A row has erupted over the winner of this year’s Miss France contest having short hair.
Eve Gilles, who has a pixie cut and was crowned the winner at a ceremony in Dijon on Saturday, is receiving support online from politicians in France after messages criticising her hair were posted on social media.
The 20-year-old is reportedly the first contestant with short hair ever to win the competition, which has been running for more than 100 years.
After her victory, she hailed a win for “diversity”, according to French media reports.
“No one should dictate who you are,” Le Monde quoted her as saying. “We’re used to seeing beautiful Misses with long hair, but I chose an androgynous look with short hair.”
She added that every “woman is different, we’re all unique”.
However, her win was criticised by some online, with one X user saying Miss France “is no longer a beauty contest but a woke contest based on inclusiveness”. Another wrote: “It is no longer beauty that we judge but rather the Woke ideology of this ultra-feminist woman.”
Supporting Gilles, Green MP Sandrine Rousseau wrote: “I’m shocked by the comments on #MissFrance2024 I didn’t imagine we were there. Our hair, and what we do with it, how we style it, is none of men’s business.”
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Fabien Roussel, national secretary of the French Communist Party, also commented, writing: “Support for Eve Gilles, elected Miss France, who is already suffering the violence of a society which does not accept that women define themselves in all their diversity.”
Gilles was representing Nord-Pas de Calais, a region in northern France.
She was crowned the winner in front of 5,000 pageant fans, with half the score determined by viewers and the other half by a jury of seven women, according to Le Monde.