Hara‑Kiri n°124 (Janvier 1972) is a sharp New‑Year issue from the post‑1968 era, when unemployment, precarity, and social anxiety were becoming unavoidable subjects in France. Rather than treating the topic solemnly, Hara‑Kiri responds with one of its most bitterly ironic beauty‑pageant parodies.

The cover presents a smiling nude woman wearing a sash reading “Miss Chômage 72” (“Miss Unemployment 72”), posed against a vivid pink background. She also wears a beret and casual shoes, grounding the image in everyday France rather than glamour.

The headline completes the joke:

“Bonne année — Bon chômage”(“Happy New Year — Happy Unemployment”)

This is deliberate cruelty aimed upwards, not at the unemployed themselves. Hara‑Kiri mocks the hollow optimism of New Year wishes issued by politicians and media at a time when joblessness was rising. By crowning “Miss Unemployment,” the magazine exposes how economic hardship was being normalised, aestheticised, or brushed aside with slogans.

The nudity is not erotic but symbolic and confrontational — stripping away dignity in the same way unemployment strips social status. This type of visual metaphor is characteristic of early‑70s Hara‑Kiri, where bodies are used as political language rather than sexual display.