Coccinelle, the country's first trans icon

On 23 August 1931, a child is born in Paris and registered as a boy at birth. Jacqueline Charlotte Dufresnoy grows up in a family that accepts her femininity. As a teenager she wears a red dress with black spots to a party. From then on everyone calls her Coccinelle: ladybird.

In 1953 she appears on stage for the first time at the Paris cabaret Madame Arthur. This is followed by an engagement at the Carrousel de Paris, a music hall where many trans performers appeared. No one there was protected. At the time, France had a ban on wearing clothing that did not match the sex assigned at birth.

In 1958 Coccinelle had surgery at a clinic in Casablanca. She was the first French celebrity to take this step, and the news went round the world. The French state had no rules for such cases. After a gruelling legal struggle, she obtained a change to her civil status. She was represented by Robert Badinter, who decades later, as Minister of Justice, pushed through the decriminalisation of homosexuality.

In the early 1960s she married in church. The condition: a new baptism. There was no precedent for this, either in law or in religion, and the marriage is regarded as the basis for the right of trans people to marry in France.

After that she toured Europe and South America for decades. She founded the organisation Devenir Femme, which supported trans people undergoing surgery, and helped set up a centre for counselling and research on trans identity. Her autobiography appeared in 1987. She died in Marseille in 2006.

In 2022, Google dedicated a Doodle to her on her 91st birthday. For many people in France it was their first encounter with a woman who has long been regarded there as the country's first trans icon.