{"id":87329,"date":"2015-07-10T13:30:18","date_gmt":"2015-07-10T17:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=87329"},"modified":"2015-07-10T14:26:30","modified_gmt":"2015-07-10T18:26:30","slug":"tender-trap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/10\/tender-trap\/","title":{"rendered":"Tender Trap"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"From<\/a>

From the cover of Das doppelte Lottchen<\/i>, by Erich K\u00e4stner, illustrated by Walter Trier.<\/p><\/div>\n

In The Parent Trap<\/em>\u2014and the German book, Das doppelte Lottchen<\/em>, on which it\u2019s based\u2014two strangers arrive at a girls\u2019 summer camp only to discover they are identical. \u201cThe nerve of her! Coming here with your face!\u201d exclaims one roommate in the 1961 film. Of course, in The Parent Trap<\/em>, they\u2019re actually twin sisters. But as anyone who\u2019s been compared to someone else knows, just the accident of resemblance is enough to cause an instinctive enmity.<\/p>\n

I used to work at a store where this one customer would always remark on how much I looked like some friend of hers. She talked about it every time she came in. The friend was named Jen something. She was a potter. She lived in the Hudson Valley. The customer even brought in another woman to attest to this miraculous phenomenon.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou may think you\u2019re a unique person walking around in the world,\u201d said the customer one day. (I guess I had thought that.) \u201cBut you\u2019re not\u2014you\u2019re a copy of Jen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Obviously I had no alternative but to hate this Jen person. I imagine she felt the same way.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On two other occasions I\u2019ve been told I looked strikingly like someone else, and once we were even introduced expressly so that the mutual friend could marvel at the supposed resemblance. It was like some live-action game of Memory. Both women were short, had curly hair and glasses; we didn\u2019t particularly think we looked alike, and we were all, I think, obscurely resentful of the comparison.<\/p>\n

There is no percentage in pointing out these supposed resemblances. Even if it\u2019s true\u2014so what? The odds of the two people being sisters separated at birth are very slim. And far from being covered in glory, the recognizer will generally be the focus of indignation.<\/p>\n

Then there are the celebrity comparisons. Most of us don\u2019t really look much like any particular celebrity. If people do, I imagine they\u2019re tired of hearing it. Of course, it can be flattering\u2014being told I resembled Bess Myerson was the undeniable high point of my life, even if I knew it was bunk. But by the same token, I once heard a man tell a woman she looked like James Woods\u2014he couldn\u2019t get over it!\u2014and she left the party in tears, so.<\/p>\n

I used to like to eat lunch at the bar of a restaurant near my office. Then this new French bartender came on and told me I looked like Marion Cotillard. Okay,\u00a0no one minds hearing that, even if it was a ludicrous claim. \u201cMarion!\u201d he would exclaim every time I came in. This only became a problem when he started putting it to other customers\u2014\u201cDoesn\u2019t she look exactly<\/em> like Marion Cotillard?\u201d\u2014and they would have to politely pretend that this much less attractive woman resembled this movie star, and it was extremely awkward. I wished he\u2019d drop it. Instead, our office moved.<\/p>\n

What is it that\u2019s offensive, exactly? That a small part of us feels like our uniqueness is being stripped away? Or just that it\u2019s so relentlessly superficial, so inane? That this qualifies as an attempt at connection\u2014it\u2019s frustrating and slightly tragic.<\/p>\n

Or, sometimes it\u2019s just unsettling.<\/p>\n

\u201cI met your fianc\u00e9!\u201d\u00a0said an acquaintance, whom I ran into on the street last week. \u201cYou looked so much alike, I thought he must be your brother!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s just the glasses,\u201d I said, smiling fixedly.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, it wasn\u2019t!\u201d he persisted. \u201cYou\u2019re identical!\u201d<\/p>\n

Really, unless you\u2019re stuck at the same girls\u2019\u00a0camp and it\u2019s a movie and Lindsay Lohan is full of promise and joy, there\u2019s no point in bringing it up. Even then, it\u2019s probably not worth it.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, just look-alikes,\u201d I said, quoting The Parent Trap<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Sadie Stein is contributing editor of\u00a0<\/em>The Paris Review, and the\u00a0<\/em>Daily\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In The Parent Trap\u2014and the German book, Das doppelte Lottchen, on which it\u2019s based\u2014two strangers arrive at a girls\u2019 summer camp only to discover they are identical. \u201cThe nerve of her! Coming here with your face!\u201d exclaims one roommate in the 1961 film. Of course, in The Parent Trap, they\u2019re actually twin sisters. But as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[18740,18735,18736,924,18743,18741,163,18739,8225,18734],"class_list":["post-87329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-bess-myers","tag-das-doppelte-lottchen","tag-identical-twins","tag-james-wood","tag-look-alikes","tag-marion-cotillard","tag-memory","tag-separated-at-birth","tag-sisters","tag-the-parent-trap"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nIt\u2019s Hard to Like Your Look-alike<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sadie Stein on why we feel hostility toward our look-alikes\u2014and why people should stop pointing them out.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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