Pageant: Miss France Is Not a Man

P A R I S, April 25 -- France's leading beauty queenimpresario today angrily denied rumors that this year'sMiss France had been born a man and denounced the Internet as aterrifying source of misinformation.

"Elodie Gossuin is a perfectly normal young lady," Genevievede Fontenay, head of the Miss France Committee, said of the20-year-old nursing student competing for the Miss Universetitle in Puerto Rico.

"She will be a candidate for Miss Universe like all theothers and that's it," she told RTL radio.

Internet Rumors

Reporting rumors spread worldwide over the Internet, theNew York Daily News wrote on Tuesday that organizers werechecking whether Gossuin had been born a man.

"Our regulations say that all delegates must be natural-bornfemales," it quoted pageant spokeswoman Mary Hilliard McMillanas saying. "If she does turn out to be a man, we'll put her onthe first plane back to France."

McMillan said Gossuin, who arrived on Tuesday in PuertoRico, was being fitted for a gown and swimsuit to wear in theMay 11 pageant and had not yet been asked about her gender. "There will be some determination. Wardrobe ladies haveinstructions to report immediately," she said.

Fontenay denounced the Internet as an uncontrolled mediumwhere rumor-mongers, pedophiles, prostitutes and criminalscould go about their business with impunity.

"I'm terrified by this type of media. You can't stop it,they send rumors around like that," she said.

Just One Look — That’s All It Took

The male journalist interviewing Fontenay had no doubtsabout Gossuin's sex, telling listeners they only had to look ather photograph — plastered all over the Paris Metro in anadvertisement for a television magazine — to be convinced.

The Gossuin rumor is the latest storm to hit the MissFrance contest. A rival organization has been trying in vain tousurp the pageant from Fontenay's company, which has organizedthe beauty contests for years.