she looked so bright in pixie hair, she made me know how much i cared

When photos of Emma Watson's new pixie cut were first released to the unexpecting public a few months ago, I had one thought: ugh. My inner monologue went a-buzz when I saw her close crop - it's not that I didn't love her haircut, I was just jealous. For years, I've wanted to cut my hair into a chic short crop. I think it was a late night viewing of Bonjour Tristesse that did me in. Seeing Jean Seberg running around the French Riviera without any hair hanging down her neck ignited something in me that I haven't been able to shake. She looked so carefree, so sexy, so gaminely gorgeous - I wanted to be her (well, minus the part about destroying the lives of everyone around her ... in the film, I mean). 

Since then, I feel like everyone around me has these incredibly cool crops: so many actresses and singers - talented and untalented alike - have made the plunge with a pixie; my hairdresser is in the process of growing out her super spunky, edgy cropped 'do; the mother of one of my friends has the perfect pixie I really want to get. And then there are those amazingly cool girls I see around campus (but are too intimidatingly hip to ever approach them) who have immaculately cared-for crops. 

I know that I shouldn't ever cut my hair this drastically short. I've discussed this with my brothers, my mother, my friends, and hairdressers, and the general consensus is that I would look dreadful with this haircut. It's been explained that I don't have the 'elfish' features required for the look, which I accept and agree with. I don't have those devastatingly petite features that appear delicate and pretty. I've accepted the fact that if I were to crop my hair, I would look like an uglier version of my younger brother. Plus there's that danger of screwing up and coming out with a very mumsy look. It's easy to go wrong with this look if you opt for thick sideswept bangs in the front (a la Ashlee Simpson, Hayden Pannetierre, Kate Gosselin ... sorry guys). So while Kate (of the Eight) and I can't do the pixie, here is my ode to the women who have done it right:

Several of Audrey's most popular characters underwent major transformations in the form of cutting her hair short, like in Roman Holiday and Sabrina

French film actress Audrey Tautou has garnered comparisons to the Audrey mentioned above due to her coquettish gamine personality and her chic hairstyle

To portray Edie Sedgwick, Sienna Miller chopped off her long hippie locks in favor of a look more resembling the former Warhol superstar

Carey Mulligan reached the top of every best dressed list with her daring fashion choices and the ever-changing hue of her pixie

Pairing minimalist clothes with maximalist accessories, Edie Sedgwick sealed her fate as the style maven of the underground scene when she cropped and dyed her once-brunette long locks

Emma Watson has matched her new look with edgier fashion choices and more dramatic makeup

Ginnifer Goodwin shows off several different ways to style a pixie: sleek bangs swept across the forehead, styled back to give the appearance of shorter fringe, or mussed up for more texture

Laugh-In starlet Goldie Hawn looks like she's having a blast in her flower-power dress and short hairstyle

Halle Berry has the amazing ability to appear to never age - she constantly looks fresh and sexy, especially with her close crop

Jane Birkin, owner of the most lusted-for fringe of the sixties, went with a shorter look in the seventies

The style icon who started it all (for me, at least) Jean Seberg, the princess of French New Wave in Otto Preminger's Bonjour Tristesse and Jean-Luc Godard's À bout de souffle

Jean Shrimpton tries the style on as she channels Mia Farrow for a Vogue editorial 

Kate Moss transformed from poster gal of heroin chic to pixie princess in 2001 with a cut by her BFF James Brown (not that James Brown)

To play bounty hunter Domino Harvey, Keira Knightley got an edgy crop that was longer in the front than the back; though technically playing a bounty hunter, Keira looked like a rock star

Kirsten Dunst reportedly cropped her hair to prove to studio execs that she would be the right fit for an in-development Jean Seberg biopic (I'm still hoping that this project comes to being one of these days)

Marianne Faithfull revealed her short style in 1968, in projects such as Rock and Roll Circus, and again in the early 1970s

In the film Rosemary's Baby, Mia Farrow has this exchange with her displeased husband, played by John Cassavetes: 

JC: What the hell is that?

MF: I've been to Vidal Sassoon!

JC: You mean you actually paid for that?!

