The Girls of Paris

After centuries of supremacy as the capital city of the world, Paris—despite London's determined assault on the throne—still comes closest to satisfying the multifaceted desires of the sophisticated male. In beaux-arts or haute cuisine, in lavish entertainment or zesty joie de vivre, or—most important of all —in chic and complaisant females, the incomparable City of Light most closely approximates the masculine ideal of what big cities are all about. To appease virtually any appetite, be it cerebral, cultural, gustatory or sexual, Paris offers superabundant satisfaction—gracefully and without reproach.

So much has been written—and dreamed—about the girls of Paris that it is difficult to separate hit from myth. For some of the mesdemoiselles de Paris— the girls of the traditionally bohemian St.-Germain-des-Prés area, for example —myth has been so persistent that time has transformed it into reality. Here les jeunes filles consciously strive to live up to standards of sexual freethinking established in the 1920s, when their enlightened predecessors were vying for the privilege of spending a night with the likes of Hemingway or Picasso. In other cases—such as the ladies of the evening— myth and reality, where they once coincided, are now diverging. (Traditionalists will lament the loss, but the quality of parisiennes practicing the world's oldest profession is steadily diminishing.) And in still other cases—such as the prevalent foreign notion that every girl in Paris is at once dazzlingly beautiful and breath-takingly worldly—myth and reality never merged at all, though at times they might have seemed very close, indeed.

Whether foreign, provincial or native Parisian, no girl loves the City of Light more than one who's living there. Her unrestrained enthusiasm expresses itself with a vivacity and charm uniquely befitting her adored city. Something about the ambiance of Paris—perhaps its very feminine beauty or its transcendental appreciation of women as sexual beings—makes a girl revel in being a girl and in being appreciated as one, as only Paris can appreciate her. The French are not city lovers—simply Paris lovers. The provinces, even to those who live there, are out. It's a safe assumption that every swinging girl in France— whether guileless farm girls from the lowlands of Normandy or sun-browned mountain maids from the Basque country in the Pyrenees—will ultimately gravitate to Paris. Almost uniquely among the world's great cities, the central core (text continued on page 110) of Paris is growing faster than the suburbs around it. Here wealth does not force one out of the city—it permits one to move closer in. Paris is also growing ever more beautiful, as sandblasting and well-planned reconstruction continue to restore the elegance of old.

In background and interests, the girls of Paris are likely to be as unpredictable as womankind itself. Superficially, they might resemble the girls of any big city, until closer scrutiny reveals that there are more of them, that they are pleasanter company, prettier in appearance and invariably better dressed. The American bachelor, relaxing after his six-hour transatlantic flight with a sunny aperitif as he first contemplates the action along the Champs-Elysées, will quickly note that the old French tradition of la promenade here reaches its zenith—in the infinitely varied stream of laughing, well-groomed females flowing past his sidewalk table. Here he will see miniskirted young Modniks who have jet-setted over from London for the weekend; leggy Fräuleinwunders throwing off Teutonic shackles for a brief taste of la vie parisienne; students from the former colonial hinterlands of Africa or Indochina, seeking a life style hardly available in Dakar or Pnompenh; well-scrubbed and well-tanned American coeds who wisely left Bermuda shorts and tennis shoes in Darien; and, of course, the ever-present parisienne—self-assured and irresistibly feminine.

While Paris, especially during the summer, probably boasts the largest and most diverse population of transient females of any city in the world, it's the local residents who should initially pique the interest of our man about town. Knowing the manifold delights and eccentricities of Paris as well as she does, the parisienne can provide the visiting stranger with the best of all possible whirls through her breath-taking city. As our man will discover anon, she is a happy potpourri of the most enjoyable aspects of womanhood, conceived in a climate where sexuality is admired, rather than repressed, and nurtured in surroundings uniquely appreciative of sugar and spice. She is at once worldly and naïve, ingenuous and sophisticated, calculating and guileless. Her often paradoxical nature must be understood to be really appreciated.

