France's leading beauty queen impresario has angrily denied rumours that this year's Miss France had been born a man and denounced the Internet as a terrifying source of misinformation.
"Ms Elodie Gossuin is a perfectly normal young lady," Ms Genevieve de Fontenay, head of the Miss France Committee, said of the 20-year-old nursing student competing for the Miss Universe title in Puerto Rico.
The New York Daily News on Tuesday reporting rumours spread worldwide over the Internet, that organisers were checking whether Ms Gossuin had been born a man.
Ms Fontenay denounced the Internet as an uncontrolled medium where rumour-mongers, paedophiles, prostitutes and criminals could go about their business with impunity.
"I'm terrified by this type of media. You can't stop it, they send rumours around like that," she said.
The male journalist interviewing Ms Fontenay had no doubts about Gossuin's sex, telling listeners they only had to look at her photograph - plastered all over the Paris Metro in an advertisement for a television magazine - to be convinced.
"Our regulations say that all delegates must be natural-born females," the New York Daily News quoted pageant spokeswoman Ms Mary Hilliard McMillan as saying. "If she does turn out to be a man, we'll put her on the first plane back to France."
Ms McMillan said Ms Gossuin, who arrived on Tuesday in Puerto Rico, was being fitted for a gown and swimsuit to wear in the May 11 pageant and had not yet been asked about her gender.
"There will be some determination. Wardrobe ladies have instructions to report immediately," she said.