Cathy Gere writes:

Various 16th-century clerics and medics railed against shaving, with one English physician lamenting the ‘filthy Fineness and loathesome Loveliness’ of the new urban fop. The same author believed unusually hirsute females to be monsters, but they weren’t always objects of derision and fear. The patron saint of hairy ladies was Mary Magdalene, whose legend had by this time accrued much new detail, including an episode of penitent cave-dwelling during which her already prodigious head of hair grew to cover her whole body. Women who wanted to be rid of their husbands prayed to St Uncumber, who had beseeched God to help her avoid an arranged marriage and was blessed with a magnificent beard that sent her betrothed packing. Gorgeous wild women, with smooth faces, furry bodies and Farrah Fawcett curls, began to appear on 16th-century stained glass windows and drinking cups as emblems of fecundity, protection and strength. Into this fad for furry things burst Petrus Gonzales.

(LRB 23 July 2009)

Yale | hardback 248 pp. |ISBN: 9780300127331