Our peripatetic voyager will be initially concerned with the outer woman, and his first observation might be that, contrary to popular notion, the typical parisienne is anything but the emaciated will-o'-the-wisp so frequently encountered in the women's fashion magazines. Most Paris mannequins, he may subsequently discover, are neither Parisian nor French: The leggier ones generally come from Scandinavia, where walking is a national pastime; and the bonier ones often come from England, where good food, except for the wealthy, is still difficult to come by. The real parisienne, our man will note, is well fleshed and robustly healthy. She carries herself neither as athlete nor as sylph, but trimly, unself-consciously and with a grace that in other girls might seem studied to a fault. She can walk in three-inch heels, for instance, as naturally as if she were barefoot.

As he looks closer, trying to isolate just what it is that makes the parisienne so attractive, our man might find himself hard pressed for an answer. It could be her legs—fine, slender and well formed. The benign climate of Paris and its marvelously efficient public transportation system seem to encourage the full flowering of legs as ornaments as well as propulsion. Girl for girl, Paris certainly boasts the world's highest percentage of shapely ankles, in happy conjunction with well-turned calves. In the Bois-de-Boulogne—the Central Park of Paris—the eye-filling combination of a well-trimmed girl, a mid-thigh miniskirt and a Honda produces a spectacle rivaling the Crazy Horse's.

But diverting as they are, the extremities themselves can't account for the inexplicable attractiveness of the whole girl. Could it be her mouth? It's decidedly the most expressive feature of her emphatically expressive face. The parisienne, like all French girls, speaks less with her tongue than with her lips—which she rounds into a provocative pout to accommodate the acrobatic vowels of her elegant language. A lifetime of speaking French draws in her cheeks slightly and causes a barely visible network of lines to form at the corners of her mouth. Especially prominent when she smiles, these crinkles give her that slightly cynical, worldly-wise look and the elfin allure that is much of her charm. Seasoned Paris girl watchers look to mademoiselle's mouth—even when she's silent—to determine whether she's a native speaker of French. They're almost invariably correct.

The key to the attractiveness of the parisienne is chic. Every detail of her appearance—her coiffure (high-stylish but never garish), her make-up (subtle, yet strikingly effective), her outfit and her accessories (perfectly appropriate and sensitively matched)—is carefully selected to enhance her individual charm. The result is an unobtrusive elegance, an almost Grecian sense of proportion, transforming even an average girl into a head-turner. It stands to reason, after all, that the proportion of knockout females in Paris is no higher than that in most other big cities. The difference—vive la difference—is the near miracle that the alchemy of Paris can work on an ordinarily attractive girl.

Day or night, on the Champs-Elysées or elsewhere, the café is the likeliest place to strike up a conversation—and perhaps an entente cordiale—with one of these lovelies. Lining virtually every sidewalk in the city, cafes comprise a large element of the engaging vitality of Paris. During a normal day, the typical parisienne might well tarry at two, five or even a dozen of them, sipping a l'eau Perrier here, an Alsatian beer there, enjoying croissants and café au lait in midmorning, strolling elsewhere for a favored aperitif, then stopping for lunch—which, depending on her figure or her predilection, can range from a mini-demitasse at a tiny pâtisserie to the immobilizing multicourse déjeuner that still provides the raison d'être for the two-hour Gallic lunch break. After the repast, her tour may begin all over again.

It is a rare café, indeed, in which you cannot find at least one attractive and unaccompanied young girl toying with a glass and demurely eying the action beyond. Should you be refreshing yourself in the same café, your waiter can probably assist you in determining whether she's unattached. Centuries of Parisian joie de vivre have elevated the profession of waiter—even in the humblest of bistros—to a position of dignity and authority. He is monsieur, never garçon. Experienced in catering to a kaleidoscopic array of appetites, he will field a question about a young lady's approachability with the same imperturbable suavity with which he answers a query about a featured course. If the response is affirmative, it's simplicity itself to strike up a conversation with the lady—especially if you're reasonably at home in the French language. Even if you're not, a trivial question in English, bespeaking any one of the minor difficulties that beset travelers in a foreign city (and provide them with fine opening gambits as well), will probably provoke an interested response. Most parisiennes speak passing-fair English—certainly better than most Americans speak French. Contrary to popular notion, the typical demoiselle will sympathetically endure conversations in high school French, and she welcomes the opportunity to brush up her English—particularly with an outgoing American male.

