1. Female sexuality is shamelessly embraced and explored
Emily’s vibrator caused an electricity outage in her building in the first episode. The moment was preluded by an attempt at phone sex with her long-distance boyfriend, which ended in the connection failing. That in itself was quite unorthodox, as it shows how they both try, rather than the scene just cut off, and the viewer is left to assume how it went about. Before the connection failed, Emily’s boyfriend seems to have reached climax and leaves Emily frustrated. While the scene could’ve ended there, it doesn’t. The scene instead normalizes female masturbation and the use of sex toys by revealing that Emily keeps her vibrator right next to her bed, covered by a sheet, instead of hidden in a drawer. Rather than focus on how the connection failed or even attempting to call back her boyfriend, she proceeds to try to take matters into her own hands.
2. The fashion
Think everything that you might’ve dressed your dress-up game cutout in when you were a child. The fashion makes it sometimes hard to believe that the show takes place in 2020, with some of the colors and pieces being a bit reminiscent of the fun fashion seen in earlier years- similar to that of the Carrie Diaries. Emily has no fear in being creative and standing out, even if others would prefer for her to blend in. The fashion in the show serves as a reminder to have fun with style, the same way predecessors such as Gossip Girl and Sex & The City still do.
3. The local-ish insight into Paris
Unlike other shows that leave us deflated when we find out it wasn’t shot where the show is said to take place, most of Emily in Paris was shot in Paris. From the charm of the cafes to the moodiness of the streets at night, and even the beautiful view from Emily’s not-so-glamorous apartment, we get to take in Paris beyond the cliches. Although Emily has never been to Europe before arriving in Paris, the first season goes on for an entire ten episodes, without one scene taking place in a tourist spot, such as the Eiffel Tower. Rather, we get to see how someone new to the city explores it like a local.
4. Embracing new beginnings in mid-20s
Odds are, by junior year of college, we feel the pressure of being a young “adult.” What will we do for a living, other than living? Where will we live? Who will we live with? You might have gained $50,000 in debt from your bachelor’s, but do you want to spend the rest of your life inputting numbers into a system? Would you be a failure if you don’t? The questions become endless, and a quarter-life crisis begins to be on the horizon before we’re even 23. Emily is presumably in her mid-20s, being that she finished her master’s before working at a marketing firm. She breaks up with a long-time boyfriend she was supposed to marry, moves to a new country of which she doesn’t even know the language, and continuously embraces the unknown with a lust for life that, let’s face it, we probably envy.
5. The portrayal of attraction, lust, and romance that characterizes a 20-something’s dating life
In the age of Tinder, Bumble, and social media, it’s not hard to find a 20-something-year-old with a messy (or very organized) but exciting dating life. Emily in Paris portrays what so many 20-something-year-olds experience- hookups, crushes on friends/neighbors, love triangles, and spontaneous kisses that we can’t believe are real life. What’s best is that Emily navigates each one graciously and shamelessly, something that seems almost impossible to do given how much shame society has injected into the matters.