LETTER FROM PARIS: DRUGSTORE COWGIRL

MARISA MELTZER on 20 years of stockpiling products that feel, smell, and work better than their American counterparts and doling them out to the underserved masses (her friends and colleagues)

MARISA MELTZER

VANITIES

We can't all be French. The closest I have come was being born on July 14, Bastille Day, but all the way in Berkeley, California, to former hippieswho believed in brown rice and went on backpacking trips. I grew up to lack the willowy build and pedigree of the likes of Charlotte Gainsbourg. So for all the times I read the classics (by which I mean French Women Don't Get Fat), I knew I was never going to look good in leather pants or messy buns or anything designed by Isabel Marant. There is nothing insouciant about me.

While Iwas studying at the Sorbonne my senior year of college, I learned I, too, could harness the power of les pharmacies. One day while I was recovering from the flu, a sophisticated friend told me that French pharmacies had the best aspirin in the world, and that it was effervescent and had vitamin C in it and came in cute little tubes. Next, on the recommendation of a classmate, I bought Email Diamant, a cadmium-red toothpaste flavored with clove and mint that leaves teeth gleaming white, and large cans of Avene mineral water to spritz on my face for hydration or to wake up. I brought stockpiles of all these products home with me.

In the two decades that followed, I have played the role of Santa Claus (Mere Noel?) whenever I have gone back to France, which is perhaps a couple of times a year for work or vacation. I joyfully stuff my suitcase with exotic goods. I started as a classic dealer of simple pleasures: Doliprane, a pain reliever that is widely available in a pill double the dose of an extra-strength Tylenol; the ultra-thick European formula of Nivea that comes in a round tin; La Roche-Posay Lipikar Balm AP+ M, an unscented lotion so deeply moisturizing that an entire friend group is hooked on it and started calling it our "family lotion."

This past January, I knew I was going to Paris for men's Fashion Week and told everyone in our office that I was available to take on their hyper-specific requests. I got Dan, who sits next to me at work, addicted to Pranarom Aromaforce throat lozenges, a sugar-free lemon cough drop that tastes and works better than anything at CVS. I bought Oenobiol Sun Capsules, a wildly popular blend of pigments and vitamins that Europeans take before vacations that allegedly makes them look tan, for another friend who would kill me if I outed him as someone who believes in the potential of bronzing pills.

And for those who didn't know what they wanted? No problem. For Adrienne and Claire, I told them to simply tell me their concerns and desires. In that sense I am also like a therapist, along with pharmacist, beauty mule, and guilty parent coming home from a work trip bearing gifts. One of their shared concerns was dark spots. Pharmacists in France are very hands-on, almost like a physician assistant, and take the job of recommendations really, really seriously. So a woman of a certain age who owned a pharmacy in the 2nd arrondissement asked me to show her pictures of both Adrienne and Claire to zoom in, study their skin for a moment, and decide which serum I should choose. She brought me two bottles of La Roche-Posay Mela B3 Dark Spot Serum With Melasyl and Niacinamide. The fact that she chose the same serum for both Europe has about 30 different sunscreen filters approved for use and America has nearly half that. So the formulas for sunscreen at pharmacies tend to be much more advanced, and feel and smell better than their American counterparts. (I am not entirely joking when I say that getting the United States caught up to the rest of the world's sunscreen filters would be my single-issue presidential campaign, and I may win.) The latest and greatest innovation is called Eau Solaire, a sunscreen water that has a consistency almost like a contact lens solution that you shake up and spray on. women, who look nothing alike, is something I dared not question.

It turns out not having almost every product locked up as prisoners behind plastic barriers is a much less depressing shopping experience than our pharmacies. If TikTok is to be believed, CityPharma in Saint-Germain in the 6th arrondissement is the best. And it's certainly big and centrally located, and packed with people who aren't afraid to take your health in their hands. Iwas once on the upstairs floor, staring at an entire wall of probiotics, and was approached with an offer to help. "I don't know which one to get," I said. He asked what I was seeking to alleviate (bad digestion), if I had taken antibiotics in the last few months (no), how much water I drank (not enough), and if I had access to a refrigerator in the next two hours (no). He zeroed in on one box and handed it to me. I accepted it with the gravitas required of such a transaction. But don't go out of your way for any specific pharmacy, and definitely don't wait in line to get in; they are on virtually every other block and most of them can cover what you seek. Ones called "parapharmacies" have larger selections.

I also got Claire Caudalie Vinotherapist Hyaluronic Nourishing Body Lotion and their hand cream that, now that she has a regular hookup, she slathers on. We have done this transaction before and have established a routine: She sends a list, I check it twice, and she Venmos me. Strictly speaking, brands like Bio derma, Vichy, Avene, and La Roche-Posay are available in the United States, but formulas might be different (I am enough of a connoisseur that I can tell you the family lotion in the US formula doesn't work as well), and in their native France they are often much cheaper. In the case of Caudalie, buying it abroad often costs less than half the price that it does stateside.

While in Paris I panic-bought myself four bottles of sunscreen in the dead of winter because I didn't know if I'd be back before spring. Due to regulation differences,

Consider my odyssey just a preview of all the delights that may await you to be discovered and enjoyed. Buy Phytomer Celluli Night Coach, which is supposed to firm your skin while you're sleeping (the French will try anything to tone their bodies short of exercise); Homeoplasmine, an ointment used on cuticles, lips, and nipples; fig-flavored cough syrup; Berncca, an effervescent multivitamin French college students swear by for hangovers; 100-ml (we're fully metric) bottles of Roger & Gallet scented water in fig blossom or ginger; or one of the many varieties of Shampoo au Lait d'Anesse, a.k.a. donkey milk shampoo.

At best, you'll have a new sense of Gallic superiority. But if you try something that you don't like, remember the French pharmacy run is on par with an afternoon at the Mus6e d'Orsay. It's just another cultural experience.

WHAT TO TAKE HOME

It turns out not having almost every product locked up as prisoners behind plastic barriers is a much less depressing shopping experience than our pharmacies.