Émilie Marie Bouchaud[1] (14 May 1874 – 14 October 1939), better known by her stage name Polaire, was a French singer and actress, who became internationally known.

Afraid of meeting her mother's partner, Borgia (whom she accuses in her memoirs of having tried to molest her), she first approached her brother Edmond.

[3][1] Polaire's career in the entertainment industry stretched from the early 1890s to the mid-1930s, and encompassed the range from music-hall singer to stage and film actress.

[6] Having quickly made a name for herself – artist Toulouse-Lautrec portrayed her on a magazine cover in 1895 – Polaire briefly visited New York, appearing there as a chanteuse at various venues, but without achieving major success.

Her first major appearance was in 1902, at the Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens, in the title role of a play based on Colette's Claudine à Paris.

Her precise filmography is difficult to determine due to confusion between her and a younger Italian actress with the screen name "Pauline Polaire", who also featured in early films.

[11] In her early days as a café singer in the 1890s, she wore very short skirts and also cropped her hair, fashions that did not become common in the rest of society until the 1920s.

[13] At a time when tightlacing among women was in vogue, she was famous for her tiny, corsetted waist, which was reported to have a circumference no greater than 16 inches (41 cm).

The tiny slip of a woman that you know, with the waist slender to the point of pain, of screaming out loud, of breaking in two, in a spasmically tight bodice, the prettiest slimness ... And, under the aureole of an extravagant masher's hat, orange and plumed with iris leaves, the great voracious mouth, the immense black eyes, ringed, bruised, discoloured, the incandescence of her pupils, the bewildered nocturnal hair, the phosphorus, the sulphur, the red pepper of that ghoulish, Salome-like face, the agitating and agitated Polaire!

Yellow skirt tucked high, gloved in open-work stockings, Polaire skips, flutters, wriggles, arches from the hips, the back, the belly, mimes every kind of shock, twists, coils, rears, twirls...trembling like a stuck wasp, miaows, faints to what music and what words!

Polaire's finances suffered from a series of actions by the French tax authorities, and she struggled to find stage or screen roles as she aged.

[26][27] All songs are included in the compilation album, Eugénie Buffet et Polaire: Succès et Raretés (1918-1936), released under a French record label, Chansophone.