two women. We open the doors of our apartments and sit on the steps, the three of us drinking and smoking into the quiet hours of the night. We go camping together. I can’t convince them that when I was growing up, I wasn’t one of those pretty blonde popular girls. I wasn’t from an upper-class family. Daddy never bought me a car. (I bought my first car for $200 when I was 22 years old with my own money and it was a piece of shit that often left me stranded.) I tell my neighbors I’ve been to jail, been in fights, and have my own set of tools that I know how to use. Barbie dolls are the antithesis of what I’m about. I’m not girly, dammit. I drink and smoke and swear and—
They laugh and say, “It’s okay, Barbie. We love ya.”
I gave up. The nickname stuck. And soon, I didn’t mind it.
Once I got over myself and looked at them, and at myself, I understood their reasoning, that it was friendly ribbing, and got over it. When a person makes an inaccurate assessment of you, it’s easier to swallow when it’s done out of affection. These were two butch women of color, and… well, this was me at the time:
A few years later, a customer service rep on the other end of the phone had my name on the screen in front of her, but stopped using it after a series of standard questions. Why am I cancelling my landline, she wanted to know. I explained that I’m moving, and won’t need it anymore. She tried persuading me to transfer everything to my new address.
“I’m moving out of the country,” I said.
“That’s exciting. Where are you moving to?”
“France.”
“Cool. Is that for school, or work, or…?”
“No, getting married.”
“To a French guy?”
“Yeah.”
And with that, this woman began referring to me as “Princess.” It’s common knowledge that every French person is goddamn royalty, so marrying one made me another Meghan Markle, or Grace Kelly. I am exactly like Grace Kelly. People often tell me so. And my husband gets confused for being a fancy prince all the time.
I’ve worked in customer service. It was inappropriate for this woman to speak to me that way, but the fact that she had this misconception in the first place wasn’t totally her fault. Books and movies have plugged a narrative into most people’s brains that says when a woman moves to Paris to marry a tall, dark, and handsome stranger with a sexy accent that there must be a pumpkin coach involved somehow. I place a lot of the blame on romcoms. I didn’t blame her, but my aversion to romcoms and people assuming I’m something I’m not had me feeling a bit prickly.
I made her dumb comment my problem for no reason other than I was young and defensive.
This was only the beginning of a never-ending barrage of ignorant and sometimes, insulting misconceptions I’d swat away like a thick, buzzing swarm of shitty comments flittering around my face in the midst of various conversations. Arriving in France made it worse, because now I had the bullshit spattering me from both side of the pond.
I’ve encountered French people who enjoy explaining my own country to me, especially if they’ve never made a trip to the States. While an American customer service rep calls me “Princess,” I’ll have a French person calling me “John Wayne.” Both of which raise my fucking hackles and make me wonder what is so goddamn difficult about saying my name. Is it hard to pronounce? Does it roll off the tongue in an uncomfortable way, like “yolk,” or “moist?”
Occasionally, people speak to me as though I were new to planet Earth. Somehow, they’ve fallen under the impression that I’ve recently hatched from an alien pod my husband found on the side of the road. They seem to be confused about the fact that I was an adult who’d had a life before moving to France to live with him.
Perhaps they believe in the myth of the stupid American. Turns out, people everywhere are fooled by bullshit they see on TV. Go figure. And trying to explain the truth generally doesn’t do any good. The average person doesn’t want their illusions shattered. So, when someone in France told me people in Colorado frequently kill and eat mountain goats and I corrected them, I was not surprised when they ignored me, then turned around to tell the person next to them that I eat mountain goat. It’s true because they saw it on TV. My testimony as a person who grew up in Colorado is irrelevant. I am not a person on TV.
I became irritated during interactions like this one. Now that I’m a little older, I know I should have nodded sagely, looked the person dead in the eye and said, “WE MUST KILL AND CONSUME THE FLESH OF THAT CLOVEN HOOFED BEAST TO APPEASE THE HORNED GOD OF THE MOUNTAIN.”
Present-day me does things like this more frequently than thinner-skinned younger me. That’s one reason why present-day me has more fun.
A few years ago, a friend back home in the States was upset because her husband left her. She screamed at me about how I didn’t care because I had “a perfect life in France.” The whole thing was confusing, because one minute, I’m listening to her account of what transpired, and the next, my level of concern and the way I live my life was being called into question. It was an okay life. At that time, Olivier and I were living in an apartment outside of Paris. It wasn’t fancy, big, or glamorous. I wore sweatpants, cleaned the toilet, watched movies on my couch, and ate burritos. It was quite like my life in Colorado, but without the spectacular mountain scenery, my friends, or an Arby’s. We had stress, bills, sickness, death, and other real-life issues to muddle through like anyone. I found myself defending my home life to this person, then realized I didn’t owe an explanation to anyone. Her unhappiness combined with her delusions about my daily life swirled around inside her until it spewed forth as oblivious vitriol. I couldn’t do anything about that, except continue on with my perfectly mundane life, which is all any of us can do.
I offered her a terse response. But, in a refined and regal way. Like a princess.
What might’ve been the most derisive assessment was when some dude dismissed my life and writing by claiming that it was just because I “married well.” What struck me about this, aside from the blatant misogyny, was the insinuation that my marriage was some kind of calculated move; that my husband was a wealthy geezer who is to be credited for my own accomplishments, or worse, that he’s a trophy instead of a person who is important to me. Mostly, it was the inference that I had “married up,” and got hitched to someone above my station or social class that I found grating. It was another fictional version of my life. In this one, it wasn’t only classist, but sexist, too.
I was insulted, sure, but almost immediately, I realized I wasn’t angry, and thought, damn… what a miserable fucking person. Then I did something previously out of character. I let it go. It felt strange, but strange can be pretty awesome.
There seems to be a delusion that expats are rich. People move overseas by way of various routes and for some, that may include being in possession of large sums of money, but for most, that isn’t the case. The main reasons often involve school, work, love, or wanderlust. I’ve met many expats over the years and haven’t encountered any of these globe-trotting millionaires. I have, however, talked with several who are frustrated, lonely, and overwhelmed. None of them are living glitzy, glamorous lives and attending Gatsby parties.
Maybe you think that being accused of having it made and being a John Wayne Princess is nothing to be bugged about. And you’re right. But, spending the majority of my life as a fucking poor person who’s heard the term “white trash” coming at her a few times, it was a big deal.
I think about these things. I wonder, when someone makes a dismissive comment about another person’s life, what it really means. As time etches more lines around my eyes, I find that when something gets under my skin, it doesn’t cause the same itch it once did. This itch is more analytical and curious, rather than the offended and outraged prickling that fired up a younger me.
I’m still learning. One of the many amazing things about growing older is being able to manage my own hypersensitivity and reactions to the ignorant things people say. As I settle comfortably into middle age, I find it’s easier to navigate around those people, sticking with the ones who say goofy things out of love, moving past those who don’t know better, and giving a regal “fuck you” to the assholes. Then I go out and have a good time while they believe whatever asinine thing they like. I’ve earned my life and my adulthood; I can go out and have that good time as a fancy Barbie Doll Princess, or as a white trash John Wayne woman. I get more flexible with age.