Women I Wish I Coulda Been Friends With - Marie Antoinette Edition

I know, I know. She was like, reviled by the entirety of France, wasn't really interested in that whole democracy thing and spent more money on dresses than I'd ever consider spending on a house while her fellow countrymen were starving in the streets from a bread shortage...

but Marie Antoinette is still a woman I wish I could've had the chance to get to know. And the movie, directed by Sofia Coppola was the first time I'd heard anything about her person aside from, "she spent tons of money and ate a lot of cake and lost her head."

It would be easy to consider her the way she's often portrayed in history - as an aristocratic lush who cared more about parties and clothes and men than running a nation. But how well would you run a country at 16?

Ya know what I was doing at 16? Sneaking vodka from my best friend's mom's liquor cabinet to make screw drivers and having baby powder fights in her bedroom (a baby powder fight is exactly what is sounds like).

So you have this girl who's forced to marry someone she doesn't even know, let alone love, at 14, for the sake of cementing some political alliance. Then, she's taken away from everything she's ever known to go live in foreign country where she's never allowed to be alone, ever. Her own mother valued you her only as a political chess piece and had her promised to the Dauphin of France at the age of 10. Ten! Her mother placed relentless pressure on her to pop out kids, not because she was dying for grand-babies, but because it was up to this girl to solidify an alliance between France and Austria. Honestly, I would've been drinking my fair share of champagne and stuffing my face with crepes too if I was under that kind of daily stress.

When the movie - based on the book Marie Antoinette: The Journey - came out a few years ago, I immediately fell in love with it. Not only was it one of the most cinematically beautiful movies I'd ever seen - the set treatments, amazing costumes, beautiful makeup, all to die for, seriously; it also gives people the chance to feel a sort of empathy for this woman, this girl who in reality was modest, private, and kind to the people serving in her household; and absolutely terrified of letting down any of the people placing impossible expectations on her shoulders.

Maybe I just feel sorry for her. I don't know. But I would have loved the chance to sit down and talk to her over a macaroon. Ask her what that kind of pressure and scrutiny felt like; what she would have rather been; who she would've rather loved, had she been given the chance to just be a girl and figure out her own way.

A peek at her closet woulda been nice, too.

 

And by the way, she never said "Let them eat cake."

xo.