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MISS FRANCE

Take the Miss France general knowledge quiz

This year Miss France contestants have had to prove they have the brains as well as the beauty, by taking an obligatory general knowledge test. Do you have what it takes to be Miss France? Test yourself here.

Published: 18 November 2014 18:00 CET
Take the Miss France general knowledge quiz
Miss France 2015 will have to prove she has the knowledge as well as the looks. Photo:AFP

The 33 contestants vying to be Miss France 2015, and eventually Miss World, have all had to take the test, the first time an intellectual element has been included in the proceedings.

Organizers want to make sure the competition which takes place on December 6th and will be broadcast live on TV in France is not just about how good the women look in swimwear.

Former winner Sylvie Tellier, now director general of Miss France said: "Miss France is a reflection of the French people. She will be invited to a lot of television shows and it would not serve us well if we elected someone who does not at least know what's going on around her."

The quiz features questions on fashion, sport, and film and also includes an English test, with the contestants asked to write about their most embarrassing moment of their lives en anglais.

Top of the class in the quiz was Miss Île-de-France, 23-year-old law student Margaux Savarit.

We've picked 15 of the questions featured in the quiz so you can test yourself on whether you have what it takes to be Miss France 2015.

Sign in to see how you rank against other Local readers. For the full quiz see below.

Here's the full quiz below, featuring the 40 questions:

History and geography

Which year did the Berlin Wall come down?

Name the three main rivers in Metropolitan France?

This year was the 70th anniversary of D-Day, but what is D-Day called in France?

What is the capital of the Dominican Republic?

Politics

Who is the current Minister of Justice?

In which year does François Hollande's five-year presidency end?

In which country did the Arab Spring begin in 2010?

Which political party does the current US president belong to?

Current affairs and economics

What do the initials BCE (ECB) stand for?

How many administrative regions does France have in 2014, including overseas departments and regions?

In which year was Facebook floated on the stock market?

Why has Rosetta been in the news?

Fashion

Which high street label have both Karl Lagerfeld and Alexander Wang collaborated with?

Who is the latest Chanel No 5 muse?

Who is Candice Swanepoel?

Name two brands owned by luxury brand conglomerate LVMH?

Music

Who is Conchita Wurst?

Who performs the song La Bohème?

Which American pop star released an album posthumously in the summer of 2014?

Who wrote the anthem of food distribution charity Restos du Coeur?

Cinema and television

Who is the female star of Luc Besson's movie Lucy?

What is the name of the quiz presented by Jean-Luc Reichmann on TF1 at midday?

Apart from Jean-Pierre Foucault, host of Miss France, can you name three other presenters on TF1?

Which French film was seen by more than 10 million people in the cinema this year?

Literature

What nationality is the author of the Harry Potter books?

Who wrote the book Merci pour ce Moment (Thank You for this Moment)?

Which famous character was created by Agatha Christie?

Of these three works, which was not written by Emile Zola? L'assommoir (The Drinking Den), Au Bonheur des Dames (The Ladies' Delight) or L'Éducation Sentimentale (Sentimental Education)?

Sport

Which country's team knocked France out of the World Cup in Brazil this summer?

In which country were the 2014 Winter Olympics held?

Which club has Tony Parker recently bought?

Which swimmer won four gold medals at the last European Championships?

Maths and logic

If you are travelling at 80km per hour, how long does it take you to cover 60km?

The “product” is the result of which calculation?

What is a third of 12 squared?

How many minutes is 12,000 seconds?

Miss World

What nationality was the last winner of Miss World?

What is the name of the organisation created by Miss France 2014 Flora Coquerel?

Who was the honorary president of the Miss France ceremony in December 2013?

What is the full name of Miss France 2009?

The contestants were also tested on their English skills, by having to describe the most embarrassing moment of their lives in five lines.

