Miss Nord-Pas-de-Calais candidate Eve Gilles was elected Miss France 2024 on Saturday evening as the successor to Indira Ampiot (Miss Guadeloupe).
Published on: December 17, 2023 – 12:16 p.m
4 mins
Miss Nord-Pas-de-Calais was elected Miss France 2024 on Saturday evening in Dijon in front of 5,000 fans who still believe in the “fairy tale” in the face of allegations of a “sexist” competition, reinforced by a recent court conviction because of images of candidates filmed topless in 2018.
Eve Gilles, 20, from Dunkirk, made her candidacy a symbol of female “diversity”. “Nobody should tell you who you are,” she said during the pageant, claiming her short-cropped hair was different from the other misses, who all wore long hair.
The new “beauty queen”, who succeeds Indira Ampiot – Miss Guadeloupe – was chosen by viewers for half of the rating and by a jury of seven women for the other half. The young woman was chosen after a big “show,” said Jean-Pierre Foucault, 76 years old and presenter since 1995.
“It makes me dream! Since I was little, I haven't missed a single ceremony,” testifies Emma from Dijon, 22 years old, who finally came to the competition in her city with her most beautiful sequin dress instead of just watching it on TF1. “The Misses are incredibly lucky. It's a fairy tale,” shouts her friend Sylvie, 23, unable to sit still in her seat in the Zénith auditorium.
However, the competition comes after a conviction by the Lille court on Tuesday of TF1 subsidiary e-TF1 and Endemol, which then managed the Miss France Company. The reason was the broadcast on December 15, 2018, of images of two regional misses who were filmed bare-chested by a camera installed without their knowledge to almost eight million viewers.
Organizers had apologized for the “hiccup,” but the incident deepened the controversy surrounding the beauty pageant, which, despite some reforms, remains heavily criticized.
Miss France, now 100 years old, is a symbol of “success,” assures the Miss France Society. “It is 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 restriction and can be transgender, married, mother… and even tattooed. So far only one trans candidate has registered. She failed in the Miss Paris 2022 election.
These small revolutions shook the famous hat of Geneviève de Fontenay, a historical figure in the beauty pageant. After she died in August at the age of 90, a tribute will be paid to her on Saturday evening that casts a modest veil over the stormy relationship she had with the current Miss Organization.
The ladies’ evening “is always a success”
However, this “evolution” is still far from satisfying feminists. “It's 'feminist washing': we continue to find ourselves in a very misogynistic election,” said Mélinda Bizri of the Human Rights League in Dijon, which, along with many other associations, is calling for a boycott of the ceremony. “Women abuse themselves all their lives to achieve these phantasmagoric criteria, according to patterns that take a very long time to deconstruct,” she emphasizes.
“Miss France is still just as sexist in the principle of classifying women based on beauty criteria,” adds Violaine de Filippis, spokesperson for Dare Feminism!.
However, each ceremony has some of the highest viewership on TF1 (7.1 million viewers last year).
The Miss Evening “is always a success because it is, first and foremost, entertainment,” Virginie Spies, a media analyst at the University of Avignon, told AFP. But this success is partly due to “hate-watching,” that is, “observing what we don’t necessarily value in order to be able to criticize it,” defines Virginie Spies.
It is “a popular culture,” defended the PS mayor of Dijon, François Rebsamen, during the municipal council on September 25, where the arrival of the Misses was heavily criticized.
“This show still conveys a rather sexist image of women, not only among little girls and young viewers, but also among little boys and young viewers,” criticized the municipal commissioner for gender equality, Kildine Bataille (Presidential Majority). ).
With AFP