“I would like to show that the competition is evolving and society too, that the representation of women is diverse, in my opinion beauty is not limited to a haircut or shapes that we have ... or not,” she said on stage, the last comment an allusion to her own willowy figure compared to the other contestants.
Miss France is judged half on public vote and half by a panel of seven female judges.
In the final, Gilles came only third in the public vote – but she was the pick of the jury.
Social media lit up with criticism of the judges’ decision.
“Miss France is no longer a beauty contest but a woke contest which is based on inclusiveness,” one critic wrote on X.
“Maybe the new #MissFrance isn’t gorgeous in your eyes, but seeing wokeism in her because she has short hair ... It’s just ridiculous,” an admirer retorted.
The row took on a political dimension as left-wing MPs came to Gilles’ defence.
“So, in France, in 2023, we measure the progress of respect for women by the length of their hair?” said Sandrine Rousseau, a Green MP who also wears a coupe à la garçonne, or pixie-cut, and is seen as a figurehead in France’s MeToo movement.
Fabien Roussel, national secretary of the communist party, also lent his support to Gilles.
“Support for Eve Gilles, elected Miss France, who is already suffering the violence of a society which does not accept that women define themselves in all their diversity.”
Gilles’ victory comes less than a week after French courts ordered broadcaster TF1 and TV production house Endemol to compensate two Miss France finalists after images of their breasts made it to air during the 2018 competition.
Unaware that a camera had been set up backstage, images of their bare chests were broadcast to an audience of eight million viewers as they were changing costumes.
Each of the women will receive 40,000 euros ($70,245) in compensation.
Lawyers for the women said the images continue to circulate online, notably on pornographic websites.
The Miss France franchise has tried to “modernise” itself by opening up the competition to candidates of any age, along with mothers, wives and trans women.
The first time a trans woman competed in the Miss Paris contest was in 2022. She failed to make it to the finals.
But Melinda Bizri of the Human Rights League in Dijon, described the changes as little more than “feminist-washing”.
“Women have been abusing themselves all their lives to achieve these phantasmagorical criteria, according to patterns that take a very long time to deconstruct,” she told AFP.
