This Thursday, November 24, 2022, M6 is broadcasting the first episode of its new original series, “The man of our lives”, with Helena Noguerra. A jack-of-all-trades artist who started out in the spotlight as a model. And from an early age, the actress was confronted with the violence of a hyper-normed environment, where the codes of beauty are sanctuarized and imposed with untold brutality.
“I am an acrobat artist” launches Helena Noguerra when you have to define yourself. It must be said that it is one of those that we do not put in a box. A little like his older sister, Lio, she is on all fronts: actress, writer, singer and activist, Helena Noguerra is constantly teeming with projects, refusing to be imprisoned in the slightest role. For her, success began at age 15, when she chose to leave school and her native Belgium behind for Parisian greatness and modeling auditions. Her doll’s face then catches the eye of agency directors, but this experience will create powerful complexes in the teenager…
Video. Helena Noguerra grandmother at 53: this “punk” nickname that she loves
A modeling career between success and complex
Already when she was just a little girl, Helena Noguerra grew up with her parents’ strong words about her physique. “I was a little chubby and short. My mom used to say, ‘She’s so cute, but it’s a shame, she’s going to be short and fat.’ And my dad said: ‘No, I don’t think so!'” she recalled in 2017 on the show “Tea or Coffee”. “I was a little beefy until I was 5 years old. And I became a kind of long vine. A little too skinny for that matter.” As a child, Helena Noguerra nurtured entertainment dreams. But in the end, her physique leads her down another path: “I wanted to be a clown. Afterwards I became a model. The proof that it all went wrong!” she had fun on France 2. Because posing under the eye of fashion photographers or cameras did not really amuse her.
In 2016, in the program “Folie Passagère”, Helena Noguerra returned to this modeling experience, which, at the beginning, offered her many things: “We meet people from very different socio-cultural backgrounds, it’s a world that was very open in the 80s. There was a lot of homosexuals, freedom, madness. It was all fantastic. I learned a lot.” Except that there is a “but”. Because, even if she was very young at the time, Helena Noguerra very quickly encountered difficulties in this exercise, confronted with an environment in which she constantly doubted: “I found it stupid to make an advertisement and to put rimmel by being very happy. And I said to them: ‘But we are taking part in an idea of the woman who is a little silly or not ?’ And I was told: ‘Shut up, and then you accepted!’ They were right, I just didn’t have to. But all that asked me a lot of questions.” Then came the first complexes from skimming the castings and photo shoots: “From a 15-year-old girl who felt good, all of a sudden you feel very ugly , big from here, fat from there, the knee is wrong, the toe, the teeth.”
And then there are remarks that are terribly painful to hear, especially when you are in the midst of construction. Like the day when Helena Noguerra goes with her mother to an appointment with the very famous modeling agent, Eileen Ford. Faced with the young Belgian, the American chained harsh words about her physique: “You would have to redo your teeth”, “She has a little low eyelid!”, “And very big cheeks, you would have to remove the molars” remembered Helena Noguerra. First taken aback by Eileen Ford’s words, the teenager’s mother finally lost her nerves: “My mother told her: ‘F*ck you, you understand? f*ck you!’ And my career at Eline Ford ended that day!”
Helena Noguerra, a committed and feminist artist
Scalded, Helena Noguerra has finally found her way, or rather her ways. First in song in the 80s, then as an actress, on the small and big screen. However, her role as a model marked her self-esteem for a long time. Not easy to build on such fragile foundations. “For a very long time, I believed that I was a quality individual, and that I got things by my intrinsic qualities. And now I realize that in a world run by men, I also had access to meetings that did not lead to things, because of the way these men had to consider me… as an opportunity for recreation“ she confided in “Tea or Coffee”.
Growing up in the world of show business, Helena Noguerra was able to understand the clichés around her position as a beautiful woman, and learn from what she considers mistakes today. Like the fact of posing naked, which she regrets today: “Because we are always reduced to our body. Our freedom goes through our body. When Brigitte Bardot got naked, we talked about the liberation of the woman (…) We objectify ourselves. And then once we get naked, we find that we become the object again. It’s very difficult to escape from this position that is always our crotch, is the desire or non-desire it arouses. Do we hide it? Do we show it? I refused for a very long time to pose naked because I had youth, that I thought it was too easy, too obvious, and that I hadn’t found anything more interesting than this beauty to exhibit (…) At 40, I wanted to exhibit her by posing naked But now that I’m 47, I’m like, ‘But actually, at 40 I’m still thinking, ‘I’m not old, I’m not outdated, I’m still desirable!’ So I am still going back to this place of the object, of desire.”
Video. Helena Noguerra taken to task on a serious subject, she responds to a dissatisfied Internet user
“Torn like all women” between the desire to free herself from sexist clichés, and the freedom to be herself and to act according to her own choices, Helena Noguerra threw herself headlong into activism. Like her sister Lio, the actress never hesitates to deliver powerful feminist messages, even if it means standing up to her childhood role models. As in 2018, when Catherine Deneuve co-signed a petition on “freedom to annoy” in the wake of, and against, the MeToo movement. Disappointed, Helena Noguerra was publicly indignant. “I didn’t think it was the right time. When there is a voice, you have to be a little humble before the cause and wait to speak out. The war between women doesn’t interest me at all. Tap on feminists or women’s voices. I thought that the war that started was exaggerated, but the moment was really not opportune” she explained in 2018 in the Canal + program.
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