True or Not? PCOS & Facial Hair During the Victorian & Edwardian Era

Facial hair on women is often spoken about as if it’s a modern concern, tied neatly to the language of hormones, diagnosis and medical categories. But long before PCOS had a name, women in both the Victorian and Edwardian eras were already living with the same quiet, unspoken symptoms.

What They Didn’t Have was the Vocabulary

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, women’s bodies were observed, judged, moralised and medicalised, but they were rarely understood. A stray hair on the chin could be framed as a personal failing, a sign of ageing, a “masculine trait”, or simply something not to be mentioned at all. Yet the evidence sits quietly in the archives: engravings, advertisements, newspaper columns and domestic scenes that show women navigating the same concerns we recognise today.

One 1908 newspaper, that was printed during the Edwardian period, discusses facial hair removal with a tone that feels surprisingly familiar. The advice columns, the small classified adverts, the promises of a “permanent” solution, they echo the same anxieties and the same hopes.

And earlier still, Victorian engravings show women in moments of rest, illness or domestic care. These images don’t name PCOS, but they reveal the broader landscape of women’s health at the time: misunderstood symptoms, limited language, and a cultural silence around anything that didn’t fit neatly into the ideals of femininity.

What we now understand as a hormonal condition was once simply part of women’s private lives, managed quietly, spoken of rarely, and often carried alone.

Looking back at these materials, it isn’t about diagnosing the past. It’s about recognising continuity. The women who came before us lived with bodies that didn’t always match the expectations placed upon them. They found their own ways of coping, concealing, or simply carrying on.

Today, we have names, research, communities and language. They had only experience, yet, across more than a century, the thread remains: women noticing, adapting, and quietly making sense of their own symptoms.