Miss France has exposed the pain caused by thousands of sexist trolls who claimed that her “boyish” haircut did not meet traditional French beauty standards.
Eve Giles faced an avalanche of online abuse after her victory, which became a symbol of the “woke” among the far right in France.
The seismic reaction to winning the national beauty pageant was mainly due to one thing: in its 103-year history, Gilles was the first winner to have the tiara placed on a head with short hair.
Many of the 9.1 million people who attended the contest final took to social media to personally criticize Gilles' victory. Some questioned whether it was a “joke,” while others asked, “Do the people who voted for her have shit in their eyes?”
The math student herself and her pixie haircut are at the center of the country's escalating culture wars, as some called her a “victory for diversity” while others complained that the competition “doesn't work anymore.” “. [based on] beauty… [but] about inclusion.”
The trolls who targeted the young woman's appearance did not stop at her hair. The 20-year-old also faced criticism for her body, with some calling her “skin and bones” and “flatter than a cutting board.”
For any young woman, one or two of these passing comments would be paralyzing, but Giles had to deal with a “tsunami” of them.
“I was not aware [of criticism] immediately because I didn't have my phone with me, but then my friends started telling me,” he said. The times.
“It was like a tsunami was approaching from behind: you don't see it but you know it's right here. And sometimes it has been very difficult. “I'm human and at first, especially, it was very disturbing for my mother.”
Gilles addressed comments about her hair at the time, describing her appearance as “androgynous” and a departure from the previous “beautiful young ladies with long hair” that the French public was accustomed to.
She said: “No one should dictate who you are… every woman is different, we are all unique.”
Speaking from Nord-Pas-de-Calais in northern France, Gilles added that it was the body-shaming comments that impacted her more than the furor over her hair, saying: “I chose my hair. I didn't choose my body or my metabolism. “It was body shaming.”
Finally, Gilles made peace with the fact that she, nor any woman, will be good enough for the sexist voices on the Internet and instead decided to “take over” her life.
“[The abuse] It's like a wave. It’s stop, start, stop, start,” he told the newspaper. “I have to let them do what they want, because if I focus on them I won't focus on what I want to do.
“In any case, according to them, no woman is good enough: the hair is too long or too short. Whether your eyes are blue or brown, there is always something wrong. But you can't listen. You just have to take advantage of your life.”
Gilles cut her hair at age 16, much to the dismay of her mother, who encouraged her by complaining that her locks ended up on her family's couch.
She has spoken of her love for the short, blunt haircut she still sports.
However, her hair may be the least interesting thing about her, as President Macron named her an “ambassador” of mathematics to increase interest in the subject among French girls.
She had been studying mathematics and computer science at the University of Lille when the beauty pageant shot her to fame, but she still dreams of becoming a statistician.
Speaking about how this intellectual side of her translates into the success of her beauty pageant, she said: “Miss France gives a woman the opportunity to talk about whatever she wants; For me it's cyberbullying and math. Before she was a girl in a small town, working in a factory, that no one cared about.
“Now for a year I have had a voice and people listen to me. Everyone knows who Eve Gilles is. Next year I will pass on the crown, like a fairy godmother, and another Miss France will be able to talk about whatever she wants.”
