Meet Jennifer Padjemi

I've been interested in these subjects ever since I was a student! My first dissertation, written ten years ago, focused on the representation of women in TV series and their impact on viewers, and my second on the evolution of black characters in TV and film. During my twenties, I consumed culture in every sense of the word: music, cinema, TV series... For me, it's the age when everyone builds up their tastes, when they become clearer and more precise, a time in our lives when we understand the impact they have on us. My job and this cultural consumption led me naturally to this essay.

I wanted to make it a personal and journalistic essay that starts from a truly grounded experience, while backing it up with concrete facts. I drew a lot of inspiration from Anglo-Saxon essays. In France, even though this is happening more and more, I still see women authors who find it hard to talk about themselves. For me, you have to be able to tell your own story without making it autobiographical. The aim wasn't to tell the whole story of my personal life, but to see how pop culture is both a personal and a global experience.

I think pop culture can really change our perception of love, friendship, ourselves, self-esteem...It's allowed me to see the world differently. I could even say that it saved my life: it answered a lot of my questions, as if the writers or directors had written this series or that film for me, and I finally recognized myself.

Pop culture can also be therapeutic, enabling us to learn more about situations we haven't experienced ourselves.

I'll talk more about this in the essay, but for example, I learned a lot about LGBT+ issues and a less normative vision of the couple. Inclusive works open up other horizons and deconstruct our ideals.

I didn't become a feminist thanks to heroines in TV series or films, but they did help me understand that it was possible to be an independent woman, to talk about sexuality without being considered a "slut", to think about one's career, to break out of heterosexual codifications, to deconstruct codes imposed from an early age. I think that the more works we produce in this direction, the more today's children will be tomorrow's feminists! And they'll have understood everything! My generation came to all this rather late, and we were forced to build ourselves in a world where women had a defined role in relation to their bodies, their sexuality...

Seeing strong, interesting female characters has helped me, but I'd also like to qualify the term "strong". Characters like Buffy, whom I adore, gave the impression that you had to be "badass" to be accepted by society. To be a good feminist, you'd have to pound your fist on the table... Whereas it's possible to be a feminist and vulnerable, to have contradictions. That's why I love Cristina Yang so much on Grey's Anatomy, because she's not presented as a mirror image of a man, and she always contradicts what we might expect of her. I think feminism needs to be much more inclusive of backgrounds and experiences that don't fit into the image of the strong, badass, warrior woman...

Pop culture has pioneered the representation of normalized, normative bodies. The main character or love interest is always a beautiful, slim blonde girl... It's both a fantasy for men and an ideal of the girl we should want to look like. We all grew up with this image that didn't look like what we saw in the mirror. Then we realize that the character who most resembles us in a film or series is the one who is less loved, who is not calculated, who loves a boy who doesn't love her back... In the construction of the body and appearance, this was really fatal. Even the female characters who have been interesting and have changed the vision of feminism are in a very classic norm: the girls from Sex and the City, Grey's Anatomy... When we saw Hannah Horvath, the main character in Lena Duhnam's series Girls, hit the screens, it was a revolution. Today, it seems crazy to us because she has the body of the majority of women, she's the most popular pants size in stores. But even back then, I thought she got naked for no reason at all, I didn't understand why she did it, even though she helped accustom our gaze to seeing other bodies.

If we go beyond pop culture, fashion was and still is the most grossophobic industry in the world. It made us believe that we had to dream about hipless, shapeless bodies, by hiring 14-year-old models. All this also had an impact on the way we think about ourselves and what a beautiful body looks like. Even today, I hear people tell me that a woman is "well built". But for whom? For whom? With the body, we can really talk about anything: ourselves, others, society.

Yes, and what saddens me is that I don't think she dressed very well! (laughs) There's a way of not hiding but valuing these bodies that aren't seen in society that I find very well done in other series like Shrill or Drop Dead Diva. Shrill is a superb series because the character played by Aidy Bryant is comfortable in her body, she dresses well and the styling is superb. It's the others who tell her that her body is a problem.
Style has a role to play in series and films, and it's never insignificant.

Yes, and I think it's a really contemporary series, especially in terms of fashion. The show's stylist, Ayanna James, imagines the evolution of the characters through the way they relate to their jobs. The heroine, Issa, is a politicized person, interested in the works of African-American authors, who works in the social sector, so she wears clothes that go with her job: lots of vintage, small designer clothes mixed with more accessible pieces. Molly, her best friend, is a lawyer, so she always has to look presentable, whether in a suit or a designer outfit. When Molly goes out with Andrew in season 4, she frees herself from her work, she's more at ease and it shows in the way she dresses. Issa, too, lets loose when she leaves work. Liberation comes through clothes. They also dress differently depending on where they go.

The designer makes a point of showing the black community through clothing and pageantry. When Issa and Molly put bonnets in their hair, for example, the scene is very realistic: all black women have night caps. This is a series that succeeds in putting fashion in the right place.

Yes, there's something very "off" about shows like Gossip Girl, which I'm re-watching right now. Every scene was a fashion show! In Sex and The City, too, they're always very well dressed with their Manolo Blahnik pumps.

I grew up with this idea of inaccessibility, of thinking I'd never be able to afford clothes like these. Even if I had a lot of money one day, I don't know if I'd be morally prepared to buy a 3,000-euro bag! The image of a woman who's always chic and dressed up, who buys designer clothes, has been imposed on us and is unrealistic in relation to our lives.

My relationship with fashion is evolving, and is now linked to ecology. When I feel like buying yet another dress that I won't be wearing in two months' time, I try to go for small brands and slow fashion. When you spend 160 euros on a garment, it's not going to end up in the garbage can the following year! I think about putting more money into a garment but buying less.

For my part, I've been going to thrift stores a lot over the last ten years. I also think about the fact that my body fluctuates. I want to have clothes that correspond to different stages of my life and my body, without having to change them. Sometimes I think back to what I wore when I was younger, and realize that I no longer wear certain tight or short clothes. Not even because I don't feel like it, but because I'm more aware of my body on the outside and of street harassment. In Paris, you know you won't feel comfortable wearing low-cut clothes, and that men will make remarks. We're led to believe that certain clothes shouldn't be worn, when in fact it's men who have built their imaginations around clothes that are sexier than others. This is all the more true for black women: our bodies are judged as if they were inherently sexy.

In any case, I love fashion and it will always define me. In black communities, fashion is very important. I grew up with parents who dressed very well. For us, it's a matter of survival. When people see us, in addition to our skin color, they look at how we're dressed. It's a mixture of assimilation, wanting to be seen to be good, wanting to be respectable. And it's passed on from parent to child.

Thrift shops have become very gentrified, and a lot of small addresses are becoming overpriced. If there's a selection, a passionate person behind it who can tell you the history of the clothes, I accept that the prices are higher. For example, I love La Religeuse in the 19th arrondissement, a boutique run by a passionate woman. It's not cheap, but there's all the service that goes with it: we chat, she offers tea, she advises on styles... She's also interested in large sizes, which is rare.

Guerisol remains a safe bet. They've kept their prices very reasonable, even if I think the selection used to be better. I used to find crazy dresses for 2 euros!

Kiloshop is also still interesting because you can find pearls.

Otherwise, Le Coffre in Ménilmontant, prices are reasonable and they're really nice!

Thanks to Jennifer for answering our questions!

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"Feminisms and pop culture published by Stock