“Me and this alopecia will become friends.” With that in mind, actress Jada Pinkett posted on Instagram last December that her baldness had nothing to do with cancer or brain surgery, as some have suggested, but she has alopecia. The condition that caused her to lose her hair was motivated by a joke Chris Rock made at the Oscars and to which Will Smith, the actor’s partner, responded with sludge that traveled the world. “Judd, I love you. I’m looking forward to seeing you Lieutenant O’Neill 2“In the background, the laughter was in contrast to the look that Pinkett heard: looking up, eyes empty, not funny.
The joke was repeated in thousands of women who suffer just as much as he did. Condition, alopecia, normalized in men but less mentioned or identified in women. It’s not that it does not exist: the available data indicate that this is what up to 30% of women can experience at some point in their lives. But the taboo and stigma that falls on a woman’s baldness has profound consequences for mental health, feelings of shame or lack of self-esteem, making self-acceptance a real challenge, and hiding is seen as the only possible way.
“I hid from him as if my life depended on him, I really felt that way. The other side of the coin is that he did everything out of fear, out of fear that it would be known. “I even wear a wig in the bathroom with my roommates to get out of the shower,” said Julia Vincent, co-founder of A Pelo, an association set up in 2017 in Barcelona to support “bald people”. There are many types of alopecia. Julia has alopecia areata, the same as tingling, an autoimmune disease: “It is a condition in which the body attacks itself, the hair follicles and the hair fall out. “Up to 2% of the population can suffer from it,” says Claudia Bernardes, a dermatologist and hair trichologist.
“Alternatives go through selling your wigs to hide, instead of offering psychological treatment to get you.”
Monte Fernandez Lopez
This type of alopecia usually starts with depopulated areas of hair and develops towards total hair loss. Julia started at the age of seven. At the age of 15 she started wearing a wig, but at 30 something changed and a bald woman came out of the closet, which is called stopping hiding. It was after posing as a model in a wig shop and seeing her photos posted on social media with positive comments: “For the first time, since I felt that alopecia was the worst thing that ever happened to me, I felt it. Thankful, ”said Bill.
Montse Fernández López alopecia areata has ended in universal alopecia, which occurs when hair loss is not limited to the scalp but also affects other parts of the body such as the eyebrows and eyelashes. “I was first seen in a hairdresser 18 years ago, I started having hair on my back and when I was shown, I was dead. “At first they were just flaps (bald spots), then I got treatment and managed not to get rid of it completely, but later I lost it completely,” recalls Monte, 50, who regrets that the alternative is to “sell the wig”. Hide instead of “offer psychological treatment to get you.”
Hair as a symbol of femininity
Hair loss is something that neither men nor women like, but in the case of the latter it acquires specific results because of the importance that culture has given to a woman’s hair. So much so that bald women usually do not even appear in centers, clinics or advertisements for anti-alopecia treatment. “There is a stereotype and a law about what a woman is and it is associated with long and lush hair. That is why sometimes there is even a feeling of loss of femininity and it can become a duel with your own image, “- describes Noemi Konde, a psychologist. Get naked. Body autonomy.
“You have low self-esteem and you try to pay as little attention as possible, but it affects your relationship, meeting people or working.”
Virginia Garcia Coupon
The effects of this visibility and stigma on bald women crystallize in all walks of life. “Women’s alopecia is invisible, as are many things that happen to us women. “There are those who have been fired or asked to paint their eyebrows for work,” said Sandra Roman, director of Mujeres Calvas, a documentary about the situation that will begin filming later this month.
Virginia Garcia Tallon, 43, a member of Alopecia Madrid, developed androgenic alopecia as a teenager, a condition of hormonal origin sometimes known as common baldness, which affects half of women and 80% of men to varying degrees. Bernardes. This type is characterized by hair loss especially on the scalp. “You are trying to socialize and it is difficult. You have low self-esteem and you try to pay as little attention as possible, but it affects your relationship, meeting people or working, ”explains Virginia, who started using a hair prosthesis that was not removed 14 years ago. At any time, in any moment. ”
“I am happy and I feel free”
That was until he stumbled upon a Facebook page of the Naked Association and tracked it down. Going to one of the meetings organized by them in the capital changed his life. “You see that there are more women like you and you feel alone in the world,” she said. Since then the process has progressed: he left the prosthesis and started wearing a wig and telling those around him who did not yet know. “You hide it because you feel something is wrong and it is not normal,” he thinks. Before, during his imprisonment due to a pandemic, the first allowed walk was shaved, with nothing on his head.
After a long and difficult process, Virginia and many other women decided to go out on the street as they felt most comfortable, even if it meant seeing their baldness and often being confused with the sick and people. Undergoing cancer treatment. “I am happy as I am, I have accepted myself, I feel free and I look phenomenal and beautiful,” Virginia admits. Key to this are supportive spaces such as those promoted by associations. For Julia, this is “vital” because “when your hair falls out, you feel like the only bald woman in the world” and “the only alternative we have is: put on a wig, hide and not notice. We are bald women, that’s right. ”
After many years of trying to hide it, Moncee underwent a “brutal change” when he met other bald women. That was in 2019, at a meeting attended by about twenty colleagues. “I was released, I wore a wig and he did not wear it back,” he said. However, he argues that this is not an easy path because the stigma and lack of information still weighs on him. “Sometimes I use handkerchiefs, it depends on where I go or with whom I go to see people, I do not feel completely comfortable, but gradually I feel better,” says Monce.
And this is that the goal is not the need for women to hide, but to be good to themselves: “The freedom of women with alopecia is not the feeling that they are wearing a wig as if it were a crutch without which they are. “They can not live because it does not limit them to the fact that they can dedicate themselves to whatever they want with or without a wig,” said Sandra Roman.
Source: El Diario
I am Ida Scott, a journalist and content author with a passion for uncovering the truth. I have been writing professionally for Today Times Live since 2020 and specialize in political news. My career began when I was just 17; I had already developed a knack for research and an eye for detail which made me stand out from my peers.
