She did it again, but for fun this time. His last experience in Paris “didn’t go well at all. I found myself running down the escalator. People are crazy there ”, smiles, today, Marianna Briançon, 26 years old, breeder elected Miss agricultural 2022, competition organized as part of the Agricultural Show. An event that she wanted to see “since a kid”. So, it was with a smile that she boarded the train bound for the capital, leaving “her mountains” behind for three days. “When it’s flat, I last about two days before feeling homesick,” she says.
“A quiet job, with weekends and holidays”
Will the gilding and velvet seats of the National Assembly, which she must visit on her last day, save her from this feeling? In case of emergency, she can always cast her blue eyes on her handles, where the two peaks are tattooed surrounding the two hundred sheep of the family farm in the Hautes-Alpes, located literally at the end of a road, nestled in a narrow valley. “I made them before leaving for Lyon”, explains the young breeder. “Is that normal? asks Marianna.
Lyon, where she passed after her baccalaureate a DUT communication. Not really a good memory. The Fourrière and Croix-Rousse hills also fell short of the snow-capped peaks of Dévoluy and Charajaille. An internship in Paris ended up convincing her that the city was definitely not for her. “At that time, I thought I wanted to have a quiet job, with weekends and vacations,” summarizes Marianna. She then found a job in Veynes, in the digital service center in the village below, where 3,000 people lived. Three years spent “in the light of neon lights” conclude with a “one-month work stoppage. A burn-out at 25, how can I put it…”, she continues.
Last spring, she convinced her father to take a week’s vacation – his first in thirty years – during which the young woman offered to run the farm, with the help of her cousin. “When I got back, she said, ‘Dad, I’m going to settle down and associate with you. I didn’t see it coming,” recalls the breeder. “I knew she was made for that, even if I hadn’t told her because I always pushed her in her choices without guiding her, but you could see it from a very young age,” he says. filling the mangers of the reformed ewes with hay who, in the ancient stable located under the house, await the arrival of the truck which will drive them away for good.
On the kitchen table, as the sun dips behind the mountain, Marianna lists childhood photos. We see her in the midst of the sheep, at her ease. Sometimes feeding a lamb, sometimes posing, on the straw, in a field. Perhaps, already, a mark of his taste for “modeling”. Between her 18 and her 22 years, she worked, occasionally, with some photographers, and participated in a beauty contest, in Gap. This Miss agricultural competition, she entered it like that, by scrolling on Facebook, not thinking of winning on the first try. Ranked in the top 30 by the public of Internet users, a jury then named it the winner.
“Show a young woman doing”
Marianna intends to use this media exposure “to break the clichés”. By starting by taking it, in abundance. Her Instagram is full of photos of her, chainsaw in hand, on a tractor, in a tank top and a plaid shirt or in an agricultural overall and muddy shoes. “No, farmers are not gruff, lonely, uncultured people. Maybe we don’t have the literary culture as people from the cities understand it, but if you walk around in the forest with my father, he can name each flower, each plant and explain to you in what conditions they grow. “, she continues.
The one who for a time leaned towards communication knows how to use contemporary codes, testifies to this his diversion of “Sweet Talker” Marwa Loud. “I’m a beast of a girl / I have a beast of a bag (of animal feed) / a beast of gova (the tractor) / a beast of work (with a lamb)”. Behind these stagings, the young breeder intends to raise awareness “about the place of women in agriculture. There is still a lot of discourse that says that women are not capable. Me, I want to take advantage of this media coverage to have an impact, to show a young woman in the process of doing “.
And to arouse vocations. A few days ago, Marianna received a letter from a young girl who wants to become a breeder. “It’s for people like that that I play the game,” she illustrates. Still, agriculture needs “young people who settle” and to have political leaders “who put in place measures to allow it”. And to take advantage of his visit to the Salon de l’agriculture, a step that is all the more essential in this presidential election year, to convey the message.
That said, the media fabric remains to some extent incorrigible. “You can be feminine while being a peasant,” she reads in various press articles about her. “Yes, I said it, but it’s a little drunk to be reduced to that”, comments and concludes the young woman. Difficult to fight all the clichés at once.