The Miss France competition, for its 95th edition and the first time in its history, crowned a thirty-year-old candidate on Saturday evening, Miss Martinique 2024, Angélique Angarni-Filopon, aged 34.
Her victory in the Miss France competition was made possible by an overhaul of the regulations two years ago. Under pressure from critics, the organizers lifted any age limit – previously set at 24 years – and opened applications to married women and mothers.
At 34, Angélique Angarni-Filopon, flight attendant, who was elected Miss Martinique 2024, becomes the oldest winner in the history of the Miss France competition. She was elected from among 30 candidates, the youngest of whom was 18 years old.
Angélique Angarni-Filopon had already presented herself in the Miss Martinique election in 2011, in the Caribbean. She decided to re-apply this year when the competition was modernized.
“In 2011, a young woman aged 20 finished first runner-up in the Miss Martinique competition. Today, it is this same young woman of 34 years who stands before you to once again represent Martinique, its diaspora as well as all the women who were told one day that it was too late” , she said during the ceremony which took place in Poitiers, in western France.
The Miss France 2025 election was held while the Netherlands decided to scuttle their beauty contest, believing that it was “no more of this time”.
In the Netherlands, the Miss National election will now be replaced by highlighting successful women “to celebrate real life, without the pressure of conforming to a perfect image”, announced Monica van Ee, the former director of Miss Netherlands, on Thursday.
For the French association Dare Feminism!, this “is going in the right direction: we must put an end to this society of the woman as an object”, Aliénor Laurent, spokesperson for the association, told AFP.