Eve Gilles was elected as Miss France last week, drawing both praise and criticism for her pixie cut. Her win has stirred a flurry of comments on social media, including many negative ones.
20-year-old Eve, hailing from a village near Dunkirk in northern France, was crowned in the city of Dijon in front of 5,000 pageant fans. Half the score was determined by viewers, the other half by a jury of seven women. Some netizens have accused the judges of supporting “wokeness” by picking someone with an “androgynous” look.
Félicitations à Eve Gilles #MissFrance2024 !! ✨ pic.twitter.com/2CDgQ7iyf5— Miss France (@MissFrance) December 17, 2023
But, Elise Legrand, in her hairdressing salon in northern France, was delighted to have contributed to the short haircut that saw one of her customers win the controversial contest. Legrand said she first dared her client, a maths and statistics student, to compete with short hair during the regional qualifiers. “I said, ‘Do it with short hair.’ I almost didn’t really give her the choice,” she told AFP, inside the salon in the neighbouring town of Bergues.
Legrand said it sent a positive message. “It’s a change from the stereotype of girls with long hair,” she said. It says, “If your hair is short, if it’s fine, whether you are slimmer or a bit curvier, you’re still feminine.” She said she believed the haircut heightened the contestant’s femininity, “highlighting her face and showing off her eyes”.
A spokesperson for the Miss Universe pageant also defended Gilles in a statement to People Magazine. “There is no one way to be Miss Universe or Miss France, and we embrace every look that comes across our stage. We represent the times, and being your confident unique self is the one thing we see being reflected in all of our winners,” the statement read.
On Monday, Greens member of parliament Sandrine Rousseau said she was “stunned” by some of the remarks. “Our hair and what we do with it, the way we style it, is none of men’s business,” she wrote on X. “No one should dictate who you are,” Eve had declared after her win. “We’re used to seeing beautiful Misses with long hair, but I chose an androgynous look with short hair,” she said after her victory Saturday night, adding that every “woman is different, we’re all unique.”
(With agency inputs)
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