So basically, Circus is the New Disease.

Haircrobat, mic check this real quick-

FASHIONS in dress often have their origin in the wish to hide disfigurement caused by disease. The voluminous trunk hose worn by English gallants at the beginning of the seventeenth century were introduced by James I as a means of concealing an unsightly malformation. Slaves of fashion to whom Nature had refused an adequate curve of the hip had to supply the deficiency by art. Readers will remember the story told by Carlyle of the discomfiture of the unlucky courtier who sat down on a nail, and on rising to receive His Majesty instantaneously emitted several pecks of bran, and stood a pitiable figure with his breeches hanging in folds about his shrunken person. The introduction of the crinoline is often attributed to the Empress Eugénie before the birth of the Prince Imperial; as a matter of fact, a similar apparatus had, under the name of farthingales, vertugadins, and what not, been used by ladies in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The patches which added so piquant an effect to the faces of the beauties of the eighteenth century were first used by officers to disguise the scars of wounds received in battle. If the late Sir Robert Peel had been a royal personage his manner of wearing his hat at an angle that seemed intended to express defiance of public opinion would have become fashionable among young "bloods," as they are beginning once more to be called; yet we believe it was really intended to conceal a scar. In a second series of his Indiscrétions de l' Histoire, recently published, Dr. Cabanès cites several other instances in point. In the fifteenth century Philippe le Bon, having fallen ill, had his head shaved. Like the fox in the fable that had lost his tail, he tried to persuade the nobles of Burgundy that the human head looked much handsomer when its shape was not hidden by a mass of hair. They did not see the thing in the same light, but, unlike the fox, Philippe had the power to compel people to be of his opinion, and, shaven heads perforce became fashionable. The daughters of Louis XI had feet of a size which made it necessary for them to hide them; hence the society dames of the day thought it due to themselves to wear trailing gowns. The wife of Philip III disguised an abnormally long neck with a high wimple, and was imitated by all ladies who wished to be considered fashionable. Henry Plantagenet, anxious to hide the deformity caused by an outgrowth on the foot, had boots made with extravagantly curved toes, which straightway became the only wear for courtiers. Louis XIV wore a wig to hide unsightly wens on his head; the fashion of wearing wigs has also been attributed to the havoc played by syphilis among the "love locks" of the seventeenth century. Many other instances could be given, but these will suffice to show that there is a closer connexion between fashion and deformity than might at first sight be suspected. This may serve to explain how a thing ugly in itself may come to be accepted as the stamp of social. ( BMJ 1905;ii: 88)