- She's a smiley blonde,
she doesn't look too dangerous.
Well, I'm really radical, guys.
(laughing)
Be careful!
(laughing)
I worked for 10 years at ELLE,
and I was really, really into fashion
in a little immature way.
I would go to Zara every day.
It took me some time to realize the system was not okay.
The fast fashion system, to begin with.
When the factory collapsed in Dhaka, in Bangladesh,
I think it was more than one thousand workers,
mainly women, were killed in this.
I think we all kind of knew how it worked,
we were all aware that those clothes were made
by people in the south hemisphere and that they
were really badly paid, but this event, I think,
made it all very concrete and very real.
Since then I've never bought any fast fashion.
But in general also, I...
I got a bit angry
with the fashion industry.
Even the luxury, the whole thing,
and the way it works with the press.
And I realized how little freedom
we had towards the advertisers.
You know, when I started working at ELLE,
I remember sometimes my chief would send me
an email on behalf of the advertisers,
then a few years later, the advertising section
would directly send an email to me,
like, my chief was not even in the process anymore.
And at the end, I received the email directly
from the advertisers, which is like, not okay.
One day I got a phone call from Louis Vuitton
telling me: "But, darling, what did you do?
Our picture is more than the Chanel picture!
And I remind you, in this magazine we
have five pages of advertising,
and Chanel has only three, so I'm gonna
call your boss and tell your boss
I'm really unhappy with you.
And I was like "uh...you know what?
I'm a journalist, I don't care,
that's not my job.
I'm not here to do advertising for Louis Vuitton,
I'm here to cover the news.
The thing that made me go "okay, you know what?
I'm leaving from here."
I had to cover this trial about a young
boy who had been killed by the police
and at nine at night, the minute we were
supposed to send the pages, suddenly my boss
arrives with a furry key chain from Fendi
and she was like
"Oh look, there is this key chain from Fendi,
we really have to put it somewhere in your pages!"
And she was like: "Oh, you know what? We're gonna
put it there on the full page."
So I had to say fuck to my young journalist,
to the trial, to everything that was meaningful to me
in this story, to put a stupid Fendi furry keychain.
And the ultimate humiliation was I had to write
three lines being like "oh Karl Lagerfeld is so cool", like,
(gagging)
At some point you have to listen to your guts, I guess.
And my guts told me to get out of there.
- Can you talk about what assumptions you think
people make about you when they first see you?
- I remember when I was a teenager, everybody was like:
"Are you a model? Do you want to be a model?"
'Cause I'm this tall, blonde, supposedly pretty girl.
And it was flattering, but then, well, no,
I want to be president!
(laughing)
A writer, a lawyer, I don't want to be a model!
But being told "you could be a model"
was the ultimate thing and the ultimate power position
for a woman in society was becoming a model.
- So how did that affect your personal relationships?
- I really had quite an active sexual life.
I was the kind of girl you could hook up with
in the club and be like: "oh my God,
there is sadness in your eyes."
And basically everybody has sadness in their eyes,
so, but I would fall for it and say: "Oh my God,
he can say that I'm just not a dumb blonde."
I had this offer to be on a TV Show.
I'm not really proud of this feeling,
but I felt it was really cool to do something that visible,
that well paid, that prestigious,
but it was a nightmare!
(laughing)
This whole advertising capitalist thing we were describing
earlier when I was talking about Elle
in Television is even worse.
Misogyny on Television? Is like,
(sighs)
it's unbearable.
As soon as I arrived there, I said "Okay, I know
how to dress ethical labels, emerging designers,
I'm gonna wear only jackets, shirts, and T-Shirts.
I will never wear a dress. I'm not wearing
too much makeup, and I don't want my hair done ever.
I had a comment from one of the producers saying:
"You know, on TV it always looks better
to have a..."
How do you say?
- Cleavage
- Yeah, "a cleavage"
- Mhm
- "Cleavages look so good on television, you should try it."
And I was like: "Nope! Bye!"
(laughing)
Women just don't speak on television.
If I talk for one minute, it was like:
"Wow! Oh my God! I said so much!"
When I had something to say, I was like:
"I'm gonna say it tonight"
and they were like:
"No, sorry hun, we don't have time."
I was a very, very bad, actually, television journalist.
I was bad.
I mean, I was supposed to do something
to switch to another personality and I cannot,
I just cannot do this. I cannot wear something
that doesn't look like me, I cannot talk
in a way that's not me, I cannot say something
I don't mean, I really cannot do this.
And television is this.
- Do you think that you were chosen in the first place
because you looked the part?
- Of course! Of course!
They didn't listen to me.
That happens to me all the time.
- They didn't get what they thought they were gonna get.
- Exactly.
- Do you have fears or anxieties around
not having that stable corporation behind you?
How has that been? That transition?
- Hmmm...
I'm really not scared at all about this.
