via Dazed Digital Text & Photos by Eva Aridjis
Jesús ‘Chuy’ Aceves, aka the Mexican ‘Wolf Man,’ and a dozen members of his extended family suffer from the extremely rare condition of congenital hypertrichosis, meaning they were born with an abnormal amount of hair on their faces and bodies. Due to their appearance, they suffer from discrimination in all areas of their lives. These men and women, boys and girls all struggle with the same issues: being made fun of at school and abandoned by their ‘non-hairy’ parents as children, followed by discrimination in the workplace and abandonment by their ‘non-hairy’ partners as adults. The only consistent work they can find is in circuses and sideshows, exhibiting themselves as freaks just as Jo-Jo The Dog-Faced Boy, Lionel the Lion-Faced Man, Julia Pastrana and other individuals with the same condition did centuries before them.
It was important to me as a filmmaker to give them a voice and let them tell their stories, and to document the challenges they face in their daily lives. Only fifty or so cases of congenital hypertrichosis have been recorded in history, and in Chuy’s family, from his deceased ancestors down to his 6-month-old nephew Derian, there have been 30 cases thus far. Never before in the history of the human race has there been such a hairy family, and Chuy, The Wolf Man is the only filmed portrait of this family in existence.”
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