By 1853, Boisdechêne was a married mother, now known as “Madame Clofullia,” and on her way across the Atlantic to try her luck in America—with the showman Phineas Taylor Barnum.
Tapaus sai aikanaan huomattavasti julkisuutta ja sitä epäiltiin Barnumin mainoskikaksi.

Madame Clofullia was judged by what she said, not how she looked.

But the woman in the photo, Madame Josephine Clofullia, was viewed much differently by her contemporaries.

While the nation wrestles with a legacy of violence against transgender people, courts weigh in on trans peoples’ rights to move freely in gendered spaces, and some citizens fret about the presence of trans bodies in bathrooms and locker rooms, Clofullia’s life as the bearded lady offers a useful history.

Barnum's "Bearded Lady of Geneva"].
Now known as Madame Clofullia, Josephine attempted to quiet the rumors that she was a man by becoming pregnant and giving birth to a normal baby girl in 1851.

But as she toured America in the 1850s, Clofullia’s audiences saw a mere curiosity, not the crime against gender that was billed.

She sits on a wooden chair and leans against a cloth-covered table. Barnum introduced testimony from Madame Clofullia’s father and husband, as well as from three physicians, each of whom had examined Clofullia. Barnum carefully designed these exhibitions not only to excite viewers’ curiosity, but to arouse their skepticism. While a handful of viewers trickled into the American Museum, the bearded lady had, distressingly, failed to provoke cries of fraud. http://images.mohistory.org/image/F127BA16-5BF1-BCE0-FEBC-85EEA60849A3/original.jpg, http://collections.mohistory.org/resource/141999, Thomas Easterly Daguerreotype Collection- 243 - 553, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Josephine_Clofullia._(Madame_Clofullia,_P.T._Barnum%27s_%22Bearded_Lady_of_Geneva%22).jpg&oldid=469098917, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Missouri History Museum. Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time. The far more common reaction to Clofullia was that she was “a perfect lady in every aspect,” as the New Albany Daily Ledger wrote in 1854.

Myöhemmin elämänsä varrella Clofullia muutti isänsä, poikansa ja aviomiehensä kanssa Yhdysvaltoihin, missä he liittyivät P. T. Barnumin sirkukseen.

He hired Josephine Clofullia, who had more whiskers than Fagin, as the original Bearded Lady. Clofullia, tyttönimeltään Boisdechene, syntyi karvaisena ja kahdeksan vuoden iässä hänen partansa oli jo viiden senttimetrin mittainen. Josephine Clofullia (1829–1875) was a famous Swiss -born bearded lady who toured with P. T. Barnum 's " American Museum ". (Madame Clofullia, P.T.

Clofullia imitoi partansa kanssa myös Napoleon III:ta ja sai tältä lahjaksi suuren timantin.

Clofillia, Josphine [Madame Clofullia, P.T. This page was last edited on 23 September 2020, at 21:07. She was born hairy and reputedly had a two-inch beard at the age of eight.

And so, as the lucrative July 4 holiday approached, Barnum resorted to a promotional tactic he had used many times before. A far larger number, by contrast, questioned the authenticity of the case—leveling the all-too-accurate charge that Barnum had put Chaar up to the suit. Josephine Clofullia.

But despite her success as a cultural meme, the original bearded lady elicited little more than a shrug.