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There is an entire literature dedicated to
our fascination with—and I am so well trained that it is uncomfortable
for me even to write this word—"freaks." Indeed, when they used to
have real circuses and carnivals, the "freak show" was very popular.
This was not just a vulgar fascination, either—not something you just
threw out to ignorant yokels 'cuz they didn't know no better than to
stare at freaks. Some of the greatest names in Western art have drawn
and painted the grotesque. Leonardo,
Velasquez, Rubens and de Ribera
all invited you to step right up and
see the dwarf, the monkey boy, and the bearded lady (de Ribera's
painting, above). The title of this painting is simply
"Bearded Woman" and is from the year 1631. The painting is now in the
permanent collection
of the Museo de Tavera in Toledo. The subjects were husband and wife,
Felix and
Magdalena Ventura. Even before the painting, Magdalena Ventura
was famous. She was not really from Naples, but rather from somewhere
in the nearby Abruzzi. She was already a grown woman with several
children before her beard started to grow in thick and full like a
man's beard. When the Duke of Alcala, the Spanish viceroy of Naples at
the time, heard about her, he invited her to come into the big city and
sit for a painting by de Ribera, the Duke's own court artist and one of
the leading painters of the time. Magdalena's fame spread such that she
was
mentioned in court correspondence throughout Italy, reflecting perhaps
all of our lasting fascination with weirdness. The Duke and his quack
medicos certainly weren't up on such things as androgen excess or
perhaps the
rare genetic disorder known as hypertrichosis; they just thought, Holy
Cow, a bearded lady. (I think the expression "Holy Cow" comes into
English from India; it doesn't exist in Italian or Spanish, so the Duke
probably said something else.) But enlightened minds such as yours and
mine are, indeed, up on such things as androgen excess and
hypertrichosis, and we still think, Holy
Cow, a bearded lady.
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Once upon a time, I commented quite
innocently and to all assembled,
that a woman visitor in our home had a mustache. (As I recall, it
wasn't a big groomed walrus affair or handlebar or Fu Manchu or
anything like that; it was just a bit of fuzz that she had
neglected to wax off.) Whatever it was, there was an
embarrassed silence. Later, I was duly