If your taste runs to the intellectual, you might leave the Champs-Elysées, cross the Seine and stroll down the Boulevard St.-Germain to the Café aux Deux Magots, longtime hangout of the French Existentialists before they became famous, and now frequented by unconventional scholars, writers and artists of both sexes. At virtually any hour, the Deux Magots (named for statues of two wizened Orientals within) and the Cafe de Flore, next door, teem with cerebral, outgoing and generally available young women eager for a whirl—and perhaps a great deal more—with a visitor who happens to pique their intense (continued on page 169) Girls of Paris (continued from page 110) and often fanciful imaginations. In these two cafés particularly, and in all the little bistros lining the adjacent Rue Saint-Benoît, to approach a single girl—with a tactfully presented offer of anything from another cup of coffee to a weekend on the Aegean—is almost de rigueur. Available or not, the mesdemoiselles will be anything but offended at such attempts to enhance Franco-American relations. The casual pickup has been commonplace in St.-Germain and nearby Montparnasse for decades, and most of the local females still strive prettily to live up to the tradition of free-living, free-loving abandon decreed them by their spiritual grandmothers in the post-World War One era.

The girls you're likely to encounter at Flore or Deux Magots might best be characterized as upper-class bohemians—invariably well educated, very possibly well bred and perhaps even well off. Real students and real bohemians can't afford the tariff—they're more likely to be found in the more modest bistros nearby. If you're truly interested in studying the studious, stroll down St.-Germain to the Boulevard St.-Michel, by the Sorbonne. Here the cafés abound with more authentic coeds who share all the spree de corps of their upper-class sisters. But if your inclination runs toward the beat or the offbeat, you may be disappointed to discover that real East Village hippies are relatively scarce in Paris: The charm of bohemia wears well in the City of Light, but the squalor of the beat pad does not. In fact, the few hippie girls in Paris spring largely from well-to-do German, Swiss and American families. The displaced Americans can be seen occasionally at the giant American Express office near the Opéra, barefoot and generally in need of a dry-cleaning, self-consciously picking up a check from Dad.

Another fertile source of stimulating intellectual companionship is the Théâtre National Populaire, common meeting ground for attractive and unattached young play lovers. Here you might find yourself sitting next to a prospective after-theater companion; and while you're getting acquainted—assuming your French is fair or better—you'll enjoy a superb performance. Afterward, whether single or à deux, you might dine at La Coupole on the Boulevard du Montparnasse, another of the haunts of the Hemingway era, now an after-hours gathering place for theater types, possibly because it's one of the largest restaurants in Paris, so ponderously unintimate that it's virtually impossible to sit through an entire meal there without seeing someone you know or would like to. Despite Coupole's size, both food and service are excellent.

If the rigors of transatlantic travel have made inroads on your stamina, there are many alternatives to wining and dining in the grand manner on your first day in town—all of them offering less imposing (but no less rewarding) opportunities to meet suitable female companionship. Le Drugstore on the Boulevard St.-Germain (there's another on the Champs-Elysées) is a traditional American institution gone gaily Gallic. Amid surroundings of sandalwood and mirrors, smart young things browse through a wide variety of magazines and merchandise—or sit nibbling a sandwich and watching the interior traffic. Les Drugstores are unique even for Paris and attract pleasantly diverse species of birds, alone or in braces or coveys. Seating space is always at a premium, so nothing but needless reserve prevents you from taking the empty seat next to whichever unattached jeune fille most appeals to you. The same rule applies at the Pub Renault, in the rear of the Renault salesroom at 53 Champs-Elysées, which caters to a slightly younger but no less appealing clientele, many of whom seem to spend entire afternoons there, sipping cappuccino and surveying the latest in sports cars—and auto buffs.

