Has France Lost Its Romance?

by | Oct 27, 2026 | Zeitgeist | 0 comments

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France Lost the Romance Americans Used to Buy

According to Glynnis MacNicol in the New York Times, the French fantasy that Paris offered an escape from the world’s problems is coming to an end. She wrote from the city after the October 17 weekend, when student protests over school conditions and the cost of living turned into nationwide marches of 550,000 people by Interior Ministry count, with looting, arson, and roughly 1,800 arrests. Shattered windows and burned bikes near Place de la République replaced the terrace view.

What Happened

The drop in American regard is not new. In March 2003, House Administration Chairman Bob Ney and Rep. Walter Jones ordered the three House cafeterias to rename French fries “freedom fries” and French toast “freedom toast” after France opposed the Iraq War. Gallup measured French favorability at 34 percent that month, down from the high 70s. The name change was quieted by 2006, and favorability recovered to 78 percent by 2014. Pew Research Center surveys in 2024 still found majorities of Americans viewing France favorably, with a partisan gap: three-quarters of Democrats versus 53 percent of Republicans.

The recent protests shifted the conversation. President Trump and Vice President Vance framed the violence as the result of mass migration and failed assimilation rather than school funding or fuel prices. High-engagement posts on X circulated footage under captions such as “Paris is burning” and “France is no longer France.” Meme accounts paired the same clips with anime edits and warnings that the scenes would reach American streets. MacNicol’s essay and a Bret Stephens column in the same paper described the country coming unglued under high social costs, youth unemployment near 20 percent, and political paralysis ahead of next year’s presidential election.

The older image of French panache—wine, fashion, long lunches, the city of lights as a sophisticated retreat—still appears in tourism numbers. One 2025 report noted a 17 percent rise in American visitors to France even as French travel to the United States fell. The cultural prestige that once made Paris an automatic prestige setting in American novels and films no longer commands the same automatic respect in the feeds where many readers spend their time.

Why Authors Care

Readers who once treated a Paris setting as an automatic signal of romance or high culture now encounter the same streets in riot videos before they open the book.

The cautionary-tale framing travels easily into military SF, thrillers, and near-future fiction; authors who want the older romantic register face a higher credibility burden.

Tourism data still shows Americans visiting, but the aspirational soft power that once sold French-adjacent books and lifestyle titles has thinned on the platforms where discovery happens.

Check the comments and search trends under any Paris or French-culture title this month before locking a setting or a marketing line that assumes the old prestige.

Sources:

Commentary

Jonathan: People have already said France has lost the romance for them. Americans used to love the idea of finding romance in Paris, finding your true love in front of the Eiffel Tower. Honestly, I can't remember the last time I saw that in media.

Thomas: It started decades ago, when France didn't help us in Iraq and there was a big turn. Remember the freedom fries thing, when Congress renamed french fries?

The whole country moved away from calling them french fries. Go to McDonald's, and they're not french fries. They didn't switch all the way to freedom fries. They just call them fries now. We dropped the word French, and that was in the early 2000s. Things have only soured since then.

Jonathan: You can't go to Paris anymore to get away from the world's problems. They didn't protect Paris as that fantasy getaway where it's just about romance and nice food and coffee.

All the videos and pictures that came out of the protests line up with what we all assumed was happening to Paris anyway. There's that famous video of a woman telling looters going into her store, "I'm on your side. I voted to give you rights and to give you a place." They didn't care. They went into her store and looted it.

That's been making the rounds on social media, and it exposes something. In America, we don't feel associated with the French anymore. I see France getting looted, and I think, "Well, the French brought it on themselves."

If I see the UK getting looted, and I think, "Hey, I know those guys. You're not doing that to my boys."

Thomas: My book club recently read Revolutions by Eric Metaxas, and it reminded me how long Americans had good feelings toward France. We were very grateful.

Jonathan: They were the first ones to help us.

Thomas: They never really did any fighting on actual American soil. They mostly did a lot of sailing around and posturing. But they were helpful. They had some naval engagements that influenced the war, and they distracted the British Navy. More than that, there was the moral support of having them aid us in the Revolution.

And you have figures like Lafayette, who wasn't acting as an agent of the French government but was a French noble who came over and served as an aide-de-camp to George Washington.

For a very long time, we had a very high opinion of France, and vice versa. They gave us the Statue of Liberty. But there's no such thing as an eternal alliance, except maybe the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France.

The attitude is really souring. The leaders of France and the United States have not been getting along. What we want and what France wants are very different, and we're at odds far more than we're aiding each other.

Part of this is that France is only sort of in NATO. It's the one member that doesn't submit to NATO leadership to the same degree as the others, and it's still trying to operate its own empire. France is still very involved in North Africa.

