So, a 34 year old miss? It's exactly like a miss of 18. The doubts, the hopes. The light, the shadows. Childishness, maturity. Miss Martinique throws it. This flight attendant with short hair exudes a laughing, reassuring class. Sometimes she seems nervous, like just before the official swimsuit photo of the thirty candidates for Miss France, in the heavenly garden of a hotel for glossy magazines, on the edge of the “Sublime” lagoon – official adjective of the Ministry of Tourism – Ivory Coast, where the Misses were preparing. Perhaps she said to herself that faced with certain young girls who had barely reached the age of majority and were so sure of themselves, Angélique Angarni-Filopon was betting big on this election. The first to exceed thirty years, in the entire history of the competition, and since the rule change two years ago.
“I remain an eternal child,” the flight attendant told us in Abidjan, who took time off to experience this extraordinary adventure at her age. A wounded child: “I have never been the most beautiful. Even the least beautiful. I had braces, my teeth were very forward, and I grew so much in 6th grade that there were no pants in my size. I had friends very late,” she says thoughtfully. More recently, a romantic separation plunged her into depression. What life does to us. The ferocity of the links. Angélique refused to give in. The Francilienne went to Martinique, where she did not grow up, but where all her grandparents live, the setting for so many wonderful vacations. What if she didn't come home this time?
Return to the country, to the roots, to the sun. She had already presented herself, thirteen years ago, in the election of Miss Martinique. Dauphine. Thirteen years to win. “Now it’s really a woman’s desire.” To show yourself. A family story too, with a mother who survived breast cancer and whom she saw suffer in her flesh, affected in what passes for the most feminine. Miss, a school of “beauty” certainly as they all say, but of perseverance and resilience too, this commonplace word.
In a society that grades us from primary school to professional evaluations, this word also says that we can be sunny, feel beautiful, whatever our grade or our ranking in the group of 30, then the 15, the 5 , until the chosen one. There is a lot of sorority, another fashionable word, in this Miss school where everyone sticks together. “I have everything to learn, even from the youngest,” says Angélique. The big sister could well touch the hearts of French women. And show that at 34, you have the right to still be a princess.
