In his book Dans les forêts de Sibérie, Sylvain Tesson writes (excuse the translation), «The mass adoption of bad taste was the principal phenomenon of globalisation.» He gives leisure wear as an example. But it seems to me that a sort of resistance has sprung up. On blogs and social media, many people depict their lives as so beautiful, so harmonious, that they can make your own seem shabby. My wife joked on vacation: «Let me Instagram this so people will want our life.» On his blog The Selby, Todd Selby photographs the incredibly perfect homes of impossibly cool people. Mimi Thorisson of the food blog Manger has just released a book called A Kitchen In France. That is, a kitchen in a paradisiacal French countryside where you live in an adorable farmhouse with your lovely kids, talented husband and lots of happy dogs. It's hard to imagine Mimi in Franprix on a Friday night because she's run out of pasta. But I'm sure Mimi knows, like the rest of us, that life can be hard, ugly and cruel. She simply refuses to depict it that way. A friend of ours, a jewellery designer, told us that she goes out of her way to avoid places and objects that she finds ugly. It may be a form of snobbery, but I find this search for the beautiful in the quotidian somehow heroic. We need these people to remind us that life can be lovely. Especially when we're on public transport.