I'm lucky because I have a family that can back me up,
I have been really well paid for many years
so I've got some money, I have diplomas,
I am a healthy white girl from Paris. I mean,
I will never be unemployed, I will always find something.
I'm not scared, I'm not insecure about this
material aspect which is such a privilege.
I am totally aware of this.
- Can you talk about any areas in your life
where you feel shame?
- I think there is also something about
the woman condition that is always shameful.
Everything that's around our sexuality,
our periods, our giving birth, our making love,
is shameful.
Giving birth is such a nightmare
and it's not possible to say it.
It was horrible.
Horrible.
- Tell the story about what happened.
- I mean, I'm not really comfortable with
telling the whole thing, but...
(sighs)
- It helps other people, though.
- Yeah, that's true.
- Because by your being uncomfortable,
you're being ashamed.
- Yes, you're right.
- (laughter)
- I was huge.
I was a whale.
(laughter)
I took, like, 28 Kilos
- Where you fine with that?
- Yeah.
Well...
No, not really.
(laughter)
It was summer, it was so hot.
No at the end it was...
it was not nice.
No, I hated being pregnant, actually.
I hated not being able to smoke,
not being able to drink. Oh my God, I was so horny.
So horny.
And this is something you're supposed to be ashamed of, too.
- Mhm.
- Okay that's...that's the shame part
(laughing)
Watching video on YouPorn, which I had never done before.
I was like: "What's wrong with me?"
(laughter)
but anyways, I was pregnant, so...
So yeah.
But I really was also wanting to get
my body back as soon as I could.
I wanted the baby to come out really quick
and not breastfeed, I was really wanting to
share the responsibility of the kid with my husband.
From the minute I had a baby in my stomach
like, this is gonna be a 50/50 job,
I'm not gonna be the kind of mom who's like,
has a baby wrapped around her body for two years.
So many people told me: "Why? Poor baby!
It's horrible, oh my God! Bad mom!"
And I remember feeling shame also on my own.
I have an image of my baby being really really young
and smoking a cigarette like this in my pajamas
and seeing the baby crying on the little thing,
behind the window, and be like:
"You're such a bad mom."
- Yeah.
- "I need a cigarette! I don't care!"
And I really feel like ashamed of me.
And recently my kid, who is now five and a half,
he told me: "Mom, you are the best mom in the world."
And I was like: "Oh my God, that's so cute
to tell me this, why are you telling me this?"
"Because your job is so cool!"
- Aw
- And I was like: "Oh, thanks!"
(laughter)
And he's proud of me for what I do.
Socks.
- What do you love and what do you dislike
the most about French culture?
- We are the country who cut the King's head
and I'm so proud of this!
(laughing)
Liberté, égalité, fraternité...
Awesome, don't change a word!
I also love French lifestyle, I think we got it right.
The fact of sitting around a table and eat
and drink wine, I mean every single life
should revolve around this concept of sitting
together and sharing a meal.
Bad, bad, bad...
There is this universalism in France
that makes it really hard to question some issues.
On the American identity ID, you have the ethnicity, right?
- Mhm
- It says if you're Caucasian,
Asian American, African American.
Well, in France that would be like, ugh.
- So you don't ever fill that out?
- No, it's forbidden by the law.
- Because?
- Because we're all equal.
There is no men and women, we are all equal.
There is no black and white, we are all equal.
And, well, no we're not.
I mean, women are getting less paid and
black men are being killed by the policemen,
so, no, we are not equal.
There is no statistics because that would never,
we never count people,
- You never check it off.
- You never check it off so we don't know,
so there is absolutely no way to prove
that they are being discriminated against.
But it's impossible to say this in France.
It's impossible to say the word "race" in France.
When you say "race" in an anti-racist meaning,
they call you racist.
- So when do you feel the most vulnerable?
- Thinking about my childhood and my teenage years
is not okay yet.
I was not a very happy little girl.
(sigh)
But I don't know why, I mean, I haven't explored it yet.
I don't know what was wrong, I just knew that...
I had the feeling I was from another planet.
And I'm not ready to explore this at all.
That's why every time I start to see a shrink,
(laughter)
after three meetings I'm like "uh uh uh,
I'm not going through this."
I don't know, it's weird.
Look at me, I'm crying.
- What do you think you're afraid of?
- (sighs)
I don't know.
I didn't want to go into this what I'm gonna say right now,
but it just..
(crying)
I had a sister and she died.
(sniffling)
And, um...
I'm not comfortable with the years she was alive.
I don't want to go there.
It's too hard.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's OK?
- Perfect. You can just put it on the ground.
Can you talk about why being in your body,
in your skin, in your journey,
why it's a good place to be?
- I really like being me, and I really like
that I found a way to share what I feel
and what I know, and what I know is that
every single life, every single experience
has to be listened to, has to be emphasized,
has to be celebrated.
And we should stop considering humanity
as a mob, that's what I know and that's
what I share and I'm so, so happy to be able to do this.
- That was so beautiful.