SUZANNE NOEL, A CHRISTMAS GIFT FOR HUMANITY

You certainly never heard her name. But Suzanne Noel is one of the greatest figure in the medical world and one of the greatest feminist in history.

She lifted Sarah Bernhardt, mended the broken faces of 14-18, revolutionized medical techniques, defended the right to vote for women, founded women's solidarity clubs all over the world ... Her name is Suzanne Noel and she is the first female cosmetic surgeon in the world , she defended her whole life the right for women to dispose of their bodies, and of their destiny.

Born in an family of the "Petite Bourgeoisie" of the North of France, Suzanne married at 19, but was bored in Paris. She decided to pass her baccalaureate, and become a doctor, like her husband. She was a fierce and brilliant student among men, Suzanne discovers a passion for dermatology and surgery, in a period when women holding a scalpel was still taboo and evokes the specter of emasculation. Volunteer in her vocation, emancipated in her privacy, Suzanne fell in love with another, younger medical student, and continues to work, despite her pregnancy.

Despite an apprenticeship started with dermatology, and more than ten years after her colleagues, since she obtained her internship at 35, Suzanne Noël will make an essential contribution to the development of cosmetic surgery.

n 1916 during the terrible first World War, thousands of wounded return from the front disfigured. Once home, desperate, many commit suicide.

Suzanne, affected by this human dramas, gives herself without counting to repair them, to reshape skulls and jaws, to redraw faces.

This period was also full of dramas for her. Her first husband died in 1918, and then her daughter, Jacqueline, died due to the Spanish flu. Devastated, her second love committed suicide in 1924.

Suffragist and feminist activist, after the war, Suzanne orchestrated tax strikes for women to win the right to vote. For her, if women do not have the same rights, there is no question that they have the same duties.

In her home practice, Suzanne is experimenting the first facelifts and liposuction of the arms, buttocks, breasts, she revolutionized the treatment of protruding ears, bags under the eyes ...

Convinced of the social role of cosmetic surgery to prevent bullying, unemployment, depression and loneliness, she charges her patients according to their means, often operating for free.

Under the French Occupation during WW2, Suzanne changed the faces of resistance fighters or wanted Jews. After the war, she received survivors from the concentration camps to erase the traces on their skin. And Suzanne during this time never stops writing, transmitting and training abroad.

Throughout her travels, Suzanne founded in Europe, the Middle East and Asia women's organizations bringing together active women, the “soroptimist clubs”. Founder of the 1st French club in 1924, she became the ambassador of these solidarity networks, an international lobbying in favor of the emancipation of women.

The one who devoted her life to stitching up humanity died at the age of 76 in 1954.

Thank you Suzanne you are one of the symbol of Women pride.