Over six decades ago, Simone de Beauvoir, renowned French writer and intellectuelle, was interviewed by Wilfrid Lemoine on behalf of Radio-Canada. Although she had only recently ventured into television, Beauvoir seized the opportunity to disseminate her existentialist philosophy beyond the page, discussing women’s liberation and oppressive patriarchal institutions. The 1959 interview was filmed a decade after the publication of Beauvoir’s Le Deuxième Sexe, which would become the ‘bible for women’s movements’ (Kritzman, 2006: 371), and it functions as an ‘epitext’ of Beauvoir’s feminist literature, a term coined by Gérard Genette to describe a public commentary that extends an author’s textual work (1997: 13). Through this genre, Beauvoir harnessed the affordances of the interview to clarify her messages and model a way of feminist communication that bears resemblance to contemporary feminist movements in the digital age.

At a time when contraception and abortion were illegal in France and married women required their husbands’ permission to open a bank account (Moi, 2008: 206), Beauvoir used the emerging medium of the interview to articulate abstract existentialist concepts in a more accessible and politically charged way. She was the first French thinker to ‘explicitly politicize sexuality’, with the view of empowering women to claim their freedom and consequently achieve social and economic emancipation (Moi, 2008: 209).

Yet the interview’s initial censorship illustrates the limited receptivity of the FrenchCanadian public to Beauvoir’s ‘radical’ beliefs about women’s liberation, religion, and marriage. It was not until 1986 that the interview was broadcast, having been withheld out of concern that its controversial topics would provoke public outrage (Radio-Canada, 2021).

Fig. 1 Beauvoir’s cluttered desk shown in Radio-Canada interview

The interview immerses the audience in Beauvoir’s world through both sound and sight, unlocking dimensions unavailable in her literature (Fig.1). The camera lingers on her desk, a cluttered yet inviting melange of essays, books, and a teapot. Beauvoir smiles warmly as she pours water for the interviewer, a small gesture that humanises the intellectuelle (Fig.2). Beyond these brief personal moments, the interview outlines Beauvoir’s existentialist philosophy, emphasising freedom, responsibility, and transcendence and revealing how these principles illuminate women’s oppression.

‘Je ne crois pas d’une manière générale en l’existence d’une nature humaine’, she asserts, alluding to her central idea that ‘on ne naît pas femme: on le devient’ (Beauvoir, 1949: 293).

A woman’s identity, she argues, is forged through lived experiences and interactions within society, rather than innate biological characteristics since ‘there is nothing natural or inherent about woman or femininity’ (Moi, 2008: 203; Andrew, 2003: 31). As a result, a woman holds the responsibility, or burden, of constructing her own meaning in the world (Andrew, 2003: 25). 

Beauvoir also rejects ‘l’éternel féminin’, asserting instead that humans have no predetermined path and are conditioned through socialisation: ‘l’homme est finalement la raison d’être de l’homme, son avenir et la fin même de toutes ces activités’. This perception reflects Beauvoir’s (1949) argument in Le Deuxième Sexe about the exercise of freedom as a prerequisite for women’s liberation and the duality between immanence and transcendence; historically, oppression has confined women to immanence, limiting them to subordinate, passive domestic roles, while men have used their freedom to claim transcendence. To emancipate themselves and reach their potential, women must similarly transcend traditional expectations tied to gender. 

Moi (2008: 229-230) critiques Beauvoir for initially undervaluing the subversive potential of traditional femininity, arguing that in Le Deuxième Sexe she overlooked how traditionally ‘feminine’ identities could serve as a progressive political discourse. By the 1970s, Beauvoir recognised the emancipatory value of ‘independent feminist mobilisation of women as women’ and of emphasis on certain ‘feminine qualities’ (Moi, 2008: 231). The contemporary online ‘bimbo feminist’ movement has taken this idea to the extreme, embracing hyperfemininity and reclaiming stereotypically feminine traits as instruments of empowerment (Sandall, 2024). From a Beauvoirian perspective, these representations risk reproducing the very hegemonic norms they seek to subvert if they are not rooted in authentic, selfdetermined choice but in internalised patriarchal expectations (Moi, 2008: 31).

Moreover, in the interview Beauvoir links her philosophical studies to her loss of faith, which was a factor in Radio-Canada’s decision to withhold the broadcast. She recounts that she stopped believing in God in her early teenage years, influenced by existentialist philosophy and Kant. Following a review of the footage by a group of philosophers and theologians, the footage was censored to prevent offence to Christian audiences (Radio-Canada, 2021). This decision underlines how religious institutions influenced political discourse and regulated the circulation of ideas. In contemporary feminist debates about reproductive rights and women’s bodily autonomy, similar tensions between religion and politics endure. However, France’s secular framework of ‘laïcité’ prohibits direct religious influence on public policy, offering greater protection for women’s freedom than countries such as the USA.

