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In 1877 Dr. Louis Duhring, a founding member of the American Dermatological Association and professor of skin diseases at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, published a case study that riveted his colleagues and was later republished as a monograph.1 In the "Case of a Bearded Woman," Duhring described a patient unlike any he had ever seen before: a young, healthy mother with a full beard (fig. 1). This woman, referred to as Viola M., was so unusual that Duhring also exhibited her to medical students at the university as part of his lectures on hair growth.2 What confounded Duhring was not so much the thick, dark hair covering Viola's face and neck but the extent to which she lived an otherwise normal life as a married woman and mother of two. Viola's unusual appearance challenged Duhring's ideas about the "natural" boundary separating women from men and forced him to reconsider what exactly it meant to be female. Could "real" women have beards? Duhring was not alone in his fascination with the cultural and biological meanings of female facial hair; rather, he was the harbinger of a widespread trend. Between 1877 and 1920, scores of dermatologists reported at conferences and in medical journals that their female patients were traumatized by hypertrichosis, the disease of "superfluous hair."
Meanwhile, as dermatologists debated the etiology and treatment of hypertrichosis, the public flocked to see bearded ladies on display at circuses and sideshows. Presumably only specialists read the case of Viola M., yet judging from articles and cartoons in mainstream magazines and newspapers, nearly everyone had seen a bearded lady at a dime museum or sideshow. From the early 1880s till her death in 1926, the most popular bearded lady was Krao, a woman who had been captured in Laos as a young girl so that she could be exhibited as "Darwin's Missing Link" (fig. 2). Unlike Viola, who visited the dermatologist in hopes of removing her beard, Krao became famous for exhibiting hers. Key to the distinct ways in which Viola and Krao experienced hypertrichosis, and the distinct ways in which scientific and popular culture responded to them, was the fact that Viola was white and Krao was not. For white bearded ladies, circus performers and patients alike, public...