OLD DAME DANCING

I’ve just come from another library speaking engagement where I talked about alopecia and my book BALD AS A BEAN: The Experience of Sudden Hair Loss. Librarians like me. I suspect it has more to do with my willingness to speak for free than with my subject, however, BEAN usually draws a good crowd. A bald woman does have a fascination factor. In any case, I start my talk with a quiz—a tonsorial version of consciousness raising—which I call “hair raising.

This is the quiz:

How much money do you spend each year on your hair? Include shampoo, conditioner, coloring products, equipment, and professional visits.

How much time you devote to your hair each week (or month or year)? Include washing it, drying it, styling it, thinking about what to do with it, regretting what you did to it, making hair appointments, driving to hair appointments.

Consider the hair that isn’t on your head. How much time and money do you spend removing it? And what is your attitude toward it?

What does your own hair mean to you? Do you wear it long or short? Why? Do you color it, straighten it or curl it? Why?

What does your hair mean to your spouse? Is he or she involved in your hair decisions?

Do you judge other people by their hair? What messages does their hair send to you?

Look at the person sitting on your right. (If you’re trying this at home, think of a friend.) Describe this individual very briefly. Was hair part of your description? Did you use words like blonde, long, curly?

Consider our culture’s attitude toward hair. Would you agree that hair can suggest youth, health, sexiness … or the opposite? We call hair “the crowning glory”. We have hair stereotypes; the uptight woman with a bun and glasses; she removes her spectacles and the pins in her hair, shakes her hair loose and voila!

How this is the point of the quiz:

That hair is a big part of your life.

That hair is a big part of your self image.

That hair is a big part of society’s perception of you—of your age, your health, your personal hygiene, your socio-economic state, even of your attitude toward life.

Therefore, when you suddenly lose your hair suddenly, all these perceptions are compromised—compromised drastically.

What would you do if lost all your hair suddenly? It is a dramatic—even traumatic—event. And it is something that people undergoing certain types of chemotherapy and people with alopecia universalis experience and endure.

Managing the problem will be the topic of frequent entries on this blog, but if you can’t wait for the advice to appear here, you’ll find answers and information in BALD AS A BEAN: The Experience of Sudden Hair Loss at www.nancyparsonspubs.com or on Amazon.com. And you’ll find even more help at www.NAAF.org. The National Alopecia Areata Foundation website.

Tags: Alopecia areata, Bald As A Bean, bald woman, chemotherapy, hair, hair raising, NAAF, self image, universalis

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 21st, 2009 at 09:44 and is filed under Alopecia Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.