A 20-year-old theology student has been elected “Miss Germany 2023”. Her mission: She wants to campaign for youth work in Germany.
Explained her happiness with a loud scream: The new “Miss Germany” – Kira Geiss from Stuttgart
“Democracy should have the right to support young people”, so  ; the 20-year-old Kira Geiss, who was elected “Miss Germany 2023” at the weekend. On stage, she explained where she thinks the focus should be: It's not about ready-made concepts, but about shaping the future with young people. You have to give them responsibility.
Geiss went on to say that she herself had experienced how important youth work was – and described how, as a teenager, she found herself in a group of friends in which alcohol and drugs were the order of the day. “When I was at the bottom, youth work built me up.” At the time, she “ran” to a Christian youth group every week because the group was so helpful to her. That's why she wants to set up a Germany-wide youth platform. She also goes to companies to report on what the so-called Gen Z needs. This is the name given to the generation of young people born between the late 1990s and around 2010.
The competition has been revamped
Miss Germany elections have been held for almost 100 years. In order to win the beauty contest, a woman used to have to look good and wear swimwear like a model on the catwalk can dance. But the company that organizes the annual national competition took a radical turn in 2019.
Since then, the candidates no longer have to present themselves on the catwalk in a bikini. Height and weight are also no longer queried. The outside doesn't matter any more, according to Jil Andert from Miss Germany Studios. Rather, the women must show a strong personality and “should be a source of inspiration,” said Andert of the German Press Agency dpa.
Miss Germany 2022: Domitila Barros was the first Woman of Color to win the competition
In 2022 the activist, entrepreneur and actress Domitila Barros became Miss Germany elected – as the first Woman of Color. Barros grew up in a Brazilian favela, where he taught street children to read and write. Today she is committed to sustainability, environmental protection and social justice.
However, the sociologist Nina Degele from the University of Freiburg is unimpressed by the realignment of the competition – she simply considers the Miss Germany format to be outdated. It has to “be replaced by something completely different,” she thinks.
10 finalists – including a trans woman
The ten finalists in the Miss Germany 2023 election
Around 15,000 women applied nationwide for the title of the next Miss Germany. When the ten finalists were announced, one of them made headlines straight away: a trans woman who lives with her parents and three younger sisters in the Lower Saxony village of Friedrichsfehn near Oldenburg.
The fact that she made it this far, means a lot to her, Saskia von Bargen said before the finale in a DW interview, “because it shows that our society is changing and that trans women are also seen as women”.
On old photos, Saskia von Bargen sees a boy – who preferred to wear dresses and play with other girls. But at the tender age of five, Saskia von Bargen declared that she was a girl. “My parents realized early on that it wasn't just a phase.” She has nothing but praise for her mother and father, who have supported her from the start. At school, however, it wasn't that easy to be accepted. To avoid being bullied, she wore boys' clothes.
Saskia von Bargen, finalist in the Miss Pageant Germany 2023
At the age of eleven, von Bargen then began taking hormone blockers to avoid puberty. Two years later she got female hormones. That was also the moment when she came out at school. Her life became easier, she felt increasingly accepted. When she came of age, she underwent sex reassignment surgery. She also chose a name: Saskia. Today she also found a way for herself to deal with hate speech. “I react to negative comments by not even reading them. I don't offer them a platform, I just block and delete them,” says the 19-year-old.
Not the first trans woman in the final
Von Bargen is not the first trans woman to have made it this far in a Miss Germany election. Last year Gadou from Hanover (also in Lower Saxony) made it to the final.
The Miss Germany competition, which took place for the first time in 1927 and was later banned by the Nazis, is not identical with the election of Miss Universe Germany. There, an official candidate for the Miss Universe pageant is chosen.
The topic of transgender people is no longer a niche in the pop and fashion industry. It wasn't until 2021 that trans woman Alex Mariah Peter won the final of the popular German television show “Germany's Next Topmodel”.
When a boy is a girl
sl/pl/eg (dpa, epd, dw)
This is an update of an article from March 3, 2023