On any summer day at the Piscine Deligny, a floating swimming pool anchored in the Seine in front of the National Assembly, you'll encounter what must be the highest concentration of bikinied femininity to be found this side of St.-Tropez. As a terrestrial embodiment of a girl watcher's wildest fantasies, this matchbox Jones Beach makes meeting girls literally as easy as stumbling over them. If you're fortunate enough to have a well-placed friend who can ease your way with a gilt-edged introduction, you can encounter more of the same around the pool of the poshly aristocratic Racing-Club de France, nestled far from the madding crowd (but desirably close to the action) in the hush of the Bois-de-Boulogne. But an entree is a must.

Parisian night life is even more protean than the French Constitution: What's in today is out tomorrow, ad infinitum. Right now, the swingingest spot in town, and certainly one of the best places to meet the dazzling and stylish beauties for which the City of Light is so justly famous, is Castel, a cavernous, velvet-lined, art nouveau discothèque behind an anonymous oak door on Rue Princesse. Here, in raucous and rather decadent elegance, the very rich mingle with the very beautiful and the very famous. Besides a gilded Russian Orthodox Madonna, a Mod boutique and a superb restaurant, there's a high-infidelity aura that transcends mere electronics. The music is recorded, of course, mostly Chicago-style blues-rock, lyrics in English. The girls—a gratifying number of them unaccompanied—are generally showbiz and society types, models and aspiring actresses. From miniskirt to mascara, they look as if they could share the screen with Jane Fonda, as indeed many of them have, since some scenes from Fonda's recent opus The Game Is Over were filmed there. Castel is ostensibly a private club, but few who look either respectable or interesting have ever been denied admittance.

The freewheeling informality of the discotheque scene—and the undeniable allure of the disco clientele—makes places such as Castel especially fertile sources of oui-hours companionship. A notch below Castell, but still very close to the top, are the King Club, New Jimmy's and Le Cage. Denizens of these three, while not quite the stylish jet-setters at Castel, still comprise some of the most appealing elements of Paris café society. Le Cage, whose chrome-plated confines resemble the interior of a giant psychedelic Pullman car, is probably the only discothèque in Paris featuring the common American disco phenomenon of a girl in a gilded cage. Presumably this makes Le Cage more American and, therefore, more authentic. As the names of many of its friskiest discothèques attest, Paris entertainment, especially in music, still seems obliged to pay lip service to American origins, despite the fact that most of what's worth while about Paris night life—including the discothèque itself—is wholly indigenous.

Whether in the opulent intimacy of a crowded night spot or on the less teeming but equally elegant byways along the Seine, you'll find the atmosphere of Paris redolent with sexuality. An attractive girl, wherever she goes, expects to be thoughtfully stared at by every passing male. This frank flattery nourishes her feminine spirit much in the same way food sustains her body. If soulful and candid reaffirmations of her sex appeal are not immediately forthcoming, she may suspect that there's something amiss in her appearance—or something wrong with the male who missed it. If she's stared at by someone who catches her fancy, ofttimes she'll reciprocate—not with the tentative glances you're likely to encounter on Fifth Avenue but with a disarmingly direct and very lengthy look of unabashed admiration. Her special penchant for eye contact makes the initiation of frankly sexual relationships—from the enduring liaison to the most ephemeral of encounters—considerably simpler. Whether at a bistro, at a party or even in a casual sidewalk conversation, there's no mistaking the look when it comes—and in Paris it comes with gratifying frequency. Both parties sense immediately what is happening, and hours of peekaboo parrying are dispensed with at a glance—a very convenient and timesaving social custom that girls the world over might well emulate.