To their credit, they're one of the few European countries that still sort of has a navy. They have an operating aircraft carrier, and they have the Foreign Legion, which still does adventuring abroad, even though that's not at all part of their narrative of being a woke, progressive country. Germany doesn't do any adventuring abroad, but France absolutely does, in the colonies it still has.

The other thing is that certain neighborhoods in Paris have, I believe, made it illegal to buy wine, because they've been so conquered by Muslim influence. They're trying to push out the native Parisians.

Jonathan: What is France without wine?

Thomas: I was trying to fact-check this live while we were talking. Obviously it's not Paris-wide. But certain areas have become very Muslim and very African, because of a huge influx from France's colonies. The UK has a similar problem, with people from former British colonies immigrating and changing the nature of the country, and it's causing a lot of strife.

Americans outside the urban centers are watching from abroad. In the urban centers they think it's all great and repeat "diversity is our strength" like a religious mantra. But not everyone in America repeats that mantra, and they see the rioting. They see the destruction of historical sites. They see the Palestinian flag flown over the statue of Joan of Arc.

It's very interesting talking with Americans. Seeing what's happening in the UK, they say, "Let's go rescue them. We're ready to invade if called upon." With France, it's not that way. It's, "We bailed you out twice. You're on your own." I haven't seen any desire among Americans to lift a finger to help France.

There's been a big question of which country in Europe will be the first to fall to Islam. Once Islam gets a majority, or even a plurality, it will take over the government and crush all dissent, and a Christian country becomes a Muslim country. We saw this in Lebanon and in Syria. Both were Christian countries. The Muslim population grew, gained political power, and completely crushed the Christian population.

They're going to do the same, and some European country will be the first. It's going to happen, it's going to be brutal, and it may wake up the other European countries, who will say, "You can't live with these people. They don't play nice."

They've never played nice. There's been no point in history where a Muslim minority population was anything but violent in the country it was in, and no time in history when a Muslim majority population wasn't oppressive. You can study the history of Islam. It's really bad.

People don't study the history of Islam. They don't understand what Islam is as a religion and what it causes politically, because it's not just a religion. It's a political ideology. And they're terrified to say anything about it, because if you say anything bad about the pedophile prophet, you go to jail in England.

But I can say he's a pedophile prophet, and I can say Allah is a false god, because I live in America. And I will say it because it's true. Allah is a false god, and Muhammad is a pedophile prophet, and I stand on what I said.

Jonathan: Bringing this around to how it helps authors, particularly romance authors, since that's the easiest example: romance has been associated with Paris for at least 100 years. When your reader reads a book, they bring context to it. They bring preprogrammed responses. It used to be that when Americans saw Paris, they associated it with romance and expected some romance in the story.

Take the movie Anastasia. My girls just watched it. We waited a while, because Rasputin is kind of creepy. The romance between the guy and the girl takes place in Paris. It's a Russian story, but it's set in Paris, and there's a whole song about how romantic Paris is. That was back when Americans agreed.

We haven't seen Paris as the romantic location in a long time. If I said, "Hon, we're going on a romantic vacation to Paris," I'd have to load my guns into my checked bags.

Thomas: The Olympic opening ceremony really radicalized me. I was so disgusted by it, and my opinion of France fell so much watching it. Of the last 10 years, it was one of the most pivotal events in my political evolution. Charlie Kirk dying is number one. Trump's near assassination is probably number two. Number three is the Olympic opening ceremony.

It was so disgusting. The mockery of Christianity, the mockery of Western civilization, the twisting of it, the demonic elements. It was like sewage. Wow, they hate themselves. They hate their history. They hate their God. No people that hates itself, its history, and its God can persist, because to persist as a people, you need those things.

And they don't just hate their true God. They also hate their false gods. They've rejected not only the one true God but also their old pagan gods. They've thrown it all out. They don't even know who they are anymore.

They just hate themselves, feel guilty for who they are, and want to be conquered. There's this weird desire to be conquered that I, as an American, don't understand. We're Americans. We do the conquering. We don't get conquered.

I have complicated views about France, because my family came from France, and they were oppressed there. There was a lot of violence against Protestants, and my ancestors were Huguenots who got hunted. There were wars and betrayals and drama. You can study the Huguenot wars if you want to. My ancestors were Huguenots, and now they're Americans.

But it still grieves me. I've been perplexed about why I still care about France, because I've mourned watching Palestinian flags over burning buildings in Paris. Why do I care? But I do.

I think part of it is that France, for all its follies, is part of Western civilization, and it's been a jewel of Western civilization. I think it's indisputable that the very best art of Western civilization is in Paris, in the Louvre. The Hermitage in St. Petersburg and the Louvre are the two main repositories of the best of Western art. Other museums have great paintings, but those are the two big ones.