By Lindsey Johnstone

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MISS FRANCE

OPINION: In the year of #MeToo it’s time for the French to switch off Miss France

Eight million French people will watch Miss France on Saturday night but surely in the year that Harvey Weinstein's scandalous behaviour emerged and the #MeToo hashtag took over Twitter, it's time the annual degrading beauty pageant was confined to history, writes The Local's Evie Burrows-Taylor.

Published: 15 December 2017 14:12 CET
OPINION: In the year of #MeToo it's time for the French to switch off Miss France
Photo: AFP
Every year the Miss France contest draws in an astounding eight million viewers.  
 
And the final for Miss France 2018, which will air on Saturday night, is set to attract just as large an audience as previous years despite the spotlight on feminism in 2017 thanks in no small part to the women who exposed Harvey Weinstein.
 
Somewhat worryingly, the longevity of the French competition, now in its 88th edition, is in stark contrast to the story of beauty pageants in other countries, which have either been ditched after TV ratings plummeted or after they were slammed for being sexist and outdated.
 
But it isn't just the competition that's the problem, after all the people behind it aren't forcing millions of people to tune in. 
 
READ ALSO:
Miss France contest ridiculed for dedicating beauty pageant to women's rights Photo: AFP
 
One of the most bizarre aspects of the Miss France phenomenon is how much coverage it gets in the mainstream press. 
 
Some of France's most respected publications and news sites — including those that proudly exposed the stories of sexually abused and harassed women who came forward as part of the #MeToo and #BalanceTonPorc (Squeal on your pig) campaigns — dedicate article after article to the contest.
 
It's not just the articles that make you feel like you have travelled back to the 1950s, but also the photo galleries published in almost every media site that give readers a chance to check out each contestant.
 
This year these slideshows of swimsuit wearing women with beaming smiles sit alongside stories of French actresses accusing Harvey Weinstein of abuse and rape, exposés on harassment in the workplace and articles with stats on the number of women who expect to be groped when they get on the Paris Metro or who have died under at the hands of their partners. 
 
One of France's two newspapers of record saw fit to do a gallery on the contestants in their swimsuit (see below). 
 
 
And another of the country's major newspapers Le Parisien somehow thought it was a good idea to put their gallery of the contestants in the women's section La Parisienne. 
 
Who knows? Perhaps the people running these sites are choosing not to see the link between the way Miss France reduces its contestants to objects to be pitted against one another and the way women are regularly reduced to sex objects in their everyday lives. But it's more likely they don't care.  
 
One group in France that has drawn a connection between Miss France and the position of women in society at large are the organisers themselves. 
 
Miss France: Why 8.5 million French tuned in
Photo: AFP
 
National director of the competition Sylvie Tellier, who won the title herself in 2002, provoked ridicule when she said this year's “ceremony will be an opportunity to denounce violence against women during an hour of prime time television.” 
 
But this is nothing short of a cynical attempt to offer a salve to a problem that they themselves are contributing to. Trying to legitimise what is essentially a chance to watch women strut around in swimwear and judge them on their appearance with a nod to feminism is laughable.  
 
Unsurprisingly French feminist group Osez le Feminisme is no fan of the competition either.
 
“Sexism against women is still in the majority and its is supported in many ways including this way of valuing women as objects rather than subjects,” spokesperson for the group Raphaëlle Rémy-Leleu told The Local. 
 
To find out just how backward the pageant is, look no further than the guidelines contestants must adhere to if they want to compete. 
 
Contestants should never have been married and have no children. They should not have had any plastic surgery, visible tattoos or piercings and they should not have ever posed partially or completely naked. Several contestants have fallen foul of  that rule in the past and have lost their crowns as a result.
 
Miss France: Are we really still doing this?
Photo: AFP
 
So it seems the ideal “role model” for women should be someone who is untouched and unblemished and hasn't been sullied by previous ogling eyes, that way they're fresh for the audience of Miss France. How modern!
 
 
Clearly there are issues to be addressed in terms of how France sees its women. 
 
And in a year that has seen a wave of women around the world, including in France, show strength and solidarity in coming forward to denounce the aggressors in their lives, the country needs to acknowledge that Miss France is a part of its past, not future.