Woman with alopecia gets ready for work the night before and sleeps with her hair and eyebrows done

SWNS

A woman gets ready for work the night before – and sleeps with her hair and eyebrows done.  Jess Mullen, 27, has alopecia and lost her hair, eyebrows and eyelashes when they fell out aged 16.  She was diagnosed with alopecia areata which quickly developed to alopecia universalis – and her hair has never grown back since.  Jess says she didn’t leave the house for two years before she built up her confidence and started sharing her story online.  Now she feels “amazing” and is able to leave the house without her wigs and make-up done.  But Jess, who works in childcare, still feels more comfortable wearing wigs around the children she works with as she worries they will be “scared of her”.  She spends half an hour putting on her wig and applying eyebrow transfers the night before – but applies any make-up in the morning.  Jess, a childcare practitioner, from Greenwich, London, said: “It takes so long to get ready in the morning.  “I started doing it the night before.  “I put my eyebrows on and my wig on.  “It normally takes about half an hour.  “I feel it’s like second nature.”  Jess first noticed a clump of her hair had fallen out after she finished her GCSEs in 2013 – but it was dismissed by doctors as a cause of having her hair up too tight in a bun.  But a month later Jess lost all of her hair suddenly – including her eyebrows and eyelashes – and was diagnosed with alopecia.  Jess said: “I was the kind of girl that loved my hair.  “I was always setting the trend – dyeing it, cutting it into a bob.  “It was traumatic to lose it.  “There was two-year period where I didn’t go out.  “Then I built up the courage to try and wig.”  Jess said the wigs started to make her feel more confident – but she still wouldn’t leave the house without one.  Gradually over time she realised she couldn’t change anything and began feeling able to leave the house without a wig and her eyebrows on.  She said: “I got more confident.  “I knew there was nothing I could do to change who I am.”  Jess started an Instagram page in 2018 and connected with others like her.  She said: “It made me feel more comfortable and more confident.  “I can go out bald.  “I love the person I am.”  Despite this Jess still has days when she doesn’t feel as confident and tends to wear a wig for work.  She said: “I worried the children were going to be scared.  “But I have gone without a wig a few times and they have smiled and saw me for who I am.”  Jess gets ready the night before to make sure she is looking glam in her wigs.  She said: “I have a wardrobe filled with boxes about 50 to 80 wigs.  “I’m able to change my hair colour whenever I want.”  Jess wants other people to know they a not alone.  She said: “You might feel like an alien, but you don’t have to feel like you’re on your own.  “If you have a visual difference it’s OK to way you do – sad or anxious.  “I am who I am – you can be like that too.”

Transcript

00:00 So it's currently 10 o'clock at night but I'm getting ready for work. I don't start work till

00:04 half seven. Let me tell you why. So as you can probably tell there's a lot of steps that need

00:09 to be involved for me to actually leave the house. So one of them being my transfer eyebrows.

00:16 I'm doing that at six in the morning like they are getting put on right now and trust me there

00:23 has been so many times I've done it in the morning and one eyebrow is up there and one is down there

00:29 and yes I am going to be gluing my wig on for the morning because again doing that at six in the

00:34 morning is an absolute no from me. I literally can't even speak. I'm not a morning person at all

00:41 and yes obviously I can and I could go to work with how I look but it's just the level of

00:47 confidence that I don't really have yet. Like I'm very confident on like social media coming on

00:54 looking like this like it's absolutely fine but for some reason like certain parts of my life I'm

01:00 just not comfortable going out and being me yet and to be completely honest it's cold laying in

01:09 bed without hair. It is freezing so putting a wig on for night time is like a hat. So what I've done

01:18 now is I've clipped it and I've plaited it and made it all up and tight and then I just sleep with my

01:24 silk cap or a silk pillow just to make sure your wigs don't mat in the night. So that's me ready

01:30 for bed and halfway ready for work. Night!

01:34 [Music]

01:59 So I have a condition called alopecia universalis which means no body hair whatsoever and I first

02:06 noticed my alopecia in 2012. So the first time I noticed I had alopecia was in the hairdressers

02:12 funny enough and I was getting ready for my prom and my sister noticed a massive bald patch on the

02:17 back of my head. So I went to the doctors regarding my bald patch on the back of my head and they

02:22 basically turned around to me and said it is just your hairline literally just your hairline it's

02:27 fine it's probably because you're dying your hair or you're wearing your hair up too much. So I was

02:32 like okay absolutely fine and then about a week after the doctors this is when things started to

02:40 get a little bit worrying. So after the doctor said it's just your hairline it's fine went back home

02:45 went about my business and then basically within that month of going to the doctors I lost most of

02:52 my hair. It was coming out in clumps, I was laying in bed, it was coming off on my pillows in the

03:00 shower and at this point I literally had a strand here and a strand here of hair and all my bald

03:06 patches were connecting with each other and I was holding on to the last bit of hair as much as I

03:12 could but it got to the point where I was like no I need to go back to the doctors this is not normal

03:17 and I know my family had a good heart when saying this but they were saying like it's gonna be fine

03:21 you're not going bald we'll sort it it's gonna be okay we're gonna go to the doctors like we'll go

03:26 and get some help like it's gonna be okay but in my head I was like no I'm going bald this is it

03:31 this is my time I'm gonna be bald I don't want to wear wigs like that was my thing I did not want

03:36 to wear wigs like because wigs back then were shocking. So I just went for it and asked my

03:42 sister to shave the rest of my hair off. What I used to do instead of wearing wigs I used to like

03:49 put hair extensions into the hair that I had left like the stronger bits that I had left

03:53 and like I'd go out and my friends would be like Jess we can see your bald patches and like they'd

03:58 have to cover it up and I'd put like um eyeshadow in like my bald patches like it was actually

04:04 horrendous and when my sister was shaving my hair and she finished I remember I used to smoke back

04:11 then bad habit I remember going to the back door and having a cigarette and I could see my reflection

04:16 in the mirror and I remember thinking oh my god that's what I look like like I did not look in

04:21 the mirror for so long after anyway let me see my lip gloss but since that moment to now I've

04:27 looked exactly the same like no hair since that moment and honestly like I say to people in the

04:32 same situation as me like that moment was an awakening for me like I made that decision to

04:39 take control of alopecia like you're not taking my hair anymore I'm taking control I do not want

04:46 this anymore and I just shaved it and then since then I've just grown into me who I am today and

04:53 like when I remember looking at my reflection the first time and thinking oh my god I look like an

04:58 alien I'm so ugly like why do I look like this but now like I feel the complete opposite like

05:05 no you're a bald ass bitch girl like you've work so it's definitely been a journey that's a fact

05:12 but I would not change my life for the world I love me bald I love the way I look don't look

05:19 like an alien I don't feel ugly and I just love the way I look

Category

Transcript

Comments

Recommended