Two visions of the world clash. For the new president of the company Miss France, Alexia Laroche-Joubert, it is "a feminist program". For many feminists, this is a “sexist” spectacle. And to demonstrate it, they have arguments to make. Young women must measure at least 1.70 m, be single and "representative of beauty", which makes the association Dare feminism say that the criteria for recruiting candidates for the election of Miss France are "discriminatory. ". She therefore announced on Monday that she had seized the industrial tribunal, believing that this "sexist" competition violated labor law.
The association, as well as three women who claim to have had to give up taking the competition because they did not meet the criteria required by the organizers, have decided to "take legal action" on the famous program, broadcast each year in December by TF1. .
The procedure, brought before the industrial tribunal of Bobigny, targets the companies Miss France and Endemol Production, the association said in a press release.
Endemol "uses women to make an extremely lucrative audiovisual program while flouting labor rights", claim the applicants.
The candidates for the crown of beauty certainly do not sign any employment contract with the organizers of the competition.
But their relationship with Endemol must be analyzed as that linking an employee to his employer, says the association, which is based on a 2013 case law, concerning the “Mister France” competition.
"Archaic caricature"
However, the Labor Code prohibits, in a recruitment, any criterion related to "morals, age, family situation or physical appearance", explained to AFP Me Violaine De Filippis-Abate, l advocate of "Dare feminism". Consequently, the applicants ask the labor courts to order the organizers of the competition to remove from their rules these discriminatory clauses, such as those prohibiting smoking in public, or wearing visible tattoos or piercings.
In view of the usual length of the latter, it is unlikely that a decision will be rendered before the next competition, on December 11 in Caen, recognized Me De Filippis-Abate.
Taking up arguments brandished for several years by many activists, “Dare feminism” attributes to the Miss France contest “a negative and retrograde impact on the whole of society”.
In its "annual report on the state of sexism in France", in 2019, the High Council for Equality between Women and Men (HCE), a consultative body responsible for advising the government, had itself qualified the Miss France contest as an “archaic caricature”.
He had denounced in particular the requirement made to the candidates to be single and childless, and even never to have been married.
When questioned, the company Miss France refused to react "immediately" to this procedure.