Besides the whole allowing his wife to be raped by Satan in exchange for a successful acting career, this was a primo example of Rosemary's husband's douchebaggery

A Mia of a different name - Wasikowska, that is - also rocks the pixie

Michelle Williams garnered comparisons to Mia Farrow when she cut her hair in 2007; three years later she has a pixie again but has longer fringe and a brighter shade of blonde

Model Mona Johannesson, photographed by Camilla Åkrans, channels Rosemary Woodhouse

In the process of growing out her post-V for Vendetta shorn look, Natalie Portman looked absolutely stunning with her groomed short style

Supermodel Agyness Deyn is known as much for her peroxide pixie as her androgynous style

Though she started a style craze when she debuted her chin-length bob in 2008, I prefer the heavily highlighted crop she sported at the Met Gala the next year

Selma Blair opted for shaggy, unevenly chopped bangs to add a little more edge to her cropped 'do

Victoria Beckham takes off that "extra half an inch" when she went from her Rihanna-reminiscent bob to this short pixie crop in early 2009

Winona Ryder's short hairstyle looked its grooviest in the 1960s-set film Girl, Interrupted matched with black-and-white boatneck tees and fitted turtleneck sweaters

Title: from "Keep On Believing" (Iggy Pop) 

when you see the view from the eiffel tower, the paris skyline at dark, then you'll understand that we've travelled too many miles to stay apart

Nothing says Paris like La Tour Eiffel (The Eiffel Tower, to you who can't speak French as sophisticatedly as I ... I only joke, poorly). In movies or television shows where the character runs off to Paris find his or herself (it's usually a gorgeously petite gamine), the Eiffel Tower is always within eyesight. The tower is always the first thing that the heroine sees - she looks up from behind the window of her taxicab, and with just one look from her big doe eyes, her faith in love is restored. So when I first went to Paris at thirteen, I was disappointed when I look out our hotel window and saw a lovely, but Tower-less, view. Finally, after a few days in Paris, my family and I went for lunch at the tower's restaurant. I couldn't find anything on the menu that was meat-free so the chef made a special vegetarian meal for me. Goodness, I've never had vegetables roasted and whipped that were so delicious. I don't know if it was the meal itself, or if it was the wonderful feeling of being in Paris, speaking my broken middle school-French to my fluent parents and waiters, or the fact that the chef had deigned little old me worthy enough for a special meal - but it was probably one of the best meals I had ever had. 

Over the years there have been many thinkers, writers, architects, and the like who have expressed their dislike of the French monument. William Morris once said that he ate a meal in the Eiffel Tower's restaurant everyday because it was the only place in Paris to eat without seeing "that hideous tower." 

While I appreciate the humor of the anecdote, I disagree with it. I belong to the hopeless Romantic group of believers who find something magical there, regardless of how corny and obvious it is. (But we are also the ones who are in our twenties and would still drop every thing at a moment's notice to go to Disneyland). The girlish excitement I feel when I see the Eiffel Tower hasn't waned since I was thirteen. 

Even the TomKat proposal didn't spoil the place for me - actually that may have been the first and only time I ever approved of anything that couple ever did (except for having Suri - apparently Suri is exactly like I was at four-years-old, according to my mother, so I obviously adore the child). 

What has now become a cliche tourist pose was once so charming in the early 20th century

I've already expressed my love of An Education on this site, but I thought the scene where Jenny and David went to Paris was the ultimate

Audrey Hepburn with Fred Astaire, her costar in Funny Face

Many of Audrey's film alter egos live in or travel to Paris. Here she is with her costar from Paris When I Sizzles, William Holden. The previous movie they were in together, Sabrina, Audrey goes to Paris and comes back a new woman

Here are Audrey and William again 

Brigitte Bardot, posing on an overcast and cloudy day with the tower distantly seen in the background 

The gorgeous Dita Von Teese, already familiar with the lushly decadent and gorgeous, poses in perhaps the most lovely photo I've seen in quite a while 

The Eiffel Tower in the rain

Yes, even Gossip Girl has visited the Eiffel Tower. What would a summer in Paris be without Blair Waldorf contemplating life and love with an array of pastries and a clear view of the tower?

Imagine waking up to that view every morning ...

"Eiffel saw his Tower in the form of a serious object, rational, useful; men return it to him in the form of a great baroque dream which quite naturally touches on the borders of the irrational." - Roland Barthes, The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies

Francoise Hardy poses on an uncharacteristically vacant morning in the park in front of the tower

Another gorgeous photo of Francoise around Paris

"... The Tower must escape reason. The first condition of this victorious flight is that the Tower be an utterly useless monument." - Roland Barthes

Catherine Deneuve poses for a photo in 1976 for photographer Helmut Newton

A very neat photograph of lightning striking the Eiffel Tower in 1908

A shot from Sylvain Chomet's scene of Paris, Je T'aime in front of the tower

One of my favorite actresses, Romy Schneider 

Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon costar in The Great Race (1965)

The Beatles in Paris during their three-week engagement at the Olympia Theatre

"Paris has the Arc, Paris has the dome, Paris has a sense of style you'll never find in Rome. Paris has the springtime sun for every flower, but Paris would not be the same without the Eiffel Tower" - Madeleine, Madeleine at the Eiffel Tower

"I haven't seen the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Louvre. I haven't seen anything. I don't really care." - Tyra Banks

Don't be like Tyra!