The Miss France 2024 pageant concluded in scandal after a contestant with short hair won for the first time in its 103-year history.
Eve Gilles, 20, from Nord-Pas-de-Calais in northern France, was declared the winner on Saturday night and claimed it was a positive result for “diversity” in the pageant.
“We’re used to seeing beautiful Misses with long hair, but I chose an androgynous look with short hair. No one should dictate who you are… every woman is different, we’re all unique.”
Plenty of people online commented that Gilles was following the rich tradition of French short hair fashion, from Mistinguett to Coco Chanel. Others described her victory as a “woke” choice by the contest jury, with one X user trying to argue that the result was based “no longer [on] beauty… [but] on inclusiveness.”
The competition final attracted a peak audience of 9.1 million people on TV, meanwhile the hashtag #MissFrance2024 became one of the most popular on X.
Some people, such as Violaine de Filippis, spokesperson for the Dare Feminism! association, stated that the concept of such beauty pageants was inherently sexist, regardless of the winner’s choice.
Miss France is still just as sexist in the way it classifies women according to beauty criteria.
Melinda Bizri of the Human Rights League in Dijon called the result “feminist-washing.”
“Women have been abusing themselves all their lives to achieve these phantasmagorical criteria, according to patterns that take a very long time to deconstruct.”
