The actress Suzanne de Baecque took advantage of a program at the Ecole du Nord in Lille, where she was a student actress, to enter the Miss Poitou-Charentes competition. Seriously. The apprentice actress slipped into this competition in 2020, sometimes hiding her microphone to best transcribe the speeches heard behind the scenes “as in Cash Investigations “, she has fun with 20 minutes. Failed after three stages, she collected the testimonies of the participants, guided by her questions. How, while a new feminist voice is being born, to be freed, can one want to become Miss? What is behind these bodies that the Miss France organization manufactures?
This experience resulted two years later in Stand up, a documentary theater performance embodied by Suzanne herself and by Raphaëlle Rousseau. A few days before the election at the end of which will be designated Miss France 2023, the actress looks back on this experience and the lessons she taught her.
How did you come up with the idea of trying this experience of miss for your theatrical project?
While we were shopping in a supermarket with my father-in-law, he saw a poster for the Miss Poitou-Charentes competition. He said to me “Ah well, if you don’t have your competitions, you can register for Miss Poitou! “. When I was little, I watched a lot of Miss France, it’s a universe that was familiar to me, and I love everything that is girly, the show…. So I started watching how a Miss France election went, a regional election, what it looked like and I signed up.
What were the first steps to take?
I sent a file with photos of me. You had to answer a form, some of the questions of which seemed a little out of place to me. We ask you your height, the color of your eyes, if you have tattoos, why you want to introduce yourself to Miss Poitou-Charentes, your dream, if you smoke, and if so, is it is a problem for you not to smoke in public… Participating in the local election interested me because there is a much more artisanal side. I saw it clearly during the next stage, that of the casting where you have to prepare yourself, with your own dress. I noticed that between the first regional election and the final election, faces change a lot. Justine Dubois, the Miss Poitou-Charentes elected when I took part in the contest, did the casting with me. When I saw her on TV at Miss France, I recognized her, but she was no longer the same person….
A long passage of your play is devoted to the coaching of Misses. Why did this moment particularly mark you?
I was impressed by the protocol that conditions the girls to act in a certain way. We were taught to walk, to parade, to smile, to look the jury in the eye, all while calling each other by numbers. The context in which I took the exam was special because it was during the Covid-19 epidemic. The election was to be canceled and they said to themselves: “Good to go, we’re doing it anyway, we have a little slot there in July between two confinements.” It was like a mini-election behind closed doors. There was really just a poor speaker playing Rihanna at full speed with a gym light while we paraded in swimsuits that fit in the buttocks… Without the decorum that we know from Miss contests, it was a bit creepy.
What was your reaction to the announcement of your elimination at the end of this stage?
After receiving the email telling me that I was not taken, I did not know what I was going to do because I wanted to continue my project. So I contacted all the girls who were in my casting via Instagram so that we could meet.
Did this allow you to put names on these numbers encountered during the contest?
Yes. Today I look at them with much more benevolence because I saw the people behind the window. Behind this girl who walks the same as Aquitaine, passed a few seconds earlier, there is an incredible life…
How did this experience influence your vision of this type of competition?
On several levels, it really thwarted all my preconceptions. I found these competitions a bit old-fashioned, comic-outdated and then hyper misogynistic, alienating. These are girls who are caught in bodily alienations from a fairly violent norm. When I met them, I saw that some of these things exist. During the competition, all expression must disappear, you must be in the mould. And the candidates accept that. But I was surprised that these girls had very singular life paths and each time their participation is a process of empowerment.
Is it a form of awareness of the problematic side of the Miss France device?
They are not fooled by the system but they believe they have reasons to participate. Whether it’s to regain their competitive spirit after having stopped sport, to feel good about themselves again after an illness… Or quite simply because they love the show and want to be part of it.
It is also a way to benefit from a megaphone and to be heard…
When you become Miss France, your life changes. It’s a form of highlighting, which is even a little scary but also makes girls completely fantasize from the very first stages. What is paradoxical is that at the same time they do so in singular ways of taking power, of their lives, of their ideas, to rise up, to make themselves heard, except that the discourse that is requested in the competition is hyper normalized. It’s the place of expression that poses a problem, the staging. In truth, you can’t really express yourself because it’s very codified.
Should these codes be broken?
I think the show can’t do it. She’s not the place for that. At that point, we would need a complementary documentary that follows each of the candidates. Here we are in a beauty contest… But it would be interesting for us to really know who are the ones who are presenting themselves, beyond a prefabricated portrait which hardly lasts a minute.
Diane Leyre, elected Miss France 2022, said after her election: “I have never felt so feminist as when I made Miss France.” Miss France and feminism are they not contradictory?
This quote really raises questions. At the same time, we could show much more feminist things than a parade in swimsuits on TF1 in front of Jean-Pierre Foucault and at the same time there is something very feminist in there. The girls say: “I decide to show my legs, to show my body…” It’s the same courage as going on stage to do a show and it takes courage (laughter).
How do they experience the gaze of the Misses and the critics?
One of the girls I met told me: “Obviously there are perverts who watch Miss France just for that but it’s not the majority and that’s not why we the fact.” They should not be taken for lambs nailed to the pillory, there is nothing sacrificial in their approach. I discovered that Miss France is also a show, it’s not just a show where we judge the physique of girls. The problem is how it is recovered for television. They have one minute and a half to talk about themselves so they obviously don’t talk about it, they don’t have time. The recovery of TF1 is not that they want to lie but ultimately they lie by omission to make money. There are girls who arrive with fairly clear dreams, but for the channel, above all, you have to capitalize on the girls’ bodies.
Do you think the competition still has a reason to exist?
It’s like the star Academy, it’s there to make people dream. Obviously all this is a hyper backward decorum and at the same time it gives a chance to girls. I don’t think abolishing Miss France would make sense because it creates dreams. Dreams that are a bit normalized, a bit boring and a bit problematic, but putting dreams in people’s heads is super important. The girls I met, they were full of desire for something that suddenly put them in motion.