Are Miss competitions still popular in Belgium?

For the 2022 Belgian edition, there were only 40,000 in front of their television sets, compared to 470,000 in 2011. ©Belga Images

One thing is certain, the public is responding less and less to the call. For the Belgian edition of 2022, there were only 40,000 in front of their television sets, compared to 470,000 in 2011. We could mention the virtual monopoly of Flemish candidates, but the audiences are not more glorious in the North of the country. Some believe that the show needs to be modernized, offering a more dynamic pace with subtitles to avoid time-consuming Dutch-French translations. This could partly explain why the show continues to unite on the French side, where it sometimes looks more like a show of the famous Victoria’s Secret brand, all in sequins, in a great frenzy of kitsch and glamour. And we must also admit that television, in general, has lost its aura.

But all is not lost if we are to believe certain press headlines like SudInfowhich boasted of having brought together “more than 500,000 people to follow the election” of Miss 2022. Behind this number, we find the number of clicks, views per video… This therefore does not represent the number of unique users. But it is still indicative of a constant: the competition is debated. And it is perhaps there, at the heart of the controversies, that lies the key to its longevity.

A well-hidden secret of evolution

Let’s be frank, we’re not carrying on with our bag of chips, sprawled on our sofa criticizing a flyaway strand or an over-plucked eyebrow. And beyond the easy pleasure that this constitutes, criticism and gossip are in fact components which have allowed the human species to survive. Formerly, “it was not enough for men and women to know the comings and goings of lions and bison”, explains the writer of the bestselling book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humanity. In fact, heIt was much more important for them to know who hates who, who sleeps with whom, who is honest and who is a liar in the group”.

Thanks to gossip, the human species was able to transmit stories, which, like the tales of our childhood, carried messages from generation to generation. Well, the internet does it very well today, but that’s not the only virtue of gossip. This activity also makes it possible to strengthen ties with a third party, by taking them into their confidence and indirectly presenting to them the behaviors considered deviant by the group, thus revealing to them a key to integrating into it. Okay, enough anthropology and sociology. Let’s get back to our flat stomachs and our perfectly shaved bikini line.

Perhaps these critiques allow us to distance ourselves from the aesthetic dictates claimed by these competitions. Aren’t the most coveted top models also the subject of all the diatribes? Certainly, the organizers were obliged to modernize one or another rule of the competition and above all to be attentive to diversity. Portugal, for example, elected a transgender Miss, but you will notice that she still corresponds to the most coveted beauty criteria. The minimum height has been lowered to 1.70 m, married women are authorized to participate… Moreover, the Miss France competition almost lost its feathers when the French association Dare to feminism! had seized the Industrial Tribunal against him. The reasons? A competition deemed “sexist”, which violates labor law and which is discriminatory. In fact, the Misses were not yet paid before 2021 for their month of preparation. Now, one or another physical criterion has been relaxed and they receive 84 euros per day.

Feminist or not?

But although there is an emphasis on the sometimes impressive intellectual ambitions and achievements of the contestants, it remains a beauty contest. And you will have noticed that its male counterpart does not exist. The president of the Miss France company had also gotten rid of the question with the back of her hand, and with a laconic response: “No, we already don’t have the rights to the show and then, because I find that with men, it quickly turns into a display of muscles. It’s vulgar.” Yes, since a swimsuit parade is exquisitely refined. However, many feminist associations agree on one point: there is no point in blaming the candidates, the problem is systemic, and they have the right to to use their bodies and their time as they see fit. Perhaps they are not wrong after all: using the cogs of an oppressive system to create a career opportunity, why not?

This is perhaps also what makes viewers dream: the fable of a young provincial woman, beautiful and talented, who, in the space of one evening, is granted the benefits of a social class that she previously believed to be unattainable. But for others, these ribbons in the name of their province reflect the image of an exhibition object of a locality, of a decorative good which, through its exhibition, conveys from generation to generation a message to women: for succeed, be tall, thin, with perfect hair. In short, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and you still have time to think about it since the Miss Belgium competition will take place on February 24.