Pehmee

Meriam Trabelsi and Caroline Suinner together form Pehmee, aka the Soft Collective, which campaigns for body peace.
Englisch

Helsinki is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Here you can experience many different worlds within the same hour. That’s the richness of Helsinki.

Caroline Suinner

Meriam Trabelsi and Caroline Suinner together form Pehmee, aka the Soft Collective, which campaigns for body peace. Their mission is to create safe spaces and promote the representation of marginalised bodies. As the base for Pehmee, Helsinki is a place where the collective can nurture its own community and work on social change.

The experience of Helsinki has been central to the friendship between Trabelsi and Suinner. They both share a suburban identity, the harnessing of which as a resource has been part of both of their growth stories. In the suburbs, brownness and blackness are more strongly present than in the city centre. As a result, they do not have to feel like they stand out from the crowd all the time because of their skin colour or identity.

“Kontula and Tapulikaupunki have long been thought of as immigrant districts where lots of people of colour live. Once you are able to break free of the shame of brownness, you can begin to appreciate your own hometown," Meriam Trabelsi says.

Helsinki is the place where they have fallen in love, built a home and countless times returned. The socially organic city resonates especially during the summer, when it offers endless opportunities for being together outdoors. The compact size of Helsinki also lowers the threshold for unexpected encounters.

In addition to sharing a proud suburban identity, the duo describes themselves as “art grannies”. Museums, theatres and staycations are a central part of Helsinki’s cultural life. The maritime nature of their hometown with its islands also appeals to them, and the feeling of space offers the chance to experience many different environments in a seemingly small city.

Although Helsinki can be stiff and things tend to change slowly, the changes are often positive. The Helsinki Central Library Oodi in particular reflects the mentality behind the development of Helsinki, one that favours more inclusive and humane urban planning.