What’s Le Bal Paris on Netflix’s Fabulous Lives? And What’s Makes It A Regressive Tradition?

4 min readNov 28, 2020

I remember it clear as day when tinsel town’s chicest star kid Ananya Panday made her debut at Paris’ Le Bal des Débutantes in 2017. For two reasons primarily. One, because that was the first I had ever heard of this high society event, even though it has been around since 1992. And two, because I had excessively stalked Panday’s social media profiles to gather as much buzz as I could around this grand, dreamy-looking, right-out-of-a-Jane-Austen-novel ball. The prospect of ancient, romantic traditions still existing — in the world’s most romantic city, no less — had excited me. Now, as a wiser me watches Fabulous Lives on Netflix, and in it another star kid Shanaya Kapoor making her debut at Le Bal in the first episode itself, it all seems more regressive than exciting.

Complete with billowing gowns, delicately-made up hair, and an ornate hall to dance with a partner in, Le Bal seems to be a modern revival of 19th century Victorian balls. But the imitation doesn’t stop at just affectation. Le Bal, like certain social events of olden days in the West, is essentially meant to be the coming-of-age ceremony of girls aged between 16 and 22. Decked in haute couture, these girls, all from global creamy families, partake in this fashion event as a mark of turning into women now capable of being out and about in society. Though Le Bal is marketed as a charity event that donates proceeds to the needy, the bling of the priceless jewels these debutantes don could blind commoners like you and me with irony.

Once described as the world’s “hottest” party, Le Bal is an obscene reminder, even exacerbation I would say, of the class divide that exists in the world. The criteria alone to receive an invite to this elite gathering is “famous parents” and “attractive appearance” — two solid, age-old reinforcements of society’s hierarchical status quo that have impeded equality for so long. It makes one wonder: is there even scope to the change activists and feminists are yearning to bring in areas of false beauty standards, unequal opportunity, and outdated norms when the uber-rich are hell-bent on keeping these traditions alive?

Charity events are welcome. But my grievance with Le Bal is the hoo-ha it creates around masquerading as one. Because in the process of doing so, it is building those very barriers back up that legions of our ancestors had tried so hard to break down. And the worst part is, in the process, it grossly glamourises it all. Take for instance the coming-of-age aspect of the ball. While these pretty debutantes and their cavaliers (and their parents) may find a wistful charm in these traditional labels, couture, and exclusive attention they are being endowed with, the truth of the matter is that these customs are highly sexist and patriarchal.

What’s Le Bal Paris on Netflix’s Fabulous Lives? And What’s Makes It A Regressive Tradition?

Written by Caqsyfii