PARIS: A Paris court backed organisers of Miss France in a judgement on Friday that dismissed claims from a feminist group the beauty pageant was discriminatory in the way it selected candidates, one of the plaintiffs said.

The Osez le feminisme (Dare to be a Feminist) group, along with three failed contestants, filed a suit against the promoters and producers of Miss France in Oct 2021, alleging they were breaking French labour law.

The plaintiffs argued that the companies were discriminatory by obliging aspiring beauty queens to be more than 1.70 metres (five feet, six inches) tall, single, and “representative of beauty”.

The labour court in the Paris suburb of Bobigny rejected their arguments, Osez le feminisme said in a statement, “an intolerable decision that extends a recruitment process that is discriminatory and illegal”.

The group said it would wait to see the arguments underpinning the decisions before deciding whether to appeal.

Miss France came under attack in 2021 from then gender equality minister, Elisabeth Moreno, who denounced the competition’s “outdated rules… which can be discriminatory”.

The latest pageant last month involved fewer eligibility requirements, which had also previously restricted entry to women between the ages of 18 and 24 without children.

Now, any woman over 18 years old of any height and child-bearing status can enter. And visible tattoos were allowed for the first time.

Transgender women who have female civil status records were also permitted to compete.

Published in Dawn, january 7th, 2023