{"id":1140,"date":"2024-12-10T13:06:36","date_gmt":"2024-12-10T18:06:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/msh\/?post_type=profile&p=1140"},"modified":"2025-11-17T14:29:48","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T19:29:48","slug":"jacqueline-rosenkranz","status":"publish","type":"profile","link":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/msh\/profiles\/jacqueline-rosenkranz\/","title":{"rendered":"Jacqueline Rosenkranz"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hirsutism and Navigating the Gender Binary in Cl\u00e9mentine Delait\u2019s Les memories de la femme \u00e0 barbe<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Explain your research project<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My research project is motivated by the fact that hirsutism (excessive hair growth) in women and people assigned female at birth was a phenotypic contradiction to dualisms separating \u201cmale\u201d from \u201cfemale\u201d, as Western cultures often identify facial hair growth with the male body. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, physicians, scientists, and circus impresarios tried to classify, pathologize, and advertise the hirsute female body using those bifurcated categories. My project asks how did the woman herself<\/em> identify, think, and navigate within the dualisms of \u201cmale\u201d or \u201cfemale\u201d. My research centers the voice of Cl\u00e9mentine Delait Clattaux, who was a French hirsute woman who traveled with a freak show circuit during the late-nineteenth, early-twentieth centuries; she notably published a narrative entitled Les memories de la femme \u00e0 barbe<\/em> in 1934. Via a French to English translation and a subsequent careful reading of this source, my project delineates how Delait identified herself and other hirsute women within and without categories of \u201cmale\u201d versus \u201cfemale\u201d, based on her understanding of biological and medical science constructions of sexual dimorphism. I also detail how Delait navigated cultural understandings of the gender binary to convey her personal assessment of hirsutism to a wider audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How did you come to this work?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This project expands on a research paper I completed for a MSH seminar course, entitled \u201cPathologizing and Classifying Hirsute Women\u2019s Bodies in the 19th<\/sup> Century\u201d. While perusing the secondary literature about hirsutism in that time period, I was drawn to how non-white hirsute women were particularly targeted by scientists, who attempted to identify them as a \u201cdistinct species\u201d, or a \u201cmissing link\u201d in the evolutionary timeline. I focused on the stories of two non-white hirsute women performers of the nineteenth-century\u2014Julia Pastrana and Krao Farini\u2014 who were marketed as scientific and educational acts in the international freak show circuit. The narratives surrounding these women starkly contrasted one white hirsute woman\u2019s story\u2013 Delait\u2019s\u2013 that I had briefly encountered in one of my leisure reads entitled, One Thousand Beards: A Cultural History of Facial Hair<\/em> by Allan Peterkin. I did not incorporate her narrative in the seminar paper, but I decided to revisit her story as I drafted ideas for my Medicine, Science, and the Humanities thesis the following year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What resonated with you as you conducted your research? What were you most excited or surprised to find out?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One theme that stood out to me during my readings of the memoirs was Delait\u2019s close identification of her facial hair with beauty and health. French medical literature often associated hirsutism with mental distress, emphasized the desire for hair removal, and identified its pathological connection to polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) and diabetes. Delait rather attributes the fullness of her beard to positively valanced qualities like great physical strength, robust health, and her coquette charm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0Do you plan on continuing this work, or is this part of a larger project? If so, please explain.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will incorporate this research into my MSH departmental thesis. As I continue writing, I have become interested in modern interpretations of Delait\u2019s story. A French film entitled Rosalie<\/em> (2023) and a historical book entitled Cl\u00e9mentine. Le roman de la femme \u00e0 barbe <\/em>(2013) are both inspired and center Delait\u2019s biography. I would like to explore how people appropriate or highlight her condition almost a century later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hirsutism and Navigating the Gender Binary in Cl\u00e9mentine Delait\u2019s Les memories de la femme \u00e0 barbe Explain your research project My research project is motivated by the fact that hirsutism (excessive hair growth) in women and people assigned female at birth was a phenotypic contradiction to dualisms separating \u201cmale\u201d from \u201cfemale\u201d, as Western cultures often […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1125,"template":"","profiletype":[87],"class_list":["post-1140","profile","type-profile","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","profiletype-research-fellows"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/msh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/1140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/msh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/msh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/profile"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/msh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/1140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1141,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/msh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/1140\/revisions\/1141"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/msh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/msh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"profiletype","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/msh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiletype?post=1140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}