Coccinelle

Coccinelle was born Jacqueline Charlotte Dufresnoy in Paris and assigned male at birth. Her mother sold flowers in Pigalle. As a teenager she began going out in women’s clothes; her stage name, French for “ladybird”, is said to come from a red dress with black spots. In 1953 she first appeared at the Paris cabaret Madame Arthur and later at the Carrousel de Paris, where many trans performers worked – at a time when the police could still harass them for “cross-dressing”.

In 1958 she underwent gender-affirming surgery with the doctor Georges Burou in Casablanca, as one of the first famous women in Europe to do so. The news went round the world, and Coccinelle became a star, styled as a blonde sex symbol. She appeared in films and in 1963 headlined a revue at the Paris Olympia.

With the help of the lawyer Robert Badinter – who later, as Minister of Justice, decriminalised homosexuality in France – she obtained a change of her civil status. In 1962 she married the journalist Francis Bonnet, at the town hall and in church, after being baptised again. It was the first marriage of a trans person officially recognised in France.

Coccinelle toured Europe and Latin America for decades. She founded the association “Devenir Femme” to support trans people undergoing surgery and helped set up a centre for counselling and research on trans identity. She died in Marseille in 2006, aged 75.