“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.

© A True Story / Youtube

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.”

© Chuy, El hombre lobo / Chuy, The Wolf Man / Facebook

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.

© A True Story / Youtube

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.

© A True Story / Youtube

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.

Daughter pulls off the wig of a girl with cancer, father forces her to shave her hair as punishment

As parents, we tend to teach our children to know right from wrong, but oftentimes, because of different reasons, we fail. One father learned that his daughter was bullying a girl who had cancer at school. Things went far and she even pulled the girl’s wig off. This made the father angry so he decided to take matters in his own hands and punished his daughter in a way that caused a stir, as well as mixed emotions, on the Internet. Since many slammed him for how he dealt with his bully daughter, the father later deleted the post.

“My ex-wife and I have a 16-year-old daughter together of which I have full custody (she has moved on with her new family)… My daughter recently got in trouble at school for making fun of a student that lost her hair from cancer treatment. Including pulling off her wig,” he started his post.

“Apparently there is some pre-existing bad blood between the two of them, but I don’t think that even begins to excuse her behavior.”

Representational Image (Source: Getty Images | Photo by Dianne Avery Photography)

As it turned out, his daughter was now dating this other girl’s ex-boyfriend and that was the reason why they weren’t fond of each other.

“At some point the other girl mentioned how my daughter’s boyfriend was just using her for sex (this was actually a big shock to me as I had no idea she was sexually active) and called my daughter a sl*t,” the father shared with CafeMom. “That’s what escalated the situation and resulted in the wig incident. Supposedly they have been arguing in class ever since my daughter started dating the guy in question. Basically just stupid teenage ‘he said she said’ nonsense.”After he learned of what was going on and what his daughter did, he gave her two options to choose from in order to teach her a lesson. The first one was for him to throw all her electronics away, and the second one was for her to go to the hairdresser and get a bald haircut. The daughter chose the latter and went to school with a bald head.

“…Everyone thinks I went way overboard. Her mother went ballistic at me saying it will make her the target of bullying (kind of the point, teach her some compassion),” the father wrote.

He believed he did just the right thing, but not many agreed with him. A lot of people took their time to comment on the situation. One person wrote: “Your daughter is a bully because you are a bully. I seriously doubt this is the first time you used abuse and humiliation to ‘teach her a lesson.’” Another person added: “There’s a term for what you did. It’s called child abuse. Taking away her electronics would have been an appropriate punishment. Grounding her would have been an appropriate punishment. Disrespecting her right to bodily autonomy and humiliating her is not an appropriate punishment. She’s unlikely to learn from it and if anything it risks perpetuating a cycle of bullying.”

Representational Image (Source: Getty Images | Photo by Svetlana Popova)

However, there were also those who praised his parenting. “I support your decision completely. You’re her parent so you have every right to do this, it’s not abusive, it’s real life. If she’s comfortable attacking someone for something they have no choice over she needs to see how it feels,” someone in support of the father wrote.

“She will see what kind of impact actions like hers have on the victim and that will teach her a very important lesson,” another supporter added.

So, what do you think? Do you believe the father went too far with the punishment? Share your thoughts with us in the comment section below.

Cover image: Representational (Source: Getty Images | Photo by Claudia Evans / EyeEm)

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