hypertrichosis

I love learning new things. and the last few minutes of the Bigfoot show I just watched...wow. I have been googling up a storm! (I often think of books, documentaries, and google as 'my college.' don't have to take out a loan, I get excited about learning stuff, and maybe someday it will come in handy! just 'cause I'm a barn gal doesn't mean I am done learning about the world around us...)

Hypertrichosis (also called Ambras syndrome) is an abnormal amount of hair growth over the body.[1][2] The two distinct types of hypertrichosis are generalized hypertrichosis, which occurs over the entire body, and localized hypertrichosis, which is restricted to a certain area.[1] Hypertrichosis can be either congenital (present at birth) or acquired later in life.[3][4] The excess growth of hair occurs in areas of the skin with the exception of androgen-dependent hair of the pubic area, face, and axillary regions.[5] Several circus sideshow performers in the 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Julia Pastrana, had hypertrichosis. (and it's not just all that extra hair. there was also a problem with the teeth, that gave them an 'apelike' appearance.[6] Many of them worked as freaks and were promoted as having distinct human and animal traits.

movies about Julia: The Ape Woman (1964). in 2013 Velvet was 'in development.' The Ass Ponys song Julia Pastrana was on their 1993 Grim album.

Alice E. Doherty The Minnesota Woolly Girl

Alice Elizabeth Doherty was born in Minneapolis and is the only known person with hypertrichosis lanuginosa born in the United States. Doherty was born with approximately two-inch long blonde hair all over her body. wikipedia.org Born: March 14, 1887, Minnesota Died: June 13, 1933, Dallas Nationality: American

Annie Jones, The Bearded Lady. she was beautiful! she appears confident in these pics. how hard was it for these women? did they enjoy the fame? how much $$$ did they make? and were the audiences nice to them?

Her nicknames may include 'wolf girl' and 'monkey face'. But 11-year-old Thai girl Supatra Sasuphan today insisted that she was after being officially recognised as the world's hairiest girl. Although the schoolgirl from Bangkok has faced merciless teasing at school, Supatra says being given a Guinness World Record for her hair has helped her become extremely popular.

and last but not least, a book.

This book tells the extraordinary story of three sixteenth-century sisters who, along with their father and brothers, were afflicted with an extremely rare genetic condition that made them unusually hairy. Amazingly, the Gonzales sisters were not mocked or shunned, but were welcomed in the courts of Europe, spending much of their lives among nobles, musicians, and artists. Their double identity as humans and beasts made them intriguing, and the girls and their father were the subjects not only of medical investigations but also of a considerable number of portraits, some of which still hang in European castles today. Using the Gonzales family as a lens, historian Merry Wiesner-Hanks examines their varied and wondrous times. The story of this family connects with every important change of their era—political and religious violence, colonial conquest, new forms of scholarship and science—and also provides insights into the complex relationships between beastliness, monstrosity, and gender in early modern life.