Bearded lady

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Jennifer Miller, a bearded lady

A bearded lady or bearded woman is a woman who has a visible beard. These women have long been a phenomenon of legend, curiosity, ridicule, and more recently, political statement and fashion statement.

A small number of women are able to grow enough facial hair to have a beard, usually if they use anabolic steroids. Cultural pressure leads most to remove it, as it may be viewed as a social stigma. Notable exceptions were the famous (and usually fake) bearded women of the circus sideshows of the 19th and early 20th centuries, before so-called freak shows became unpopular.

Mujer Barbuda – copy of Ribera (1631)

The current Guinness World Record holder is Vivian Wheeler; in 2000, her beard was 11 inches (28 cm) long.

Some contemporary feminist women, wishing to question the boundaries of social norms, have not removed visible facial hair as a political statement. Notable examples include artist Frida Kahlo^{[citation needed]} and professor Jennifer Miller.

In some cases, female beard growth is the result of a hormonal imbalance (usually androgen excess), or a rare genetic disorder known as hypertrichosis.

In fiction

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• In William Shakespeare's Macbeth, the Weird Sisters have beards, among other strange facial attributes.
• The female dwarves in fantasy fiction are often depicted as having beards; examples include dwarves^[1] of J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, and dwarfs of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series.
• In the movie SpaceBalls the antagonist Dark Helmet's escape pod is stolen by a bearded lady.
• The Kids in the Hall featured an Irish bearded lady as the best friend of Chicken Lady, a popular recurring character on the series.
• The HBO series Carnivàle featured a bearded lady as a performer in the carnival.
• In A Series of Unfortunate Events, the toddler Sunny Baudelaire disguises herself as "Chabo the Wolf Baby" in the House of Freaks by wearing a costume beard.
• On an episode of My Name Is Earl, Judy Greer plays a woman who has grown a beard and joins the circus.
• The first book in the series The Emigrants features a woman with considerable facial hair, Brita-Stafva, mistress at Hästebäck and of Robert Axel Nilsson, brother of the main character.

See also

• Jane Barnell as Olga Roderick in Freaks
• Hirsutism
• Annie Jones
• Jennifer Miller
• Frida Kahlo
• Wilgefortis
• Julia Pastrana
• Helena Antonia

References

1. ^ Tolkien, J. R. R. (1994), Christopher Tolkien, ed., The War of the Jewels, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, "Of the Naugrim and the Edain", ISBN 0-395-71041-3 

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Bearded Lady

• How Facial Hair Influences Women's Everyday Experiences