I was in Europe when Notre Dame burned. I don't know how much coverage it got here in the States, but it was wall-to-wall news in Europe, and people mourned it.

It seems like a church is burning somewhere in Europe every day. There's a systematic campaign against these old churches, and people don't seem to realize they're losing their history. It's getting burned down.

Jonathan: As an author, be aware that the symbol France once was may not speak to your demographic anymore, because people don't recognize it as a symbol of romance anymore. And that's on both sides.

We're not just talking about Trumpers saying, "I won't ever go to France. I'm not spending any money there." That's not what we're saying at all. The overwhelming perception right now is that Paris is not a romantic location anymore, and that matters when you decide where to set your romance or your cozy.

Thomas: Would you set your cozy romance in Baghdad?

Jonathan: I could see it.

Thomas: You could. But the way you'd write it, you wouldn't rely on the Baghdad setting to add the romance. You'd rely on the setting to add the drama, and add the romance between the characters.

Jonathan: We'd call it This One's in the Bag.

Thomas: We will tour other countries. We have things to say about Canada, Japan, and Korea.

Jonathan: Somebody asked a really interesting question: Is there a replacement for France as a romantic setting?

The dating world has been nuked by societal trends over the last 20 years. It used to be drive-in movies in America, or lovers' point. Where are the romance places now? The bookstore. That's actually a very romantic location. People view it romantically.

Thomas: We talked about this just last week, with Barnes & Noble traffic being up. People in the chat said their kids hang out at the bookstore, and they hang out with romantic aspirations. "Maybe I'll meet my true love at Barnes & Noble."

Somebody said Italy. Italy is interesting. It's now run by a government that's more right, but not super right. It's more centrist.

Jonathan: Who cares? That doesn't affect whether people think of it as romantic.

Thomas: It does matter in terms of how bad the riots get. They tried to do the same riots in Italy, and Italy shut them down. So you don't see video of Italy burning, with fires and the Colosseum in the background. Greece and Italy, maybe. The Mediterranean parts of Greece have a lot of beautiful vistas.

Jonathan: Europe has tons of beautiful vistas. That doesn't mean they're described as romantic. Russia has tons of awesome vistas, once you get past the cardboard buildings.

Thomas: Scotland, maybe? There's a lot of romance regarding Scotland.

Jonathan: I see a lot of potential in Ireland. Scotland is a little dreary much of the time, but Ireland is so green. It's shocking to American sensibilities. Of course, I live in Tucson, so everything's brown.

Thomas: I came up with a saying when I spent some time in Scotland: "The cost of green is gray, and the cost of blue is brown." You pick one or the other. If you want green land, you get gray skies, because you need the rain to make the green. If you want blue skies, you get brown soil. Maybe no place has perfect weather. There are always pros and cons.

Jonathan: Casablanca was set in Morocco, and for about 50 years that was the romance. For a while, Seattle got there too, because of the Tom Hanks movie Sleepless in Seattle.

Thomas: I think there's an opportunity to write the next Casablanca. Pick a part of the world people don't know anything about and make it a romantic setting. Tabula rasa.

The more people know about a setting, the less romantic it gets. Part of why Casablanca was romantic at the time was that no one knew anything about it. There was no Wikipedia page to look up. If your edition of National Geographic didn't happen to have an article on it, maybe you could look it up in the encyclopedia, but there wasn't much information. And there are a lot of parts of the world people don't talk about much: El Salvador, Ecuador, Belize. Hawaii.

Jonathan: If you've ever been to Hawaii, you don't think of it as a romantic place.

Thomas: I've been there. I love Hawaii. There's a big difference between the Big Island and the little islands.

Jonathan: But Japan is considered a romantic location. There's a whole subset of the male demographic in America saying, "I want a waifu."

Thomas: PewDiePie moved to Japan. The biggest YouTuber, with the highest status, could move anywhere in the world, and he moved to Japan.

Jonathan: Japanese women, at least, present as positive, smiley, and extravagantly feminine, and guys see that as the best option for a relationship. In the military, it's a trope: if you go overseas, you'll come back with a Korean or Japanese spouse, or, as Brian says, a Filipino one.

So I can see romance doing well in a Japanese setting. Cami Tang is at the forefront of that right now, because she's been writing those kinds of romances for a few years.

Thomas: Here's a more fundamental question, and since we're out of time, we want you to answer it in the comments: What makes a setting romantic?

We know what makes a setting not romantic: riots, fires, and chaos. That's what's hurting France. But why did France have a romantic image before that? As you find the answer, you can find the new location.

If you find a location no one is writing about, and you can find the romance in it, you may be the next hot romance author. There's a huge opportunity to discover the new Paris. Paris has fallen, but there will be a new Paris.

Jonathan: People want a new Paris. They want Paris to be Paris.

Thomas: Rome is romantic.

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