I’ve been an avid listener of La Poudre for 3 years, a podcast I downloaded to justify the volume of time I dedicate to swanning around Dublin. In French, they actually have a word for this – filling lexical gaps as they so often do – Flânerie. The flâneur was a connoisseur of the street, and ‘the word carried a set of rich associations of urban exploration’, says Wikipedia. Can I swap this for accusations of “moping”, or “being-unproductive”?

 

“I was going to call it La Poudre,” Lauren says in an interview, ‘The Powder’ in French. She launched the podcast during a creative rut. After having spent a decade working  as a news reporter, she sold her soul to the corporate devil – daytime television. During her year on TV she interviewed the likes of Isabelle Huppert and Adèle Exarchopoulos, but described the milieu as unfulfilling, performative, and sexist, “Misogyny on Television? Pfft. It’s unbearable.” Launching her own podcast after completing an MA in Gender Studies seemed a more appropriate route. 

 

She interviews women from diverse backgrounds, be they the Mayor of Paris, international bestselling authors Leila Slimani, or Paris Opera ballet dancers like Marie-Agnès Gillot. She has also interviewed Latifa Ibn Ziaten, a woman whose son was killed by gunman in Toulouse that claimed to be linked to Al Qaeda. The podcast is among the top 15 most downloaded in France. One of her most recent interviews with Reni Eddo Lodge – author of Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race – and the very first episode recorded entirely in English.

 

“I was thinking about the phrase, faire la poudre d’escampette,” a French idiom meaning, ‘to do a runner’. And run she did. It’s the paradox of powder that she views as symbolic of female power. La Poudre: makeup, or drugs? Face powder, or gunpowder? “La Poudre,” Lauren explains, “It’s cosmetic and corrosive, light and smoky, feminine and explosive”.

 

Where did your interest in feminism start?

 

My first interest in feminism came from my job as a journalist. So my whole activism started from there. And that’s when I joined an association called, Prenons La Une, for whom I am the porte-parole?

 

Spokesperson?

 

Spokesperson. And that’s also when I decided to launch La Poudre, which was a very political act back then: creating a space for uniquely women’s voices to be heard in the public space.

 

I often reflect that you are quite omniscient in your journalistic style – never sharing very much of your own experiences, but with a distinct emotional honesty. How do you see the interplay between that emotional quality, while also maintaining a degree of reservation? 

 

Wow, that’s very interesting. [She laughs.] On being emotionally open, I think it’s really my way of being a journalist. I think it’s often the best way to inform. It could seem paradoxical, but in a way the most honest and objective way to inform is to say things how they appear from your point of view. I think it’s always important to clarify that it is only my point of view. It’s my vision of things. And when I have a doubt about something, it’s my own doubt. I pose questions based on those instincts, and I think that’s the best way for me to be a good journalist.

 

I think that that might be a cultural thing, too. I’ve been aware of that since studying in France: the academic voice doesn’t strive to sound objective. There’s a kind of subjectivity in French writing that in Trinity would be like, no. One of my earliest memories when I started college back home was being in a seminar, and the professor drawing an ‘I’ on the blackboard, and then putting a giant X through it. But studying in France I use the first person in many of my essays. So I think it could be a cultural thing.

 

Yeah, probably. I think it’s also a feminist thing. Like when I did my Masters in Gender Studies, one of the first things you learn is like that there is no objectivity. Science has been made by man, a science that was never objective. The science that was produced was often biased. 

 

And on the fact that I’m reserved about my own life, that’s very true. I could never be a guest of La Poudre. If I were invited I would not accept, because I’m shy about my private life. So I know it’s kind of a paradox. But thank you so much for the compliment. It’s very touching.

 

In one of your interviews, you had Assa Traoré as a guest, a woman whose brother was killed as a result of police violence in France. What does police violence look like in France? What do you think accounts for the lack of social movements against structural violence? It doesn’t seem like you have anything to the equivalent of the Black Lives Matter movement in the US. Why is that space there, in France?

 

I think she is the equivalent of the Black Lives Matter movement; she created Justice For Adama, a charity dedicated to stopping police violence and drawing attention to issues of discrimination in France. She probably got more media attention than any other activist like her before. Because there already had been police violence, and families fighting for justice for the loss of their loved ones, but she’s the first one who gathered enough attention to incite a movement, and she went to such lengths to do so.

 

The problem in France is that seeing things through the lense of race is not accepted. We are a very universalist country. We don’t have the right to make ethnic statistics. So you would never find a statistic on how many black people have been killed by the police versus how many white people, for example. We don’t have the figures. So it makes it hard to question the issue of discrimination. But Assa Traoré is doing a great job of bringing these issues to the forefront. I’m trying to do my part too. And right now there are a few people in France trying to push a more intersectional vision into the public space.

