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Sex in la Cité really is a Carrie on! The French are up in arms about Netflix’s racy new hit Emily In Paris – but for a Brit who lives in France, it rings all too true

10th October 2020 by Helena Leave a Comment  

Despite French criticism, the series has drawn a huge audience, thanks in no small part to its heritage. If you’re getting déjà vu — pretty young woman working in media teetering round a major city in ever more extravagant outfits — it’s no coincidence. Producer Darren Star and costume designer Patricia Field are the team that brought Sex And The City to our screens.

Emily may have traded Carrie Bradshaw’s MacBook musings for pictures posted on social media, but some of the lines from Mindy, Emily’s new best friend, could have come straight from Carrie’s man-eating sidekick, Samantha. ‘Try his meat,’ she urges when Emily is on the verge of complaining that the rare steak, cooked by the hot chef who lives downstairs, is not well done enough.

And like its Nineties predecessor, boy, does sex loom large in this show. Casual, passionate and extra-marital — it’s all there. Par exemple, Sylvie is having an affair with one of her married clients, Antoine, whose wife, Catherine, appears to know about the affair but is unperturbed by it.+5

Like its Nineties predecessor, sex looms large in this show. Casual, passionate and extra-marital scenes are in plentiful measures

Is this a fair representation of French society? Well, yes. Infidelity is rife in France, although they’d never call it that. They have a very different attitude to sex — it’s like eating, or shopping: a pleasure people shouldn’t deny themselves.

Emily’s character is a modern version of Carrie Bradshaw in the hit series Sex And The City

Sexual appetites aside, nothing in the show felt more true to life than when, in response to Emily’s assertion that she’s hungry, Sylvie replies: ‘Have a cigarette.’ The reason French women are so thin is because they rarely eat or drink.

I remember interviewing the elegant head of Cartier, and asking her if she ever ate a croissant. She looked horrified, exclaiming: ‘Not for ten years!’

This abstemious way of life means French women don’t bond over ‘just another drink’ — they’d never dream of drinking after dinner — and I think because of that, they’re just not as much fun. That’s why, in my view, Emily’s friendship with young French woman Camille doesn’t ring true.

French women can be quite stand-offish, and competitive. Great for a bitching session, but they won’t be there as a shoulder to cry on. However, while Emily In Paris doesn’t replicate Sex And The City’s core ‘girl squad’, one element that is loyally replicated is the showstopping fashion — as it should be, given its glamorous locale.

There’s plenty of showstopping fashion in the Netflix series. Looking good in France isn’t about labels — they wear Chanel but will mix it with Gap — sophistication is key

I arrived in France heavily pregnant, and so spent most of my time in tracksuit bottoms, to the horror of my new neighbours. Two decades on, I wouldn’t dream of even going to the bakery in my gym kit.

Looking good in France isn’t about labels — they wear Chanel but will mix it with Gap — but sophistication. The French just like beautiful things, and I think that’s where what we perceive as their sexism comes from. Emily tells a client that having a naked woman in a perfume ad is sexist — he says it’s just sexy.

Women are desired and put on a pedestal here, and I like that. When I go to my local deli, the owner greets me with ‘Bonjour beauté!’ Who wouldn’t want to be called beautiful doing the weekly shop?

So for all the French may complain that Emily In Paris is stuffed with clichés, I would say the French are different from us. And for that reason, I think they will never fully accept us — 20 years on, my husband and I are still known as ‘Les Anglais’.

But I like to think they have a grudging affection for us, even if — like Sylvie — they’d never admit to having anything as crass as emotions. 


Filed Under: France, Relations, Style, Women, blog --> Tagged With: about, carrie, emily, french, netflix, paris, really

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Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.

Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi-based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor-in-chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.

Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. She is working on a thriller set in Sweden as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

In 2022 her short story The Japanese Gardener came second in the Fish Publishing Short Story Prize. One of her stories was also shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize. When she’s not writing, she works as a headhunter for the media and entertainment industry for the Sucherman Group. 

Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.

Bibliography

More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004

Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)

All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006

Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007

So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)

More, More France; Gibson Square 2009

To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)

The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009

Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011

The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016

The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018

The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019

 

 

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