This Saturday evening, December 11, the election of Miss France 2022 takes place live in Caen. 29 women compete for the coronation. Contest broadcast on TV every year since 1987. For several years, the Miss France contest has been more and more criticized for the image it returns of the woman, woman-object, drastic rules of age, height, and indirectly of weight. Yet millions of viewers watch it every time.
franceinfo: Jean Viard, how do you explain this paradox?
Jean Viard: Me, I’ve always considered Miss France to be a bit old-fashioned competition, to be honest. It wouldn’t occur to me to attend, etc., because it is indeed a certain idea of woman, a certain idea of beauty. And then there are codes, because it’s more complicated than that, they must not be married, not have had children. Well, it’s barely if we don’t ask them if they are virgins, so there is still, behind, a kind of normalcy of what a young person is, which is still quite culturally coded … is the least we can say.
There is all that, but at the same time, it is a social phenomenon: indeed, I believe that there are 5, 6, 7 million people who will watch the show. So, this is a huge show that thrills the crowds. Me, I would put it away, you know, there is the Tour de France, there are the bullfights, there is the hunting, there are all these subjects which are a little debate, but at the same time, it is the heart of popular culture. It is popular practice. It is the dream of tens of thousands of young girls.
Because we are talking about the regions too?
We talk about regions because it is built on the ground. So there are committees, there are networks, there are young girls who come out of the life that was designed for them, because suddenly, they will go to a competition, they will meet others. people, they spend a week in a dream location to learn posture, etc. So there is all of that.
But it’s always complicated, I was going to say bourgeois bobos, a bit like me, tend to find it a bit ridiculous. And in popular circles, we feel that it remains a tradition that makes sense. And for a lot of young girls, it’s a way to get out of their world, basically to be dazzled with something that will transform them. Because afterwards, even if they passed as Miss Provence, Miss Brittany, etc. or Miss France, their life is marked.
Especially since today, it has evolved a little. The women who take part now have a general culture competition and are studying most of the time. They have life plans, can their career be boosted too?
Yes, we do everything so that they are not only pretty girls, so that they are accomplished young girls to put it in a little classic terms. No, but we made an effort. But it is true that there is the equivalent for men in fact but that does not interest many people, and it is a bit like football. We tend to watch boys’ games. There are girls’ matches. They are also often very good, but for the moment, it attracts less people.
I want to say one thing: “dare feminism”, for example, does not claim the ban of Miss France, but claims that they are paid and say: it is a job. There, for example, the evening on TV, I do not know how much it will bring in advertising, in my opinion, a lot. Basically, the young people who are there do not receive a salary, when indeed, it is all the same they who make the attraction. It’s interesting. This means that “Dare feminism” does not have a radical position either, probably for the same reasons, but tries to put it on the labor market.
In the period we are in, in addition this year we are coming out of the Covid, so we are all completely destabilized, we do not know where we are going, etc. This is not necessarily the time to break traditions which, casually, will rejoice perhaps a third of the French. I also tend to be particularly nice right now, if you like, because I think the world is particularly difficult.
We also talk about tradition, Miss France is often before Christmas, it is in December. But doesn’t a tradition also have to evolve? How do you explain that in Germany, for example, the competition has become very open? You just have to be under 39, and Miss Germany today is a 35-year-old mother. This is an evolution that France is also expecting, perhaps from Miss France?
I don’t know if France is waiting, but I would be happy if we had a slightly more open vision of what beauty and charm actually are. And indeed, that we open, but it is true that on this, we are quite traditional. You know, France is not a country ahead of many normative questions. Look at the right to die at the end of life, things like that. We are generally, I was going to say, the bottom of the class. Even marriage for all, we are not necessarily in advance, so France is not a country in the vanguard at the moral level, and in addition, in the current period particularly, we have a conservative pressure in this country. which is absolutely considerable.