Violette Morris, sans contrefaçon

Homicidal, marginal, notorious collaborator… her controversial death demonized Violette Morris, and overshadowed the life that preceded it. Yet the woman whom newspapers dubbed “our country’s most intrepid sportswoman” was undeniably a pioneer. A multi-medalist sportswoman, Cocteau’s inspiration and a hugely popular figure, she freed herself early on from all the limitations associated with her gender, refusing to accept the femininity imposed on her by the times, wearing a suit and short hair, accepting her homosexuality and her decision never to give birth. Rejected by both conservative society and the feminist activists of her time, she embodied a challenge to gendered binarity that disturbed everyone at the time. New research today offers a new reading of the destiny of the woman who played a key role in her contemporaries’ access to sport, the wearing of pants and the right to assert themselves outside a man’s shadow.