Please note this is NOT a ZOOM Lecture but an in person lecture.
What happens when one of the oldest visual signs of masculinity appears on a woman’s face? Across centuries, the female beard has been read as miracle, monstrosity, medical anomaly, spectacle, protection from unwanted male attention, and even as a form of power.
At the center of this talk is Clémentine Delait, the formidable bearded café owner of Thaon-les-Vosges, who transformed a physical singularity into a public persona entirely her own. She posed, performed, sold postcards, played knowingly with masculine and feminine codes, and approached her fame with remarkable humor, nerve, and self-possession.
Moving from bearded saints and Wild Women to sideshow performers and modern ideas of bodily positivity, this lecture explores how female facial hair can become a language through which gender, authority, desire, and difference are made visible—and how Clémentine Delait learned to speak that language entirely on her own terms.
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Laetitia Barbier is a French art historian, writer, tarot reader, and independent researcher based in New York. Formerly Program Director, Librarian, and Curator at Morbid Anatomy, she is the author of Tarot and Divination Cards: A Visual Archive and co-creator, with Lou Benesch, of the Camena Tarot. Her work explores tarot, popular religious imagery, occult traditions, symbolism, and the strange afterlives of images across art and visual culture.
Image Credit: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/keab6wps
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The Absinthe Parlour at The Last Tuesday Society is London’s best award-winning alternative cocktail bar hidden within The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities. A drinker’s cabinet of wonder filled curious cocktails & extraordinary elixirs —The Last Tuesday Society’s Absinthe Parlour is truly a hidden treasure of East London. Opened by collectors, drinks historians & absinthe experts — Allison Crawbuck (Brooklyn) & Rhys Everett (London) in 2016, the duo bring with them a shared passion for the mysterious world of spirits & the macabre.
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Event is suitable for 18+ over only. Please contact [email protected] with any questions, allergies or dietary requirements. Refunds for in-person events are only possible up to 7 days prior to the event date.
