The new series, and currently the fourth most popular show on Netflix, Emily in Paris, has everyone talking. The titular character Emily, a marketing executive, travels across the country to Paris as she is hired by a French marketing firm with the goal of providing them with an American perspective.
This is practically every girl’s fantasy and Emily is living it. She moved to Paris. She got her dream job. She has a go-getter attitude. She was always dressed in designer pieces. She never let anyone knock her down. And she was by far, the definition of a “modern woman”.
Being in a pandemic, this show brought Paris right to my comfy couch, and never have I ever wanted to be in Paris, or like Lily Collins more in my life. Not even exaggerating. While the show may unrealistically portray the City of Love, it was the perfect binge-watching show in order to relieve some stress and procrastinate. I thought it was magnifique.
The episodes cover a wide range of topics such as, how women are treated in a male-dominated workplace, the controversy between sexy or sexist, different fashion trends, the realities of fashion week, the struggles of family affairs, the life of a social media influencer, many complicated love lives, and so much more.
Whether viewers liked the show or not, it got people sucked in and it happened after the first couple of episodes, if not the very first one.
“I’m only on episode four, but I love the perfume commercial debate,” said Patricia Sydenstricker, a Junior at SPU.
Leira Joyce, a Junior at SPU, captured the show in three words: Empowering. Bold. Powerful. “As I watched Emily in Paris, I was able to reminisce of all the places that I visited on my trip to Europe,” she says. “[It] was the inspiration that I needed to remind myself of this year … When a woman loves what she does, she is unstoppable…watching this show allowed me to remind myself of what I am working for,”.
However, there has been some conversation surrounding how the show is somewhat unrealistic, “a sinister study of the American Dream” as Vice calls it, and how the outfits that Emily wears are “the most cringe-worthy trigger of them all”, according to Vogue.
Some may claim that the (so to speak) twenty-two year old, who moves to Paris, without knowing anything about the local customs, culture, language, and basic mannerisms, may seem a bit ignorant.
But according to clinical therapist Caroline Given, L.C.S.W., she shared that “our reaction to the show is more indicative of what we are going through, rather than what the show presents”. She also shared how “the polarizing views on Emily in Paris reveal a lot about how people respond to crisis and chaos…either escapism or reality confrontation”.
So, if we eliminate the nonsense about the show and forget how a newly college graduate is able to land her dream job (not saying it isn’t possible), and instead focus on Emily’s positive outlook on life, her drive, and her ability to find her way around any situation, I’d say that this show would then capture every woman’s dream. And as Emily would say, “C’est la vie”.