Marie Le Conte

London

Journalist and Writer at Freelance

hard-working dilettante / freelance journalist & author / sometimes on the radio / [email protected] / 🇫🇷🇲🇦

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Articles

The charlatans are clearly here to stay

2 weeks ago | theneweuropean.co.uk | Marie Le Conte

For a little while, it looked like the US were the exception. Americans voted for a hard- right populist and things went about as well as expected, and so he got voted out again. A term later, however, just about enough people decided that, actually, they just hadn’t had enough yet, and so they brought the charlatan back into power. We, on the old continent and elsewhere, wondered if the electorate or the candidate were to blame.
All hail Lady Gaga, the weird sister of pop!

2 weeks ago | newhumanist.org.uk | Marie Le Conte

There rarely is only one Lady Gaga. The video for “Disease”, the first proper single from her new album Mayhem, opens with her in a white dress, lying on the hood of a car. It is being driven, we soon find out, by another version of her, this time dressed in black. The two Gagas sing at each other menacingly for a while, from either side of the windshield. Eventually, a third Gaga appears, and drags white Gaga away. The pair end up fighting on the pavement, then running away. Black Gaga looks on.
Marie Le Conte: ‘It’s not enough to say rugby bored me… I couldn’t even bring myself to despise it’

3 weeks ago | observer.co.uk | Marie Le Conte

The afternoon started well with a cold beer while listening to The Clash, but then the match started I am against dating apps as I believe that love ought to be found in unexpected places, and playing it safe never does you any good. I repeat this to myself like a mantra on the way to south-west London, an area I dislike, to watch rugby, a sport Iʼm convinced I will loathe.
Everything you do is wrong

3 weeks ago | theneweuropean.co.uk | Marie Le Conte

The last straw isn’t meant to be the biggest or most important one – that’s the whole point. Still, despite knowing this, I couldn’t help but feel quite gently hysterical as I lost my mind reading about fish. As you may or may not have seen, a Guardian investigation published recently revealed that most British supermarkets sell seabass and seabream, which are linked to “devastating overfishing in Senegal”.
Dilettante: When is it the right time to leave home?

3 weeks ago | theneweuropean.co.uk | Marie Le Conte

It was, in retrospect, completely mad. I still can’t believe they let me get away with it. In fairness to them, I didn’t really give them a choice: at the age of 17, I went to my parents and informed them that I had applied to several universities in Britain and none in France. If they wanted me to continue studying, they would have to let me cross the Channel a few months later. If they didn’t: to McDonald’s I’d go. They were about as pleased with the choice as you’d imagine.
How to stop rape culture

4 weeks ago | theneweuropean.co.uk | Marie Le Conte

You have almost certainly heard of the court case that made the headlines in France for several years, concerning actor Gerard Depardieu. You probably even know that, last week, he was found guilty of sexually harassing two women on the set of a movie, and given a suspended jail term of 18 months. There is one thing you may have missed, however. It doesn’t seem like much on the surface: a mere 1,000 euro fine, which Depardieu must now pay to each of the defendants.
Am I welcome in Britain?

1 month ago | theneweuropean.co.uk | Marie Le Conte

I was, as it happens, in the hall when Theresa May talked about “citizens of nowhere”. I didn’t really pick up on the line at the time, probably because I was stressed, and nursing a light hangover. It was conference after all. I read the script afterwards, trying to find lines I’d missed while watching the speech live, and that’s when it hit me. Was I a citizen of nowhere? Yes, yes, I obviously was. I was born in Nantes, in western France, but my parents were from elsewhere.
Dilettante: The government which actively loathes its own voters

1 month ago | theneweuropean.co.uk | Marie Le Conte

Do I smell? I shower every day, but am I one of those people whose stench still somehow lingers for a few minutes after I’ve gone? Is it my hair? Is my hair horrible, but I’ve spent so much time with it on my head – a whole life, in fact – that I can’t tell it’s unbearable to look at? Is it my breath, the way I speak, the way I look, a combination of all of the above? I ask because I’m assuming there is something wrong with me.
It’s time to decriminalise abortion

1 month ago | theneweuropean.co.uk | Marie Le Conte

It is, if anything, remarkable that it hasn’t happened yet. Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi should be applauded for her amendment to the crime and policing bill, of course, but it feels incredible that it is needed at all. If it passes, it will remove “women from the criminal law related to abortion”, and would mean “no offence is committed by a woman acting in relation to her own pregnancy”.
Dilettante: The blind faith of old-school photography

1 month ago | theneweuropean.co.uk | Marie Le Conte

You know, I don’t think I could actually tell you when it began. Was it in France? It might have been. There was that festival in Brittany, in the summer of 2009, and I do remember us buying some flimsy disposable cameras for the occasion. That’s when the seed was first planted into my head, I reckon. Without really meaning to, I guess I just started carrying a disposable around after that. I didn’t put much thought into it; it just happened.