Miss France 2024, Miss Nord-Pas-de-Calais, Eve Gilles, on stage after her election in Dijon on December 16, 2023 (AFP / ARNAUD FINISTRE)
With short hair, Miss Nord-Pas-de-Calais, elected Miss France 2024 on Saturday evening in Dijon, made her candidacy the symbol of female diversity during this beauty contest marred by a recent legal conviction for images of candidates topless.
“No one should dictate who you are,” said Eve Gilles, 20, during the competition, making her only choice to keep her hair short a difference from the other Misses, all with long hair.
Originally from Quaëdypre, a village near Dunkirk, Eve Gilles, promised to “defend the values of strong women”.
Miss Nord-Pas-de-Calais, Eve Gilles (L), is crowned Miss France 2024 by Miss France 2023 Indira Ampiot (D), in Dijon, December 16, 2023 (AFP / ARNAUD FINISTRE)
“We experience body shaming on a daily basis, it doesn’t matter. We all have our imperfections. Every woman is different, we are all unique,” she explained at a press conference.
The new Miss France, a second year mathematics and computer science student, has not clarified her position on the “beauty” contest in which she participated and which is widely contested by feminists.
Miss France 2024, Eve Gilles (Miss Nord-Pas-de-Calais), parades on stage during the Miss France 2024 competition in Dijon, December 16, 2023 (AFP / ARNAUD FINISTRE)
Succeeding Indira Ampiot, Miss Guadeloupe and France 2023, Eve Gilles was selected at the end of a great “show”, in the words of Jean-Pierre Foucault, 76 years old and presenter since 1995.
Half of the score is given by the viewers and the other by a jury of seven women.
On social networks, Internet users welcome the choice of a “sublime” woman and criticize the criticism that appeared on the web after the result of the competition.
-Compared to celebrities-
“Maybe the new #MissFrance is not superb in your eyes, but seeing wokism in her because she has short hair…. It’s just ridiculous,” says a fan of the new Miss on X .
“Eve Gilles is the new Miss France 2024, your malicious and useless criticisms will not change that, she is sublime,” launches another on X.
Her short, brown hair and dark complexion have earned the new Miss France, originally from the island of Reunion, a comparison to celebrities such as the American actress Halle Berry, the model Linda Evangelista, the Spanish actress Ursula Corbero or even “old-fashioned Rihanna”, as one Internet user puts it.
Contenders for the title of Miss France 2024 during the ceremony broadcast on TF1, December 16, 2023 in Dijon (AFP / ARNAUD FINISTRE)
The competition took place after a conviction by the Lille court on Tuesday of the TF1 subsidiary, e-TF1, and the Endemol company which then managed the Miss France Company. The cause was the broadcast to nearly eight million viewers of images of two regional Misses, filmed bare-chested on December 15, 2018, by a camera installed without their knowledge.
The organizers had apologized for this “hiccup” but the hitch adds to the controversy surrounding the beauty contest which, despite some reforms, remains highly criticized.
Now a hundred years old, Miss France is a symbol of “success”, assures the Miss France Society. “It’s a social elevator,” says its president Alexia Laroche-Joubert, referring to Misses who have become “businesswomen, doctors or even directors”.
The criteria have also been “modernized”, she assures. A candidate now has no age limit and can be transgender, married, mother… and even tattooed.
Only one trans candidate has so far come forward. She failed in the Miss Paris election in 2022.
– “Hate watching” –
Contenders for the title of Miss France 2024 during the ceremony broadcast on TF1, December 16, 2023 in Dijon (AFP / ARNAUD FINISTRE)
These small revolutions caused the famous hat of Geneviève de Fontenay, a historic figure in the beauty contest, to wobble. Having died in August at the age of 90, a tribute will be paid to her on Saturday evening, casting a modest veil over the stormy relations she had with the current Miss organization.
This “evolution” is, however, still far from satisfying feminists. “It’s ‘feminist-washing’: we remain in a very misogynistic election,” said Mélinda Bizri, of the Human Rights League in Dijon, who is calling for a boycott of the ceremony with many other associations. “Women abuse themselves all their lives to achieve these phantasmagorical criteria, according to patterns that take a very long time to deconstruct,” she emphasizes.
Contenders for the title of Miss France 2024 during the ceremony broadcast on TF1, December 16, 2023 in Dijon (AFP / ARNAUD FINISTRE)
“Miss France is still just as sexist in the principle of classifying women based on beauty criteria,” adds Violaine de Filippis, spokesperson for Dare to Feminism!
However, each ceremony counts among the highest audiences on TF1 (7.1 million viewers last year).
The Miss evening “is always a success because it is first and foremost entertainment”, explains Virginie Spies, media analyst at the University of Avignon, to AFP.
But this success is partly due to “hate-watching”, that is to say “watching what we do not necessarily appreciate in order to be able to criticize it”, defines Ms. Spies.