Having passed the eye test, you may find yourself beneficiary of yet another Parisian institution that seems deliberately contrived to hasten the progress of heterosexual relationships: If a Paris lass permits you to kiss her, it's almost a certainty that she'll share your bed as well. Of course, this rule has its exceptions, and it certainly doesn't apply to the traditional French buss on the cheeks—which, incidentally, is seen less frequently in Paris today. But if the kiss is real, most likely the desire is, too, and—circumstances permitting—consummation is more than just a possibility. Parisiennes are notorious coquettes, but they maintain a fine distinction between teasing and torture. Very rarely will you encounter an ersatz swinger who goes so far and no farther: The parisienne simply refuses to generate sparks unless she wants to savor the whole conflagration through to the afterglow.

Once you have established an alliance, you can begin to appreciate the subtle delights that comprise la vie parisienne—and la parisienne herself. It won't take you long to discover, for instance, that she is passionately pro-American, to a degree that might seem surprising, indeed, to travelers accustomed to enduring lengthy foreign critiques—both knowledgeable and unknowledgeable—of virtually all aspects of American life. Venality is an undeniable fact of the parisienne's personality, but her devotion to things Stateside transcends the mere ring of the dollar. More likely, hers is a genuine fascination with the lore and lure of progress, American style. Americans fire the French imagination. The typical Parisian image of a foreigner is not British but American—despite the fact that there are many more English in Paris at any given moment. The highest paid male model in Paris today is an American ex-Marine, who somehow fits the French girl's notion of what a cowboy should look like.

The parisienne digs American music, American art, American clothing and American institutions generally. Rock 'n' roll, Levis, buttondown shirts, Op art, Coca-Cola and Playboy all play important roles in her life. Perhaps disturbingly, you'll also find her reveling in many of the tinseled and transistorized manifestations of American culture that you might have come to Paris to forget. But through the eyes of a French girl, even the less commendable facts of American life emerge with a patina of Parisian charm.

While the typical Paris demoiselle hardly espouses the thoughtlessly self-preoccupied hedonism that unthinking outside observers have often imputed to her (Paris still boasts her share of strait-laced girls from hyperprotective families), centuries of permissive, cosmopolitan sophistication have nurtured a coterie of females more sexually tolerant and more worldly than any others on earth. Parisian women excel in their understanding of the manifold idiosyncrasies of men. Even respectable French matrons can be seen or heard—in three-star restaurants, tiny boites or wherever you'd care to look—amiably discussing their affaires de coeur with anyone interested enough to listen. Single girls discuss matters sexual—their past lovers, their current liaisons, even their bedroom proclivities—with a candor that is equally engaging.

Since the Second World War, intellectual feminists—of which there is a large and articulate faction in Paris—have been persuasively vocal in their argument that the young parisienne is entitled to all the sexual freedom of her frisky frère. Not surprisingly, she has been attentive, seizing eagerly any opportunity to assert her female independence.

On the other hand, perhaps because she is rarely forced into real competition with men in a social or economic setting, she never faces the confusion that often confronts her Stateside sister—deciding when to be equal and when to be different. She is always different, always womanly, secure and rejoicing in her femininity. Even among successful businesswomen—and the booming post-War economy has produced quite a few of them in Paris—one rarely encounters the pushy, pantsy executive-bittersweet stereotype that is the successful New York career woman. The Parisian girl, no matter how well placed she may be in business, knows instinctively that any relations between the sexes are just that—sexual. She will rely on femininity, rather than on business acumen, in her dealings with men.

Whether in business or in private life, la parisienne is beset by the flattery of admiring males whenever she ventures close to them, but she is never enshrined or apotheosized. Men cater to her corporeal vanity, which is immense, but make no concessions to her physical weakness, which is largely mythical. Most of the hoary clichés of Gallic politesse—door holding, hat tipping, chair pushing, hand kissing, and the like—that Americans, perhaps victimized by one too many Maurice Chevalier flicks, tend to associate with Paris life, rarely occur there. The French male is every bit as solicitous as his American counterpart, but his interest takes a different form, which American males, unless well versed in manners Continental, imitate only at their peril. Since the Frenchman is infinitely more fashion-conscious (men comprise 25 percent of the readership of Elle, Paris' most popular ladies' fashion magazine), instead of offering to carry mademoiselle's groceries, he might remark that she's wearing the latest perfume—and name the brand approvingly.

