by Stefano Montefiori, correspondent from Paris
The beauty pageant and the request of the association “Osez le feminisme” rejected by a court: it does not violate any code to require a minimum height from the participants
PARIS The organizers of Miss France have the right to require candidates to be at least 1.70 meters tall. The protests of feminists were rejected: According to the Arbitration Court of Bobigny near Paris, the Miss France election does not violate the Labor Code with discriminatory rules .
The court found the organizers right and the association Osez le feminisme wrong, which went to court in October 2021 on behalf of three rejected candidates because they did not meet the required criteria. The feminist association “takes note of an unacceptable decision that continues a discriminatory and unlawful selection process” and is considering the possibility of appeal. “According to the regulation, a candidate must be at least 1.70 meters tall, not smoke or drink alcohol in public – explained Osez le feminisme lawyer Violaine De Filippis-Abate at the time of the complaint – behave “elegantly”, not having tattoos larger than 3 centimeters, not publicly mocking politics,” conditions feminists say constitute discrimination in the workplace.
However, Alexia Laroche-Joubert, producer of the show and president of the company Miss France, had changed the conditions of participation for the competition last June. “All I ask is that young women are over 18, that they are at least 1.70m tall – because they wear designer clothes and there is a minimum height requirement – and that their marital status remains female. In order to uphold the spirit of Miss France values, applicants must not have directed pornographic films or have made any statements punishable by law.” Allowed tattoos and also being married or divorced.
The competition was founded in 1920 by Belgian-born journalist Maurice de Waleffe, who wanted to reward the “most beautiful woman in France” with the idea that “the choice of the majority indicates a nation’s instinctive type”. A century later, the event is often a source of controversy – like in 2019, when the not-very-thin Polynesian Vaimalama Chaves was awarded – but it still gets good reviews. Like last December 17, when seven million viewers watched the coronation of Indira Ampiot, 18, former Miss Guadeloupe and winner of Miss France 2023, on Tf1 (the first private French channel), associations like Osez have been denouncing anachronism and feminism for years Sexism of a competition between girls based above all on the criterion of beauty, but the court of Bobigny – the reasons for which will be known in the next few days – has shown itself sensitive to the thesis of the producer Alexia Laroche-Joubert, who in turn accuses the Feminists of anachronism and “archaism”: “I’m fed up with these blamings on the young women who voluntarily take part in the program. Yes, that is archaic: ignoring the fact that women can choose what they want to do with their lives.”
Jan 8, 2023 (change Jan 8, 2023 | 3:18pm)
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