“People Only Know Me as a Freak,” The Wolf Man Struggles to Find a Job Outside the Circus

Jesús Aceves has hypertrichosis, which makes his hair grow abundantly over his face and back. Because of his condition, he’s also known as The Wolf Man. But he’s tired of this alias and wants to live a normal life.

Meet Jesús Aceves, a 55-year-old man born with a condition called hypertrichosis, which means he has abnormal hair growth over his body, especially his face. Although married with kids, Jesús isn’t fully happy with his living conditions. He says he and his family suffer discrimination. In an interview, one of his kids mentioned, “People call me names, and they even tell their kids not to be my friends.”

He worked in the circus all his life, traveling through several cities. But now, he’s tired of being seen as a freak. As a consequence of years on the road, he’s been known as The Wolf Man.

Back home and not in the circus anymore, he’s facing another challenge: finding a “normal” job. He needs to support his family since his wife works in temporary jobs.

After several failed job interviews, he agreed to try something he had always avoided: shave his face. He relied on his family barber to transform him, even creating eyebrows and lashes.

The experience was difficult since the face is an extremely sensitive body area, but both he and his wife believed that simply by shaving, he would be able to find a job.

Jesús did several interviews, and it’s confident that now he’ll find somewhere to work besides the circus. If this happens, he must shave his face every 2 days.

Although rare, some conditions aren’t impossible to have. Luckily, people find a way to overcome the difficulties a rare condition brings and strive in life. Hannah Tyre, for example, was born with osteogenesis imperfecta, meaning that her bones break very easily. But her love for makeup made her an internet influencer, reaching millions of followers. We hope that, by reaching the mainstream media, people with genetic diseases won’t suffer more discrimination.