The status the parisienne acquires through stylish accessories is just one aspect of the economic revolution that has swept over France in the past 15 years—working a number of worthwhile changes on its female population. Freed once and for all from the twin shackles of the Code Napoléon and a stratified society, nurtured in an era of unprecedented affluence, raised in an ambiance of sexual license and beneficiary of an educational system effectively free to all who qualify, the Parisian jeune fille has only in the past few years begun to explore the full potentials of the good life—with a gusto bespeaking her desire to make up for lost time. Her newly upward-mobile society poses no limits on the heights to which she can soar, and she is determined to test her wings. Employment opportunities seem to open magically to accommodate her. In a recent survey, Parisian girls listed public relations and photography—in that order—as the two careers they'd most like to pursue, and currently these are two of the fastest-growing businesses in Paris. (PR comprises a much broader spectrum of duties than in the U. S.; photography as a vocation was doubtless given a big boost by the popularity of Jacqueline Kennedy, the most admired woman in France, who met her husband while she was a camerawoman.)

Besides the desirable and highly lucrative positions as models in Paris' big-name fashion houses (Courrèges, Dior, Givenchy, Saint Laurent, and the like), parisiennes can also explore a wide variety of moderately well-paying jobs in such glamorous fields as cinema, advertising, radio and television—or as hôtesses, a job for which there is no precise U. S. equivalent, requiring pert, uniformed and multilingual stewardess types to serve as interpreter-guides for conventions, tours, trade exhibitions and what not. If you land at Orly Field, you'll see a counterful of them; virtually all speak English, and they can be very pleasant after-hours company, indeed.

The recent proliferation of ultrachic boutiques and the continuing expansion of the larger (but still very tasteful) department stores have created a burgeoning need for attractive and knowledgeable salesgirls. A stroll around the shop-lined confines of Sèvres-Babylone, in the very heart of the Left Bank, will affirm how well the need has been met. Because most of the boutiques—especially the madder, Moddier ones—cater to the tourist trade, you'll find, if you care to venture in, that most of these girls speak excellent English, too.

Besides the economic revolution, there's the Gallic equivalent of a moral upheaval going on in Paris right now. With some justification, the typical parisienne feels that her grandparents started the sexual revolution some 50 years ago, and site's mildly mystified as to how an issue so old hat could create such fervor in even as fervor-prone a country as the United States. But currently, the French National Assembly is debating the issue of birth control. Still on the books is France's famous 1920 law prohibiting contraceptive devices of any sort. The law reflects not so much France's pervasive Catholicism (the nation is nominally 80–90 percent Roman Catholic) as its shocked reaction to the horrors of World War One, which more than decimated its male population. Statistics and cathedrals notwithstanding, Paris is decidedly a nonreligious city, priding itself, in fact, on a heritage of anticlericalism, heresy and apostasy dating to long before the time of Voltaire. While contraceptive devices, especially in Paris, have for years been available to the educated and the well to do, the current movement would extend their use to the less favored. The pill is now available by doctor's prescription, but even this can be difficult to obtain. If the Parisian feminists, the ladies' magazines and an enthusiastic majority of young Parisian males have their way, the pill will soon be available to any girl who requests it, as part of France's comprehensive national health plan.

