In those days, a “bearded lady” was a circus freak. Now, we have one (in essence) as our Surgeon General. They are reading stories to young children in bars and public libraries, and people are losing their jobs for not going along with the insanity.
Just to clarify, some bearded women suffer from one of a few physical anomalies which cause this. They were probably women with a problem rather than men pretending to be women.