Coccinelle

French actress, entertainer, and transsexual, the first widely publicized post-war sexual reassignment case in Europe, where she was an international celebrity and a renowned club singer. She took the stage name Coccinelle (French for "ladybug") when she entered show business, making her debut as a transgender showgirl in 1953 at Chez Madame Arthur where her mother was a flower seller. She later performed regularly at the famous nightclub Le Carrousel de Paris, which also featured regular acts by other famous transsexual women such as April Ashley and Marie-Pier Ysser. In 1958, she travelled to Casablanca to undergo a vaginoplasty by Georges Burou. She very quickly became a media sensation upon her return to France as a woman, with a look and stage act based on the prominent sex symbols of the day. She performed in the Cherchez la femme revue which ran for 7 months at the Olympia in Paris between 1963 and 1964. In 1987 her autobiography was published, titled Coccinelle par Coccinelle. She married French journalist Francis Bonnet in 1960 and was married legally by the French Roman Catholic Church after her legal name change and rebaptism. Her marriage to Bonnet was dissolved in 1962. She then married Paraguayan dancer Mario Costa in 1963, who died in 1977. She then married fellow transgender activist Thierry Wilson in 1996. Coccinelle worked extensively as an activist on behalf of transgender people, founding the organization "Devenir Femme" (To Become Woman), which was designed to provide emotional and practical support for those seeking sexual reassignment surgery. In addition, her first marriage was the first transsexual union to be officially acknowledged by the government of France, establishing transgender persons' legal right to marry. Coccinelle was hospitalized in July 2006 following a stroke and died on 6 October at Marseille, aged 75. Link to Wikipedia biography