On January 21, 2012, the Miss Ronde France beauty pageant takes place for the fifth time. “Ronde” means round, but in this context may be translated many ways – curvaceous, generously proportioned, full-bodied.
Miss Ronde France is a contest founded by a French psychotherapist to encourage women with ample figures to feel beautiful. For the first time, and thanks in part to considerable media attention last year, in 2012 it is one of the opening events at Who’s Next Prêt-à-Porter Paris – a ready to wear trade show that has teamed up with the pageant organizer “to take part in the fight against the discrimination women with curves are victims of, but also to promote the ‘large sizes’ of the brands present at the show.”
“Only 20% of women in the world are below size 10,” the Who’s Next website goes on to state, and “50% of French women 35 and older are overweight (characterized by a body mass index superior to 25).”
Miss Ronde Contestant
Enter Marilyn Anita Dunning, Miss Ronde Rhône-Alpes 2011. Rhône-Alpes is a southeastern region of France, bordering Switzerland, where Dunning has made her home for some 14 years. She is one of the 21 women competing for the Miss Ronde France 2012 title – one of the women who on January 21 in Paris will parade in casual wear, lingerie and an evening gown and answer a question posed by the jury.
“I found out about the pageant through a friend of mine’s sister,” Dunning says. “We were discussing going into a plus-size business together – a place to buy designer clothing and sexy lingerie without having to go either through sex shops or the Internet. She said she’d sell the clothes but not wear them. I found that odd, and volunteered to wear them…One thing led to another and I decided to advocate what I was preaching by entering the contest.”
At 1.74 m (5’ 7’’) and 121 kg (267 lbs), Dunning qualified. The rules state that candidates must have French citizenship – which Dunning, a dual U.S./French national, has – and, she explains, “weigh at least 6 kilos more than your height minus 100 cm. So a French woman who is 1.74 meters tall must weigh at least 80 kilos, or over 176 lbs, to participate.”
There is no age limit, which is just as well: Dunning will be 56 years old this year.
New Opportunities
A single mom with a 13-year-old son still at home, Dunning has over the past eight years suffered two accidents bad enough to warrant lengthy periods off work.
The first took place in the early Noughties, while she was skiing. Because she was off work for over six months, Dunning says, she lost her job as a writer/editor at the International Committee of the Red Cross Red Crescent (ICRC) in nearby Geneva.
To make ends meet she ended up taking a job as cashier at a large French supermarket near her home in Gex – and two months in, a bottle slipped out from under the arm of a customer and came crashing down on her right hand. Two ligaments were torn; reconstructive surgery was necessary.
Dunning found out about the pageant after another extended period off work, just as she was gearing up to get back into work life again and looking for new opportunities.
The Pageant May Be the Answer
Originally elected 3rd runner-up to Miss Ronde Rhône-Alpes 2011 in June, 2011, in September Dunning found herself “the” Miss because some of the pageant committee members, Misses and runner-ups split from the Miss Ronde Rhône-Alpes competition to found the Miss Be Curvy Rhône-Alpes pageant.
Spurred into action by suddenly finding herself the title holder, Dunning has since passed a French modeling casting call, signed up for modeling gigs on the Plus Size Tall website, put her story out there where it has been picked up by local papers and radio – all developments chronicled assiduously on her French Facebook page.
She has also proven resourceful at finding sponsors – a local printer provides her with business cards, a large-size fashion boutique with clothes, and, in a mutual project with the Beverley’s Place fitness center in nearby Lausanne, Switzerland, she is following a regimen designed by a nutritionist and working out on a Power Plate as a kind of poster child who could draw other full-bodied people to the center once they see Dunning’s results.
The irony is that the very reason Dunning is in the contest – her ample figure – may end up being somewhat less ample when all this is done: already, she says, since mid-November when she started the Beverley’s Place program her measurements have gone from 136 (53.5 in.)-124 (48.8 in.)-134 (52.75 in.) to 126-109-126 cm and her weight is down to 115 kg.