Having challenged dominant religious beliefs, Beauvoir then turns her critical gaze to the institution of marriage, employing her existentialist philosophy to expose it as an oppressive cornerstone of patriarchy. Another highly provocative moment of the interview, which likely contributed to its censorship, was Beauvoir’s bold likening of marriage to prostitution: ‘si deux êtres restent unis de l’un à l’autre par des institutions et par des liens purement extérieurs […] on arrive à quelque chose qui me semble aussi répugnant que peut-être la prostitution’. For her, a marriage devoid of genuine physical or emotional connection lacks both freedom and authenticity, but she welcomes the growing acceptance of divorce in the USA as a step towards liberation. 

Beyond this interview, she critiques oppressive social institutions more broadly in her literature for jeopardising freedom and argues that the traditional institution of marriage condemns women to lifelong subservience to their husbands (Andrew, 2003: 33). Bergoffen (2006: 92-94) observes that Beauvoir was evidently ‘no fan of marriage’, conceiving it as a system that positioned the ‘wife as subject to the husband’. Beauvoir did, however, acknowledge that some women were content within this role as the Other, lacking the desire, or perhaps resources, to transcend it (Bergoffen, 2006: 93). This resonates with the recent online ‘trad wife’ movement, where women embrace their domestic roles as child-bearers and homemakers at the expense of their professional careers, sometimes romanticising a model that historically upheld subjugation. 

Through a Beauvoirian lens, one might interrogate whether this adherence to domesticity stems from genuine freedom of choice or societal conditioning and the subtle coercion of internalised norms. From her existentialist perspective, women should strive to move from immanence to transcendence, exercising freedom to determine their lives. According to Moi (2008: 199), under the weight of the domestic expectations of the 1950s, many French women felt validated and liberated by Beauvoir’s exposure of the oppressive nature of marriage and motherhood. Her ideas in this interview and her exploration of their wider implications in Le Deuxième Sexe provided them with a framework by which they could understand their own oppression and imagine a life beyond domestic subservience (Moi, 2008: 199). While these patriarchal institutions have gradually been dismantled, for instance through widening access to divorce, Beauvoir’s feminist thought remains crucial in challenging patriarchal norms in law and culture and heteronormative family structures.

Fig. 2 Beauvoir smiling as she pours water for the interviewer, Wilfrid Lemoine

To fully grasp how this interview functions as an epitext for Beauvoir’s philosophical ideas, it is helpful to examine the interview itself as a media genre and its unique affordances. Although Beauvoir’s work was rooted in the printed word, she came to acknowledge the value of audio-visual media, therefore occupying a ‘transitional status’ between print and new media (Tidd, 2003: 22). She recognised their dual power as secondary channels to shape public perceptions while amplifying her messages. This 1959 interview marked the beginning of her engagement with audio-visual media, even if it was not published for several decades, and by the early 1970s Beauvoir devoted herself to television projects that had broader outreach, as she became increasingly aware of the limits of ‘the power of the pen’ (Brison, 2003: 203-205). This shift was influenced by Beauvoir’s interactions with young feminists who motivated her to engage more with everyday political struggles and to leverage her position as a high-profile intellectual celebrity (Tidd, 2003: 29).

Beauvoir was one of many intellectuals of the period who harnessed the rise of the interview to control their ‘témoignage’ and mediate their public image (Tidd, 2003: 21). In this 1959 interview, when Lemoine misinterprets Beauvoir’s views on having children, she bluntly yet humorously retorts ‘Non c’est que vous n’avez pas tout à fait bien lu’, pointedly correcting him with a smirk. This interjection not only clarifies misunderstandings of her literary texts but also humanises Beauvoir, presenting her as witty and personable.Throughout the interview, Beauvoir appears more commanding and charismatic than in her written texts, speaking with conviction and often dominating the dialogue. In addition, her repetition of ‘je viens de vous dire’ demonstrates her active engagement in the conversation and a mild frustration at having to reiterate her ideas to the inattentive interviewer. Equally, this constitutes a reminder that female intellectuals often had to assert themselves forcefully to ensure their ideas were heard in a male-dominated sphere (Long, 2013: 14). Her assertive control of the narrative not only underlines her intellectual authority but simultaneously reflects a subtle gendered power reversal, as she confidently interrupts the male interviewer at certain points. Interviews enabled her to cultivate a credible public persona as they represent ‘the most ‘natural’ and ‘authentic’ expression in the radio or television broadcast’, symbolising a verification of the ‘living link between an individual and [their] work’ (Johnson, 2003: 2). 