Though it's still flourishing, prostitution has also run afoul of the law. For better or for worse, the golden age of the Paris brothel has passed. The city still teems with play-for-pay girls, running the economic spectrum from $5 to $150 a throw, but almost imperceptibly their number is diminishing. The iron hand of free enterprise—rather than the creaking and ponderous edifice of the law—will eventually force Paris' poules out of business. Confronted with a booming economy generating ever-increasing numbers of better-paying (and considerably less strenuous) jobs for women, and facing the burgeoning threat of amateur competition, the pros of Paris are at best fighting to hold their own. The French government may even wind up subsidizing them, much in the same way it maintains many of the useless but delightful landmarks that make Paris the charming city it is; but it's safe to assume that in the next generation, Parisian practitioners of the world's oldest profession will tend to become, more and more, the world's oldest professionals.

We can't bring ourself to recommend it, but those who venerate tradition sufficiently to forgo the pleasures of the chase (if such it can be called in Paris) will find several areas of the city where cash will buy companionship. The largest group of grisettes will be found in the second and ninth arrondissements (geographical designations equivalent to our precincts, but much more widely used), an area running from Boulevard de Sébastopol to the Gare Saint-Lazare, taking in the Madeleine and the Opéra en route. A few of the girls still work the streets, but you'll find most of them in small cafés, unmistakably giving you the glad eye—and sometimes the glad hand—as you enter. Prices here range from as little as $5 (even less if tradition compels you to haggle) on the dingy Rue Budapest behind the Gare Saint-Lazare, to $10 or even $20 around the Madeleine or Opéra. Montmartre, Pigalle and the posh 16th arrondissement also have their share of amour-the-merrier grisettes, and on the Rue Saint-Denis and the Boulevard de Sébastopol one can encounter, from mesh stockings to peroxide, the same Irma la Douce types (and possibly some of the same girls) who made Paris so well remembered by doughboys during the Great War. There's also a flourish of strumpets by Les Halles (where generations of night people have repaired for predawn onion soup), near City Hall, and shanks' maring along the Champs-Elysées (these are the most expensive filles de joie).

In this automotive era, it was predictable that Parisian prostitutes would also take to the wheel. Around the Champs-Elysées, at least a score of girls will be all too willing to take you for a literal joy ride. When good weather finds potential customers seated at the sidewalk tables lining the boulevard, a girl looking every inch the high-fashion model on her lunch hour will slowly cruise past on a well-defined circuit. After the second or third lap, an interested male may go to the curb, to hop into her Aston Martin when next she passes. In the evenings, these same girls—or their freewheeling sisters—cruise up and down the adjacent Avenue George-V, in Peugeots, Citroëns or even XK-Es. You can generally guess their price from the car they're driving. In midwinter, it's an intriguing sight, indeed, to see a brace of ravishing beauties, in breath-taking décolletage, driving serene circles in a Mercedes along the darkened streets of the capital. The members of this motor club—most of them expert drivers, incidentally—are known to the Paris police as "les amazones." They whisk their clients off to a nearby hotel—or to the dark and peaceful byways of the Bois-de-Boulogne, for a memorable ménage à trois.

The law actually encourages such auto-eroticism. The 1960 ruling against street propositioning, in conjunction with a city ordinance making it illegal to use a residence for "immoral" purposes and a crackdown on those living off girls' earnings (which struck a mortal blow to many small hotelkeepers), leaves the pros few alternatives. There's no ruling yet against happy motoring, and les amazones are making the best of it. When they're not wheeling and dealing, they're often wandering in and out of the bar at the Hotel George V (a paragon of wealthy respectability) or at La Calavados, an equally respectable supper club nearby.

Success in their calling is made no easier by the quality and quantity of semiprofessional talent now operating in Paris. In increasing numbers since the War, girls of every sort have been doing occasionally for money what they would otherwise be doing for pleasure alone. Some are pretty salesgirls who can't quite make ends meet or simply must have $20 to buy a new Mod coat. Others, on the fringes of St.-Germain-des-Prés, realistically gratify two appetites at once—by combining sexual dalliance with the price of a dinner or three. All are independent, living in virtually every sector of the city, operating only when the urge strikes them. By the ingenuousness of their dress and their actions, it's easy to tell them from the pros.

