Featured Image Source: vogue.com Our celebrity highlight for the week is Willow Smith, the daughter of actor Will Smith and actress/talk show hostess Jada Pinkett Smith. Willow Smith perfectly fits the definition of true Hollywood royalty. Willow Smith’s first taste of limelight and fame came in 2010, when she released her debut single "Whip My … Continue reading Celebrity Highlight For The Week: Willow Smith
A diagnosis of childhood alopecia can truly shock parents. . Your first thought may be, “hair loss is for the elderly, not for my child!” However, alopecia in children is a lot more common than you’d think. Alopecia areata affects millions of children of all ages; in fact, 1 out of every 1000 children worldwide … Continue reading Children Living With Alopecia
"The creative arts are subjective and they reach people at a point in their lives when they need it most. It's like a song or an album is made and it's almost like it has a radar to find the person when they need it the most." -Jon Batiste Music is a universal language that … Continue reading Highlights of the 64th Annual Grammy Awards
As women, our goal is beautiful, healthy hair. Damage can make styling a challenge and make us feel less than desirable. I mean, who wants thin, brittle hair? Beauty supply shelves are full of products promising to help repair damaged hair. But here’s a big secret: sometimes the problem isn’t which moisturizer you’re using, but … Continue reading 5 Vitamins Your Body Needs to Prevent Hair Damage
I’m sure I was not alone in keeping up with Issa Rae’s hairstyles on the HBO hit series Insecure. Ever since the show debuted in 2016 on HBO, I make sure not to miss a single episode of this “30 minutes Bible of true African-American hair culture.” With its 5th season now underway, the show … Continue reading Issa Rae: Securing The Black Hair Culture Through “Insecure”
Nowadays it’s more acceptable to wear your hair in its natural state, but building up the self-confidence to do so can send you on a tough personal journey. Black hair isn’t just a look—it’s an investment and a grueling relationship that many African American Women choose to commit to. From expensive treatments, monthly trims, and hairstyles that take over 5 hours to complete, women of color suffer constant inconveniences just to get their hair under control.
Being a multicultural woman with African American roots (pun definitely intended) I have felt this acutely. I have never been fully comfortable wearing my Au naturel curly locks to a job interview because I never wanted my interviewers to see me as "unprofessional" or "untamed.” I would always straighten my hair or put it in a sleek ponytail because I felt that interviewers would then take me more seriously.
The hardest part of being a woman with alopecia is difficult to pinpoint. First of all, it absolutely decimates your self-confidence. Whether you typically wear your hair long or short, struggling to cover those maddening bald spots, where your tresses have fallen out in clumps, sabotages your self-esteem like the worst kind of schoolyard bully.
In the early stages of Alopecia, the balding quickly became worse. One afternoon, I was brushing my hair before washing it, and with each stroke, my hair slipped away from my head. I was brushing and brushing and brushing, and it was all falling on the bathroom floor. I was devastated, lying on the floor crying while the shower was still running. My family was home, but no one fully knew the pain I was enduring at that moment. I eventually gathered myself together enough to wash what hair was left. Once finished, I began to add my leave-in conditioner and comb it through my hair, but my hair was completely falling out before my eyes. So much hair was dropping to the floor. I was just collecting handfuls of hair in my hands and putting it in the toilet.
When I was first diagnosed with Alopecia, I felt like someone put a curse on my happy, little life. Did I accidentally step on someone’s toe and they decided that this was the best way to smite me? I don’t know, but trying on wig, after wig, after wig to camouflage my rapid hair loss was surely a curse on its own.