Beyond shaping her public image, the interview equally served as a means to expand and clarify the philosophical and political context of her texts. This interview provided Beauvoir with a platform to translate complex existentialist theories discussed in Le Deuxième Sexe into more accessible ideas for a wider audience. By 1964, nearly 40% of French homes had TVs, marking a remarkable increase of 400% within just 6 years (Chaplin, 2007: 50). Therefore, Beauvoir’s strategic use of the interview proved highly successful in democratising access to her feminist ideas and broadening her social influence, ultimately bridging the gap between the intellectual and the public (Tidd, 2003). Through this lens we can view this interview as an epitext of Le Deuxième Sexe as the topics discussed in the interview stemmed from the concrete ideas in her text.

Parallels can be drawn between Beauvoir’s use of the interview genre and the role of social media in contemporary feminist activism. Social networking platforms such as X and Instagram enable mass movements such as #BalanceTonPorc, the French equivalent of #MeToo, which amplify women’s voices, challenge patriarchal norms, and mobilise collective action. While Beauvoir spoke out as a single, intellectual voice, digital activism involves connected communities and enables instantaneous and far-reaching dissemination of feminist discourse. However, it should be noted that feminist movements on social media operate within a ‘cadre’ or a framework of manipulative algorithms that may dilute or amplify certain messages. Nevertheless, this comparison reflects the shift in feminist discourse generated by the digital age from an individual thinker to a grassroots approach and demonstrates how different media shape the speed and scale of messages.

In sum, the 1959 Radio-Canada interview exemplifies how Beauvoir extended her philosophical ideas about women’s liberation, religion, and marriage beyond the written word, using audio-visual media to shape her public image, articulate complex philosophical concepts and influence public discourse. The interview complements her written work by translating abstract existentialist concepts into accessible ideas for the public, and together they provide a multidimensional view of Beauvoir’s feminist thought. As an epitext, it simultaneously reflects and amplifies arguments in Le Deuxième Sexe and provides a model for strategic feminist communication. Contemporary social media movements echo some of Beauvoir’s existentialist ideas and aspects of her approach, through their use of new platforms to democratise political discourse and mobilise collective action. Ultimately, the interview demonstrates that the interplay between medium and message is crucial for the effective dissemination and reception of intellectual ideas.

Bibliography:

Primary Source:

Radio-Canada. (2021, April 12). Deux entrevues rares avec Simone de Beauvoir. [online] Radio-Canada. Available at: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1144992/simone-beauvoirecrivaine-philosophe-entrevue-censure-archives [Accessed 25 October 2025].

Appendix:

Fig. 1 & 2: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1144992/simone-beauvoir-ecrivainephilosophe-entrevue-censure-archives

Further reading:

Andrew, B. (2003). Beauvoir’s place in philosophical thought. In: C. Card, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Simone de Beauvoir. pp.24–44.

Beauvoir, S. (1949). Le Deuxième Sexe. Paris: Gallimard

Bergoffen, D. (2006). Marriage, Autonomy, and the Feminine Protest. In: M.A. Simons, ed., Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Critical Essays. Indiana University Press, pp.92–112.

Brison, S. (2003). Beauvoir and feminism: Interview and Reflections. In: C. Card, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Simone de Beauvoir. pp.189–207.

Chaplin, T. (2007). Turning On the Mind: French Philosophers on Television. University of Chicago Press.

Elmhirst, S. (2024). The Rise and Fall of the Trad Wife. [online] The New Yorker. Available at: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-trad-wife [Accessed 29 Oct. 2025].

Genette, G. (1997). Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Grosholz, E. (2004). The Legacy of Simone de Beauvoir. Oxford: Clarendon.

Haigney, S. (2022). Opinion | Meet the Self-Described ‘Bimbos’ of TikTok. The New York Times. [online] 15 Jun. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/15/opinion/bimbotiktok-feminism.html [Accessed 26 Oct. 2025].

Johnson, C. (2003). The Genre of the Interview. Nottingham French Studies, 42(1), pp.1–4.

Kritzman, L. (2006). The Intellectual. In: L.D. Kritzman, B.J. Reilly and M.B. DeBevoise, eds., The Columbia History of Twentieth Century French Thought. New York: Columbia University Press, pp.363–374.

Long, I. (2013). Women Intellectuals in Post-68 France: Petitions and Polemics. Palgrave Macmillan.

Moi, T. (2008). Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sandall, H. (2024). #BimboTok: a critical discourse analysis of hyper-feminine bimbo identities on TikTok. Media International Australia, 193(1).

Tidd, U. (2003). Simone de Beauvoir: the Subject in Question. Nottingham French Studies, 42(1), pp.21–32.