Clementine Delait, the most fashionable of bearded women
I tell you again and again, at Eat the Cake Studio, we love strong-willed women! Women who have carved their own path, regardless of what society wanted to impose. We love including these women in our experiences, like our Cabinet of Curiosities. And there's no better example of a strong-willed woman than our dear bearded woman, Clementine Delait.
Clementine was born in 1865 in the Vosges. In her autobiography, she tells that she does not remember the date when she began to have chin hair, but by the age of 18, she already sports a "flattering mustache" and must regularly shave her chin. This does not prevent her from having suitors and she soon marries a baker with whom she opens a café in their small village.
At the time, she still shaved, but everything changed when a fair came to the nearby town and with it, a bearded woman. Clementine saw her and was very disappointed, noting that "the poor creature has only a few sparse hairs on each side of her face". Her friends jokingly told her she should let her beard grow to show the difference, and Clementine, who never backs down from a challenge, agreed. Three weeks later, her chin was adorned with an increasingly soft beard, which her husband enjoyed stroking and which people came to admire from miles around.
From that day on, Clementine would never shave again.
She renamed her café "The Bearded Woman's Café" and soon began selling autographed photos in the form of postcards to her many fans. She quickly received offers from circuses ready to offer her a fortune to take her on tour, but she did not want to leave her sick husband and was content with the extra money her postcards brought in, money she used to pamper her said husband.
She did appear nonetheless in some shows, such as playing cards and drinking champagne in a lion's cage (she only accepted this challenge because her sister was against it, and there is nothing Clementine hates more than people telling her what she can or cannot do!). After her husband's death, she finally accepted to do some tours, visiting the royal courts of all Europe with her adoptive daughter.
She also obtained permission to dress as a man (at the time, it was perfectly illegal), which she ardently desired even though it was very clear that she always identified as a woman. She enjoyed blurring the lines and fooling her friends, always with great good humor, perhaps enjoying the deception all the more since she was so feminine the rest of the time.
But to be honest, for me, the most remarkable thing about Clementine is not her life, as extraordinary as it was. What amazes me is something even more magical and so hard to achieve.
What strikes me most about her is how comfortable she felt with her own appearance, especially at a time when such eccentricity was even less accepted than today (although one can argue about the safety people felt then in relegating such people to the rank of “phenomena” distant from their so-called normality).
Clementine's autobiography is filled with positive affirmations about her curves, her beauty, the number of hearts she could have won if she had not been devoted to her husband. From the start of her story and the mention of her "flattering mustache", Clementine shows no embarrassment about her abundant facial hair, her tall stature and uncommon strength, and never doubts her own femininity, mentioning that while she could certainly summarily eject any unruly customer from her café, she was also the most talented embroiderer there was.
She always describes herself as "seductive" and "well built", and boasts that no one ever doubted she was a woman... except when she disguised herself as a man, of course. She enjoys recounting the first time she walked dressed as a man and how she fooled a pretty saleswoman by first presenting herself at her shop as Clementine, then as a man, boasting about how, the second time, the saleswoman "blushed and acted coy, probably hoping for more than a handshake".
Clementine never saw herself as anything but a woman, and certainly not as a "freak show", although she did not hesitate to tour as one in the last years of her life. For her, it was not about belittling herself, but about proudly showing people how beautiful she was.
She lived a long life, mostly happy, thankful for her luck and the gifts nature had given her, and I think it is a beautiful lesson of confidence and self-love.
And if you want to know more about this extraordinary woman, you might meet her by visiting our Cabinet of Curiosities… 👀🗝️