“No one should dictate who you are. » With short hair, Eve Gilles, 20, elected Miss France 2024, Saturday evening in Dijon, made her candidacy the symbol of female diversity during this beauty contest. During the competition, Miss Nord-Pas-de-Calais declared that her only choice of keeping her hair short was a difference compared to the other Misses, all with long hair.
But after her victory, the hair argument was a little different. “I’m not just a haircut,” she said this Sunday morning on TF1. On the subject, the new Miss France also avoids specifying her position on the “beauty” contest in which she participated and which is widely contested by feminists.
“Defend the values of strong women”
Originally from Quaëdypre, a village near Dunkirk, Eve Gilles promised to “defend the values of strong women”. “We experience body shaming on a daily basis, it doesn’t matter. We all have our imperfections. Every woman is different, we are all unique,” she explained at a press conference.
The young girl has Reunionese origins through her mother, Edith. Coming to the North to study, she met Bruno, an expert surveyor in Wormhout, near Dunkirk. Eve has two older sisters. “My family is really, really important. It’s my little cocoon”, she explains in The voice of the North.
A second year student in mathematics and computer science, she first studied medicine to become a neurologist. But she eventually changed her path. She says she worked in an egg factory in Wormhout before returning to her studies. In his video portrait broadcast by TF1 for the election, she explains that she wants to “work in statistics. Nobody likes it, but I do! “.
To within five millimeters
The young woman has several passions: dancing, horse riding, but also documentaries and historical films. His favorite reading is the Sherlock Holmes investigations. Beauty pageants also seem to have always fascinated her. As proof, she published on her Instagram account a photo of herself as a child, with hair falling down to her buttocks and wearing a dress made from newspapers.
Finally, his size almost played a trick on him. When registering for the Miss Hersin-Coupigny competition, in Pas-de-Calais, the height chart first showed 1.695 m, while the minimum height required for the competition is established at 1.70 m. She finally regained the missing millimeters through stretching, she assures.