St.-Germain-des-Prés is one of the best areas in which to find these free-loving free lancers. In any number of cafés, boites and caves, you'll find girls in their teens and 20s looking for kicks. Sex is just one of their kicks, but it can provide what passes in this area for a livelihood. A few may ultimately wind up as full-fledged hookers around the Opera or the Madeleine, but most, in time, will emerge prosaic housewives, probably the better for having left their wild oats in St.-Germain. They are largely drifters, though a few have daytime jobs of one sort or another. Swept up in the uncertain tide of their own emotion, too self-assured—or too languorous—to swim against it, they wash from one boyfriend to another, from one pad to another, always reserving the right to have other pads, boyfriends—or customers—in the process. In La Vérité, Brigitte Bardot played the archetype of just such a girl. Almost without trying, you can find her in any of the darker, smokier cafés—and take her back to your hotel if you so desire. (Whether in the grandest hotel or the humblest pension, Paris concierges are so accustomed to this sort of union that they tend to bless it with a paternal smile—if they see anything at all.) Your new-found friend may stay the duration or run off the next day, and she may or may not ask for money. If she does, it won't be much, because sex is part of her "self-expression," which she doesn't want to compromise unduly.

In the foot-loose American's guidebook, one of the great attractions of Paris is its great attractiveness: It draws girls from all over Europe—even from all over the world. During the summer months—especially in August, when most of France goes on vacation—the opportunities for meeting foreign girls in Paris, ranging from pleasure-seeking visitors from France's more remote provinces to equally fun-loving types from as far away as Australia or Hawaii—are almost limitless. A summer holiday brings out the best, as well as the beast, in most of the pretty visitors: and you can almost take your pick of Munich models, Danish danseuses, American exchange students and the comeliest of comrades from Moscow—many of whom will be ready and willing to sample the pleasures of Paris with a young male who shares their taste for la vie joyeuse.

For Americans, of course, Paris is no farther away than a passport, the standard vaccination booklet and a $250 charter from the East Coast. (Standard summer fares are $754 first class and $526 coach, round trip from New York, with a considerable coach discount during the off season.) If you're not seeking authentic parisiennes (many of whom will probably spend the month on the Riviera), Paris is really a delightful place to visit in August, despite what the guidebooks say. The streets are relatively empty, parking spaces appear regularly, driving can be attempted without risk of life, nighttime entertainment goes on comme d'habitude and—as long as you're booked at one of the better hotels—closed shops won't pose major difficulties.

Of course, the tourist girls you'll meet are invariably less inhibited than they would be on home ground. They're out on a Continental fling, far from disapproving parental glances, bound and determined to enjoy themselves—and very probably longing for understanding male companionship. The sight-seeing route is generally the best place to make contact; and since foreign girls usually prowl Paris in pairs or even packs, it won't cramp your style to take along a friend. At the Louvre, you'll find any number of wide-eyed young things paying breathless respect to the Winged Victory, the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa, and the same holds true for any of the more prosaic attractions in and around Paris—the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame, the Luxembourg Gardens, Versailles, the flea market and the Bastille. An added plus is that perhaps 90 percent of the summer touristes you'll meet will speak very good English, whatever their nationality.

The number of American girls in permanent residence in Paris was somewhat reduced by France's recent disengagement from NATO and the concomitant relocation of SHAPE headquarters from Paris to Belgium; but the loss has been partly compensated for by the influx of Stateside secretaries working for American firms that have set up Paris offices to take advantage of Common Market trade.

As the American visitor, male or female, immediately senses, there is a bit of Paris—its sparkling beauty, its heady joie de vivre, its protean heterogeneity, its unabashed sexuality—in every girl, and a great deal of it in every French girl. Since there's a parisienne inside every girl, her life style—whether she tarries there a weekend or a lifetime—invariably rises to match the splendor and animation of the city itself. Though presumably he wasn't speaking exclusively of the distaff side, Emperor Charles V said it all in the early 16th Century: "Other cities are towns, but Paris is a world."