The kids’ clubs themselves, enclosed by painted gates, are extraordinary little worlds scaled to children, with circus-style tents shading the play areas, a tiny pool, and tiny trains and cars for the toddlers. They can learn archery, snorkeling, kayaking, hip-hop dance, basketball, and Rollerblading. And, just as expected from all those fairy tales, they can eat just about anything anytime they want. A Middle Eastern Night, featuring staff dressed as harem girls and sheikhs, spills into Dominican Night, Mexican Night, and Seafood Night, in which female G.O.’s dressed as mermaids loll on a sandy “beach.”
Club Med has certainly adapted to changing demographics: It is now a child’s dream and a Frenchwoman’s fantasy, all rolled into one and served tantalizingly to its mixed clientele.
It is a French sensibility that called for the tautly manicured lawns and banished video games; and for the jarring moments of unselfconscious colonialism in the pomp and display of attractive Dominicans dressed in native costume and cheering us as we enter to eat. Then the French sit next to you at meals, making pleasant chitchat, and exhibiting the smugness of their paradoxe français right in front of your reluctantly tofu-eating self: having their tartine and coffee, their olive oil and wine and “ p’tit cig” after dinner, with not a hint of an effect on their impeccable health and exemplary figures.
When it came to sex, I was stunned by what the management provided for the delectation of French and American women alike: the extraordinarily flirtatious male G.O.’s, young international men who were apparently hired to walk around shirtless in baggy shorts slung perilously low over washboard abs and to gyrate suggestively to a medley of hip-hop tunes and Latin salsa every afternoon by the pool. My jaw dropped: It was as steamy as a Vegas floor show. “What was this about?” I wondered, fascinated.
As the days unfolded and I kept watching, I learned exactly what it was about. It seemed to me that male G.O.’s far outnumbered their female counterparts and are trained to flirt intensively with the middle-aged women. G.O. flirting is a kind of gentle, innocently suggestive, relentless approach: “Oh, there’s the sexy mom look!” said the 24-year-old photographer, vamping in a kind of Austin Powers photo-shoot persona to this 40-year-old exhausted sunburned mom. I have not been called “Babe” so much since I was 21.
I got it—and it’s a brilliant marketing idea. If you are going to entice tourist dollars and euros to a family resort, who is doing the booking? Mom. Who needs some spice and attention? Mom. And who would be annoyed if Dad was being besieged by provocative young women? Mom. This way, the women who hold the reservation strings get to feel refreshed and pretty (“I adored Club Med!”) and Dad can play on at the tennis court, oblivious. Everyone has a great time.
A week passed oddly blissfully; the kids had their fantasy, I had mine. When the day came to leave, I was sorry—and also a bit relieved. The kids were tanned and had made friends and learned to snorkel. I had become acclimated to drinking a Margarita and watching the sun set over the turquoise ocean. I certainly got used to François and Carlos and Abdul, the bronzed G.O.’s, and their raffish smiles. But I missed time; I missed the edge that the real world has; I began to feel infantilized by people tasked with being nice to me. I missed New York, where no one is nice unless they really mean it. “Enough with the buffets already!” I thought. Real life is spiced with a little hunger, and it’s a place where when someone flirts with you, you know they’re not doing it because it is part of their job description. In real life a woman can run for a bus in sneakers without thinking she has let down the entire feminine tribe.
So we left, without regret. That’s the thing about paradise, the “antidote to civilization”; after a while you long for civilization itself—with all its discontents.
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