Clémentine Delait (1865–1939) had the condition known as hirsutism, which causes increased hair growth. When she was alive, people visited circuses and freak shows to gawp at women with facial hair. Mme Delait, however, was different from ‘bearded women’ on display for the amusement of others. She wore her beard with pride and built a profitable business around her exceptional appearance. She was a self-promotion wizard.
A studio portrait of Clémentine Delait in the 1920s, when she was in her 50sWikimedia Commons
We know all about Clémentine Delait because she published her memoirs towards the end of her life, when she was 69. Instead of settling for reading what other people thought about her, she decided to turn the tables and tell people her story, in her own words. In her autobiography we learn that she was the daughter of a farming family in the Vosges department, where she was just like any other girl, working hard on the farm and living in what she described as humdrum obscurity.
Her facial hair started growing in her teens. With a barely disguised twinkle in her eye she tells us in her memoirs (published in 1934),
“What I won’t say is how old I am because I’m a lady; or how I grew my beard, because I don’t know. But I can assure you that at the age of eighteen, my upper lip was already adorned with a promising fuzz, which nicely highlighted my brunette’s complexion.”
She married a baker from Thaon-les-Vosges when she was 20, and worked with him in the family boulangerie. Seven years later, however, her husband Joseph became incapacitated by rheumatism, and Clémentine took over the business. She turned the bakery into a café that also sold alcohol. Mme Delait was not deterred by drunken, rowdy punters.
She describes with great relish how she would grab them by the scruff of the neck with one hand and by the back of the trousers with the other, to eject them unceremoniously from the premises.
At this point she had not yet embraced her beard. According to her memoirs she had become accustomed to shaving her chin, when suddenly she had an epiphany. Not on the Epiphany, but on Pentecost Sunday in 1900, at the fair in Nancy. In her memoirs she recalls how she spotted a poster there advertising a ‘femme à barbe’, and went to investigate. At this time, she says, she was sporting a bushy moustache which attracted the attention of the crowds queuing up to look at the Bearded Lady they had paid to see.
A postcard showing one of Mme Delait’s self-promotional stunts, in which she was locked in a cage with lions (and the lion tamer) at the Camillius circus in Thaon-les-VosgesWikimedia Commons
Not all of the comments towards her were flattering, but she insists in her memoirs that the rabble did not intimidate her, adding that shyness was not one of her strong points.
Mme Delait thought the bearded lady at the Foire de Nancy was a fake, and was recounting the story to her regulars in the bar back in Thaon. One of them said that he would give her 500 francs (a significant sum at the time) if she grew her beard. It sealed the deal and thereafter she never shaved again.
Mme Delait did not accept her prize even when her facial hair grew into an impressive forked beard. She did not need the money, because word of mouth brought customers from far and wide to the café bar, which she astutely named the Café de la Femme à Barbe. She ran the café for around 30 years, drawing visitors from all over France.
The Café de la femme à barbe with its famous proprietor standing at the balcony, one of many shots commissioned and publicised by Clémentine DelaitP. Boyer
Mme Delait was a woman with razor-sharp business acumen. She eschewed the exploitative world of the freak show to shape her own image and carve out a successful business. She commissioned photographs of herself in various situations, from studio-set images dressed in fine clothes to standing on the balcony of her café, and had the images put on postcards that she distributed at her café.
She was a master (or mistress) of self-promotion and if she were alive now she would almost certainly be a wealthy social media influencer.
Clémentine Delait’s inimitable character and astonishing life story inspired the 2024 film, Rosalie. It is a fairly free adaptation of Mme Delait’s life, and while it is worth watching, the best way to learn more about this larger-than-life character is by reading her memoirs (in French), available to read for free on the Bibliothèque national de France’s Gallica website.