The Road Traveled
Dunning describes her childhood as “moderately privileged: we were one of only two black families residing in the white, predominantly Jewish town of Brookline” outside Boston, Massachusetts. “Size was not an issue,” Dunning says. “I was not a heavy child. Mom was a successful fashion designer and my older sister and I were her models. My sister was delicate, filiform; I was the buxom, sportive type.”
Dunning says she graduated from Brookline High School in three years instead of four, and got a full scholarship to Boston University based on excellence in Spanish studies. In college, she majored in Spanish and minored in psychology. Fast forward to the mid-1980s, when – with work experience that included Communications Systems Consultant for AT&T, and a divorce behind her – Dunning left for Europe with the intention of living in Italy.
But on the way there, in Paris, she fell in love with a Franco-Italian funfair operator and married him. They had a son – now, 25, living and working in Lyon – and Dunning created and ran a technical writing, editing and indexing firm in Paris for 13 years. When the marriage failed, Dunning, by now fluent in French and Italian, went to live in Rhône-Alpes with the French man – “a business consultant and computer wizard” – who would father her second son. They split up in 2001, the year she began working at the ICRC just over the border in Geneva, Switzerland.
Through a creative writing group and performing in amateur theatricals in the Geneva area, Dunning has links to English-speaking expats; she is also an inveterate blogger in English. Back home a few minutes away in France she participates in another writing group, sings mezzo-soprano in a choir, and is on the steering committee of a local social center that runs “after school programs, trains people to read and write, learn French, helps immigrant families integrate into France.”
Dunning says she stills feels American “especially around Thanksgiving,” but says a French side of her has definitely kicked in. She recognizes it for example “when a perfect stranger decides to use the ‘tu’ form of address instead of the more formal ‘vous’ and the hair rises on the back of my neck and I find myself stating ‘Nous n’avons pas élevés des cochons ensemble’ - and meaning it!” (Literally the expression “nous n’avons pas élevés des cochons ensemble” translates as “we didn’t raise pigs together,” but it is used as a way of letting people know when they are being overfamiliar.)
In the Moment
Regardless of where the Miss Ronde pageant leads her – a lot is at stake, and working the angles of that is presently a full-time occupation for Dunning – she’s aware that whatever develops won’t necessarily come from winning the actual title. And the experience is exhilarating on its own terms, Dunning says, in her life “right up there with having a principal role in live theater or being part of a choir of 200 and 60 musicians performing [Carl Orff’s] Carmina Burana.”
“Being the oldest candidate, I don’t have the same objectives as the others [mostly in their 20s or early 30s.] I have a message I want to share and I keep focused on it. My message? Folks do not know why or how a person’s become the size they’ve become. It could be because of a health issue, it could be a reaction to life.” Putting her own weight gain over the past 15 or so years down to some “medical issues” but mainly “reaction to life,” she repeats her belief that plus-size women should be able to buy well-designed, sexy clothes in mainstream outlets - and how crucial “self-acceptance over external judgments and unnaturally thin-oriented fashion trends” is for them.
Message or no, she can’t wait for the “make-up sessions, choreographies to be learned, videos to be made, photo shoots” surrounding the Big Day. Harking back to the days when she modeled for her designer mother (who died of cancer before having the chance to come visit after she moved to France), Dunning says, “I'm in Paris, connected with the fashion industry, and I'll be walking down that Who's Next runway with my Mom by my side!”
Update, January 23, 2012: Marilyn Dunning was not among the four top winners of Miss Ronde France 2012. However, a Special Mention was created by the jury especially for her, citing her "personality, charisma and dynamism."
Sources
- E-mail exchanges with Marilyn Dunning, December 2011 and January 2012
- Marilyn Dunning’s Facebook page
- Miss Ronde France
- Who’s Next
Gail Mangold-Vine - Based in Geneva, Switzerland, Gail Mangold-Vine is the author of two books. Her work as a journalist is published worldwide.
