THE LIFE and LEGACY of COCCINELLE
The effects of the Great Depression struck Paris in 1931, bringing an end to the economic and artistic boom that had characterised Paris during the interwar years, often known as ‘les années folles’. That same year, a rare ray of light in an otherwise gloomy period shone through: the child who would grow up to become Jacqueline Charlotte Dufresnoy, better known by her stage name Coccinelle (Ladybird), was born.
Raised in the Temple district of Paris, nearby to what is now the thriving gay nightlife of the Marais, at the age of four Dufresnoy reported her sense that something was wrong with the gender she had been assigned at birth. She was not born to an affluent family, and her first job was working in a hairdressing salon, which her father feared would turn the person he knew as his son into a homosexual. Her next job, however, would see her working in the vibrant cabarets of Paris.
It was as a teenager that Dufresnoy adopted the name Coccinelle after attending a fancy-dress party in a red dress adorned with black spots. This would become her stage name as a performer within the city’s thriving scene of transformistes. These transformistes were generally understood by the public as female impersonators, with