 

You ask your guests what relationship they have with their uterus. We hear a lot about liberating the vagina (works like The Vagina Monologues etc), but what’s significant to you about the uterus?

 

My views regarding this question have changed since the beginning of the podcast. I think I was a bit more naïve. I hadn’t read as much as today. I didn’t have as many perspectives on feminism. When I first wrote this question, it was really about the injunctions that you get as a woman to becoming a mother. As soon as you become 30, people expect you to be giving birth. Soon. Because that’s ‘what you’re made for’. 

 

So I was hoping that posing the question would enable conversation regarding this issue. Like being a working mom, or a single parent. I also hoped that it might be a way to talk about gynecologist violence.

 

Yeah, like obstetric violence. You had an episode about that, Cervyx?

 

Yes, exactly. So while I think it has opened up many interesting conversations, many listeners emailed informing me that it is a transphobic question. Which I didn’t realise when I wrote it, but it’s true. It’s true that it is a problematic question, because some women don’t have uteruses. 

 

But I think if I had a trans woman on La Poudre tomorrow, I would still ask her this question. Because I would like to know what it’s like not to have a uterus and still be a woman. So it’s still relevant.

 

Yeah, I see what you mean. Because you’re still going to get that projection from people. All those expectations.

 

Exactly. Like, ‘Oh you’re not actually a woman because you can’t give birth’. But of course, she can [be a woman]. So I’d want to talk about that too.

 

Since arriving in Paris, I’ve been reflecting on the idealism around ‘La Femme Française Élégante’. The media often romanticizes French women as being effortlessly beautiful without “having to try”. Have you ever reflected on the archetype of La Femme Française?

 

It’s definitely a stereotype. I think it puts a lot of pressure on French women, and Parisian women in particular. Of course it’s a cliché. Of course I think it’s mostly untrue. There are many French women who are very eccentric, who like to play with clothes. Not everyone goes around in jeans, with messy hair and cashmere sweaters – that’s just in the magazines.

But I also think there might be some aspect of French lifestyle that fits the stereotype. I think there’s an emphasis put on self-care. I might just be reinforcing the cliché right now just saying this, but there is this tendency among the French to make the time to have a coffee or a glass of wine with a friend, and it doesn’t matter if your hair is a bit messy because these small pleasures are more important. And I’m really attached to this aspect of French culture.

 

I do see what you’re saying…. yeah, I just wanted to ask because I thought it was interesting.

 

Yeah, it’s interesting. I think there’s also this fantasising about French women because there has been so much art produced about them. Particularly in Paris, like in the work of Victor Hugo. There are so many movies, paintings, books, all about French women. So I think she gets fantasised.

 

At this stage I’m glad Lauren can confirm this inkling I have. La femme française… I feel like her phantom haunts Paris. In the classroom, on walks to college. Even on the metro, men approach you, ‘Mademoiselle, tu sais que je te trouve super mignonne?’. Or the more subtle, ‘Tu as l’air très intello toi, avec les lunettes et tout.’ The straightforward ass-grope is also frightfully commonplace. French feminist Taous Merakshi put it very concisely in a recent interview, ‘C’est la vie quotidienne quoi. Sometimes it rains, and sometimes a man gropes your ass on the metro’.

 

 

When I Google you, one of the main photos that pops up is one with you with this red lipstick on, and you’re wearing a t-shirt saying, ‘Recluse’. You know the one?

 Lauren (Right) with friend and co-writer, Jeanne Damas.

 

Yeah, I know that picture.

 

It’s a cool photo. It prompted me to think about Lipstick feminism. It’s a variety of third-wave feminism that seeks to embrace traditional concepts of femininity, including the sexual power of women. Its goal is to reclaim aspects of femininity that had earlier been seen as disempowering, like makeup or stilettos. 

You’ve mentioned that you do not buy any fast fashion, and you rejected being overly made-up when you worked in television. But what is your opinion of this more subversive form of feminism?

 

I encourage any form of feminism that has the aim of empowering women. The thing that is to be avoided is shame. It’s never okay to shame women for not corresponding to the ‘ideal woman’ – because she’s fat, or she has short hair, or because she doesn’t dress ‘womanly’.

 

But it’s also not okay to shame a woman if she wants to wear a lot of makeup and or show off an incredible, how do you say? Décolletage? 

 

 Cleavage?

 

Yeah, cleavage. And wear high heels and show off her amazing legs. 

 

The goal with my podcast is to empower women to be exactly how they want to be. I’ve had on a lot of sex activists who try to reclaim the right of women to be sexual subjects, not objects. Women who claim their power of seduction and play with their makeup and hair, so lipstick feminism fits into that.

