Julia: Her Troubling Legend

The "ugliest woman in the world" was buried in 2012. Born in Mexico in 1834, Julia Pastrana had the fur of our ancestors all over her body. Thick, black hair.  Her ears were large “The better to hear you with.” Her nose as well. Some thought she had two rows of teeth. She did have a large jaw – jutting, pugnacious.

Darwin dismissed claims that Julia was the missing link between ape and man, describing her as “a remarkably fine woman. . . with a masculine beard,” though there is no evidence that he ever met her.


Julia was born to an indigenous women in the Sierra Madre. At the age of  two she was "taken in" by the household of Pedro Sanchez (former governor of Sinaloa). Something happened. Her pamphlets say she "was ill-used", so Julia left for the United States. Some say she was sold to a corrupt official, Sepulvida, who planned to make a profit by exhibiting her. But once she arrived in New York Sepulvida seems to disappear from her narrative. Perhaps the 4'6" woman overwhelmed him? At any rate, Julia attended a military ball in Baltimore and  met Theodore Lent, an American impresario. Though she also met P.T. Barnum Julia never joined his circus. Instead, she chose Lent as her manager and left New York for London.

Julia was hugely popular in Europe. She sang and danced and charmed her audiences. After a highly successful German tour she received several proposals of marriage, but chose to wed Lent. The two traveled to Russia, where Julia gave birth to a son who died within days followed by his mother. 1860. She was twenty-six. Her dying words are said to have been, "I die knowing I was loved for my true self."

Lent had mother and son mummified and continued to display their bodies. He later married a woman of similar features and exhibited her until he was admitted to a mental institution in 1884. He died in the asylum, but Julia and her son remained on display in Norway and vicinity until the 1970s, when someone decided it was time for a U.S. tour. Disgusted by the prospect (maybe) someone stole the bodies and abandoned them in a dumpster. The baby was eaten and the mother gnawed by rodents until she was retrieved and, eventually, buried (to much fanfare) in Sinaloa.

Laura Barbata arranged for the burial. Preening in the media shine, Barbata confidently asserted that Lent embodied male exploitation of women. Something to do with colonization. Jan Bondeson, Julia's "authoritative biographer," agreed that Lent could not have married Julia for love.

It couldn’t have been love. She was so ugly. It must have been the money.

Julia's story is almost a legend. Two plays and a rock opera have been made since her burial. Each offers a version of the victim narrative spearheaded by Bondeson and Barbata.  I hope to trouble that narrative by exploring what we know about her life and imagining  the rest.