I was Here - The Bearded Woman

Sixteen-year-old girls shouldn’t have to worry about growing a beard, but I did.

Menstrual Blood Gum Bichromate and Cyanotype prints, Human Hair, Blood. 2023-2024

“Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a condition in which the ovaries produce an abnormal amount of androgens, male sex hormones that are usually present in women in small amounts. The name polycystic ovary syndrome describes the numerous small cysts (fluid-filled sacs) that form in the ovaries.” – John Hopkins Medicine

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) slowly, quietly consumed my body when I was a teenager. Many people, including my pediatrician, denied that something abnormal was happening within my body. I lost half of my hair and gained eighty pounds, and developed cystic acne, hirsutism (male pattern hair growth), oligomenorrhea (infrequent menstruation), and other abrupt symptoms beginning at age sixteen. My pediatrician never mentioned PCOS to me, even though one out of every ten women are affected by this complex hormone disorder. It’s a common misconception that “negligent” weight gain causes those aforementioned symptoms, when in truth the hormone imbalance causes the weight gain itself and the symptoms. This causes most women to not get diagnosed until their thirties as PCOS is one of the most common, yet under-researched disorders that is regularly overmedicated, affected by fatphobic bias, and mishandled by practitioners in the medical field.

On Christmas Day of 2022, I started my cycle for the first time in over six months. I was officially diagnosed with PCOS on March 2nd, 2023, at nearly twenty-two years old, after irregularly menstruating for six years. I gained most of my knowledge of PCOS through social media as a teenager, but the diagnosis catapulted me into advocating and researching it for myself.

My ongoing project, I Was Here – The Bearded Woman, is of menstrual blood gum bichromate and cyanotype prints. Since creating my own formula to hand-print with my blood as pigment, I’ve been harvesting my menstrual blood since early 2023.

This body of work is a metaphorical interpretation of my grief, frustration, isolation, and acceptance of co-existing with this body riddled with PCOS. In these images, I grieve the “socially acceptable, desirable” body I could have if I had not developed PCOS. I press the viewer to acknowledge my existence, unlike doctors who ignore PCOS, by staring through the lens at my viewers and putting my own head hair, PCOS facial hair, and blood onto the images.

The Pearl, The Cyst, and The Egg are three repetitive symbols in these images. The Pearl represents femininity and female reproductive health, which I associate with the Roman goddess Venus and sea life. The Cyst (transparent orbs) represents my own polycystic ovaries, of which I cradle in these images and even am consumed by. The Egg (microspheres) represents the eggs within my own ovaries.