Miss France 2025 will be crowned Saturday evening on TF1, from Poitiers, among thirty candidates with for the first time a thirty-year-old, while the Netherlands decided on Thursday to scuttle their beauty contest, judged to be from another time.
Always in the crosshairs of feminist associations denouncing a “misogynistic and old-fashioned” tradition, the Miss France election continues its transformation with the lifting this year of all age limits.
Flight attendant, Angélique Angarni-Filopon, 34 years old, Miss Martinique 2024, is the first “eldest” of the contenders for the 95th Miss France ceremony. The candidacy of a 52-year-old woman, however, did not go beyond the regional level this year.
Since 2022, the competition has also been open to women in relationships or mothers. The overhaul of the regulations also authorizes applications from transgender women “with change of marital status”. According to the organizers, only one reported case occurred during the Miss Paris election in 2022.
In the Netherlands, the national miss election will now be replaced by highlighting successful women “to celebrate real life, without the pressure to conform to a perfect image, no dresses or crowns but dreams that come to life,” Monica van Ee, the former director of Miss Netherlands, announced on Thursday.
For Frédéric Gilbert, president and producer of the Miss France company, “the competition allows women to be highlighted in the greatest diversity, for more than three hours live.”
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“From now on, audience peaks are achieved when candidates speak, not when they parade in swimsuits!” Mr. Gilbert told AFP on Saturday.
“The success of Miss France is atypical, a cultural exception in Europe with 7 to 8 million viewers, and audience peaks of 9 million. The profiles of the candidates change with doctors, engineers or gendarmes,” says the producer of the ceremony is congratulated.
For Aliénor Laurent, spokesperson for the association Dare to Feminism!, “eliminating a beauty contest like Miss Netherlands or Miss France goes in the right direction. We must put an end to this society of the woman as an object, of patriarchy , of the representation of women as it still is”.
“Replacing a beauty contest with highlighting inspiring women once a year, as in the Netherlands, is still not satisfactory. It would be more effective to highlight women in school programs and in space public. We should not be surprised to see inspiring women,” added Ms. Laurent.
Chaired this year by the singer Sylvie Vartan, the Miss France 2025 jury, once again 100% female, brings together the Olympic champion Marie-José Pérec, the host and stylist Cristina Cordula, the dancer Fauve Hautot, the comedian Nawell Madani, the pianist Khatia Buniatishvili and ex-Miss France Flora Coquerel. Enlisted for the thirtieth consecutive time, the unmistakable Jean-Pierre Foucault, 77 years old, will present the competition with the theme “the grand ball of Misses”.
Among the 30 candidates who will vie for the Miss France crown, Manon Le Maou, 28 years old, Miss Franche-Comté 2024, non-commissioned gendarme, Romane Agostinho, 27 years old, Miss Auvergne, animal osteopath, and Mélissa Atta Bessiom, 25 years old, Miss Pays-de-la-Loire, artificial intelligence project manager in a French luxury group.
