I’m currently developing a story on what makes some people charismatic, magnetic and more apt to lead a charmed life than others. It’s a women’s magazine cliche if ever there was one, but I’m hoping the subjects I’m choosing to include will make my article a little different - and more useful.

As women, one of the most pervasive myths we’re sold is that if only we were beautiful enough, fashionable enough, thin enough, our lives would magically become better. People would be drawn to us, our preferred gender would fall at our feet, birds would surround us as we got dressed in the morning a la Sandy in Grease, and KT Tunstall would play in the background as we walked to work.

It’s part of the reason we pursue these things, I’d argue - because doing it promises access to a fantasy world, even if that fantasy exists purely in our own heads. Dressing up allows us to be “someone else” for a day.

Last week, I read an article claiming that one of the reasons French women had that certain je n’est ce qois was because they were relentlessly thin. I’m not relentlessly thin, I thought to myself. Perhaps I should cut the chocolate and camembert and then I’ll be long and leggy like Carine Roitfeld.

Well, perhaps. Or not. But being long and leggy isn’t the key to happiness or to charm. Nor is perfect skin, the iron will - and feet - to walk in high heels, or the money to dump on a wardrobe that more closely resembles that of Kate Moss. Conventionally beautiful women aren’t any happier than anyone else.

That said, it appears that there is a class of people out there whose lives really are more magical than other people’s. Who are inundated with invitations and adventure and glamour. Who seem to have a happy soundtrack playing silently behind them when they walk down the street. I’m not talking about being well-liked, or doing interesting work, or having a good group of friends - I’m talking about the freakishly fortunate.

It’s the hope for that kind of magical, serendipitous (or on other occasions, perfectly ordered and controlled) lifestyle that magazines are selling us when they run features on glamour, elegance, and what makes French women so alluring. Where they get it wrong, though, is in suggesting it’s something you can manufacture through the way you look. 

This is a question of personality.

I’m well aware of the political limitations of an article like this one. Of the role that wealth and other forms of privilege play in one’s ability to access “the good life” - whatever that means to you - particularly on a global scale. But I also think we all have the ability to make our lives a little bit more interesting, by changing the way we interact with the world.

Related: Sorry, that dress/jacket/pair of skinny jeans won’t turn you into Chloe Sevigny/Mary-Kate Olsen/Rachel Bilson/whoever the glossies are pushing this week.
Can you make a living just by being ‘you’?
The secret lives of beautiful women

Image credit: Pieces of Tibet, lecercle.