The cute little girl with a pudding bowl haircut sitting on her mother's knee is Brigitte Trogneux. Her family are renowned chocolatiers and confectioners in the Amiens region of northern France where the upmarket Trogneux brand is as well-known as, say, Thorntons is in Britain. But the family - or rather the youngster in the photograph - has another, much greater, claim to fame today.
Trogneux is her maiden name. The black-and-white family portrait, featuring her parents and siblings, was taken back in the s. Could anyone, least of all Brigitte herself, have imagined that more than half a century on it would be used in a smear campaign by the far-Right, who falsely claimed she was born a man. In , Brigitte won a libel case against the freelance journalist who made the initial claim, yet it's a vicious and unfounded rumour that has not completely disappeared from parts of social media.
Just last month, Right-wing American commentator Candace Owens resurfaced rumours that the French first lady had been born a man in a new YouTube series and podcast called Becoming Brigitte.
She also claimed that she was the target of legal threats from President Macron. Brigitte's daughter Tiphaine Auziere, a lawyer, has previously talked about the impact of the accusations. In an interview to mark the publication of a novel she'd written, Tiphaine, now 41, told Paris Match: 'I have concerns about the level of society when I hear what is circulating on social networks about my mother being a man.
The little girl with a pudding bowl haircut sitting on her mother's knee is Brigitte Trogneux, and far left is her brother Jean-Michel. How can we resist disinformation on social networks? Mr Macron himself also expressed his anger and frustration at the rumours and their effect on their private life.