 

But I also think it’s important to protect the rights of women who, for example, want to wear a veil on their head for religious reasons. Basically, there is no one way to be a woman. It’s from that notion that all the problems start.

 

Definitely. And I think that’s what third wave prioritises best. Even though, like you said in that episode you had La Marche, that referring to the movement in ‘waves’ is a kind of flawed.

 

Yes, but it’s practical to have this ‘waves vision’, even if it is not very exact.

 

What have you been reading recently?

 

The book I’m reading right now I’ve been reading for a few weeks, because it’s very deep and intense. It’s called Living A Feminist Life, by Sarah Ahmed. It’s incredible. And I’ve gotten so much out of it. She basically says that when you start to lead a feminist life, you are going to drive yourself crazy. You are going to be very angry. You’re going to have a hard time. You’re going to want to fight people, and the things people say will start to sound aggressive to you, because you suddenly … see. 

 

I’ve felt this way for the last two years, and reading this book has helped me be like, ‘Oh okay. I’m normal’. The author also gives some strategies to survive as a feminist, so it’s helping me a lot.

 

And it’s also helped me understand – even though I thought I’d gotten this part reasonably clear – how privileged I am. The oppressions I have to endure are nothing compared to what lesbian women or women of colour have to endure every day. So Sarah Ahmed has done such an amazing job with this book, and I think every feminist should read it.

 

Oh interesting. Because I tend to feel like, ‘Maybe it’s just because I’m in my twenties. Maybe when I’m a bit older I’ll calm down’. But I don’t even see an end.

 

Yes, she talks about that experience in the book. But she says ‘No. Actually, it’s not going to calm down. And you don’t want it to calm down’. Because anger is responsive. And if you stop responding, nothing is going to change. You just have to live with it and manage it.

 

A question you often ask your guests is when they became a woman, inspired by a line from Simone de Beauvoir’s, Le Deuxième Sexe, ‘on n’est pas né femme, on le devient’. They often discuss a transitional period between girlhood and womanhood.  Although not all those who identify as women experience girlhood, what is your conception of the space between girl and woman?

 

[Eyes widen] Oh, that’s interesting [she pauses]. 

 

I don’t know. I guess, my understanding would be… I really love the work of Monique Wittig, and she wrote this sentence that stirred a controversy at the time, but it was so important. She said, “Lesbians are not women”. By saying that, she meant that lesbians don’t live in domestic spaces in which they have to confront the patriarchy, because they don’t share their lives with men. And there’s no disequilibrium in the way they split the… you know ‘mental charge’.

 

(Note: Mental Load, is a concept popularised French comic artist Emma about when a man expects his partner to ask him to do things, and views her as the manager of their household chores. )

Yes, charge mental, you talked about that on a recent episode with Emma. So interesting. We have so many stereotypes about ‘the crazy multitasking female’. When I heard it I was like ‘Ahh. I know what they’re talking about’, it was just such a relief like, ‘Okay, it’s a thing’.

 

I know. It’s such an important concept. Now obviously she was just referring to the domestic space, but my point is that I think to become a woman is to become a victim of discrimination. There is such a switch between the ‘little girl’ and the girl who is slightly older. I read a study recently and it said that when you ask a 4 or 5 year old girl how she sees herself in the future, she might answer ‘President. A cosmologist. Part-time ballerina and firewoman’. Basically, her answers are infinite. And when you ask the same question to a 9 or 10 year old girl, her perspectives have already shrunken. She doesn’t see as many possibilities for her future. She has already internalised all of the parameters that society has built. So, I guess it’s sad to say this, but my understanding of the space between girl and woman is a transition in which you realise …

 

Your limitations.

 

Yes. Exactly.

 

We then have a small discussion on other books that explore the space between girl and woman, and before I leave I have two requests. First, that she watch Peter Mullan’s stunning The Magdalene Sisters – as it is clear from listening to the podcast that she has is quite the cinephile, and has interviewed women who have won the Certain Regard award at the Cannes Film Festival and the César award. My second request was to fulfill a certain vision of La Poudre – a request that took a bit of convincing.

 

Lauren’s last question in every interview is, “What does the powder evoke to you?” French Singer Songwriter Camille, answered:

 

‘La poudre? Je ne vois pas une poudre explosive. Je vois une poudre, un nuage qui fait pfff. La poudre…’

 

‘The powder? I don’t see an explosive powder. I see the powder like a cloud that goes pfff. Powder, it materialises the air around us. It renders it visible. It shows us that it is fluid, like water. So when powder meets air we suddenly under the impression and that everything is weightless, and that we are underwater.’

 

My intention was to create a photo that might capture that moment. It was unsuccessful.

Many episodes of la Poudre have been dubbed in English, and you can download them from the iTunes store.