00:00It is a little bit painful to physically cut ties to something that was a little bit of my identity.
00:08I was the girl with pink hair.
00:10If we were trying to find one person and we were in a group of people, I'm like,
00:13oh, just look for my hair, it's bright purple, you'll see me.
00:16Cancer took that choice away from me.
00:19My name is Jessica Mills, I'm a wig maker, and last year I was diagnosed with breast cancer.
00:26Most of my clients are cosplayers.
00:28Cosplay wigs are a little different than a ready-to-wear or everyday wig.
00:33This is meant to emulate a character, whether animated or live action.
00:37They tend to be a little more extra, a little more larger than life.
00:42I cosplay myself, but I also do more clients than my own wigs.
00:48In 2021, when the film industry started to pick back up again, I was on a movie for a little
00:52bit.
00:53I was brought in for the wig work.
00:54I was trying to make up for the lost time of the pandemic, basically.
00:57We lost a lot of time, a lot of experience, and I was trying to get all of that back.
01:02And then suddenly, stop, you have to deal with this cancer thing.
01:08I was taking my bra off one night, and I felt a lump.
01:12And it was right where my underwire hit.
01:14It didn't get better.
01:16It didn't get worse.
01:17It didn't get bigger.
01:19Then, what I had found previously was beginning to hurt.
01:23And I had to fight with doctors to be seen, which is terrible to have to say.
01:34After a couple of fights with that, I was finally taken seriously.
01:38And lo and behold, I had stage 3 cancer.
01:41That kicked off a year of treatment and tests and everything else.
01:46And I worked through that.
01:48I was still working on set the entire time I was going through chemo.
01:50So this is the hair that we shaved off of my head at the beginning of chemo.
01:56When it was on my body, it was a little bit longer than this.
01:59You lose some length in that.
02:00I had bangs.
02:01Can't reuse that.
02:02This hair I'm going to use to make a wig.
02:05No one person's head of hair will make a wig on its own.
02:08I was really touched that a lot of friends offered their hair to me in the process.
02:13Piece by piece, hair by hair, I will tie that hair into a lace material.
02:19When I say I'm tying it, I'm literally taking one little section of lace.
02:26You are just tying a knot.
02:32And you repeat that over and over and over again.
02:35I had this grand idea that I was going to make it for myself during chemo.
02:40But to make a wig from scratch takes about 40 to 80 hours of work.
02:44All the spare time that I had, I needed to rest.
02:47So now my focus is more that I just want to keep that hair and not lose it.
02:53Even though all the big stuff is over, I still have my hormone therapy stuff to take care of.
03:00I have found that the doctors that I'm seeing don't call it remission anymore.
03:03They might say that you have no evidence of disease.
03:06I get a lot of people who say to me, oh, you're done now.
03:09Or, oh, I'm so glad this is over for you.
03:11And I have to explain to a lot of people that it really isn't.
03:13My cancer is considered hormone driven.
03:16So I need to take a hormone blocker.
03:19I have to take calcium because the hormone blockers can leach the calcium out of your bones.
03:24So that's a risk.
03:25I take a cherry supplement, which is supposed to help with the arthritis.
03:30Can't tell if it does or not.
03:31There is a study for it.
03:33But, I mean, I'll do what I can.
03:35I'm going to have to do this every day, twice a day, for the next five to ten years.
03:39And that was an adjustment for me.
03:41This pill, this is an interesting one.
03:44It's supposed to be the thing that keeps people with stage four living for longer.
03:49And for higher risk of recurrence, like myself, stage three but high risk, it's going to keep it from coming
03:53back.
03:56Unfortunately, it's thinning out my hair.
03:58It's not as bad as chemo, but it is definitely, like, I have half of the amount of hair that
04:02I used to have.
04:03And I had all these plans for different hairstyles I was going to do as it grew back in.
04:07And since it's thinning out my hairline, I can't do that.
04:11So it's just a change.
04:16This was a dining room.
04:17And it is now my studio.
04:20I've got ten wigs this week that I'm working on.
04:23And I'm going to need a bunch of different tools to do it.
04:26I love this little carousel.
04:27I've had it for years.
04:28The poor thing is so covered in hairspray at this point.
04:30I've got these dowels that I'll use.
04:32After the hair's already been curled,
04:34you can use it to kind of coax the hair around the shape that you want
04:38so that you get the curl that you want, kind of smooth things back in.
04:43Cosplay tends to be more synthetic than human.
04:46Synthetic hair, it's going to hold up to humidity better than human hair would.
04:50If it was human, it would frizz.
04:53Hey! Hi!
04:54My client today, she's a friend of mine named Taz,
04:57and she is a burlesque performer.
04:59She approached me to do a wig for her for a photo shoot that she's going to do.
05:02So here she is.
05:03Yay!
05:04That nice sweep over the face that you're asking for.
05:07Yes.
05:07Very Veronica Lake.
05:08I love it.
05:09That's a nice structure going.
05:11We're just going to do a little quick pin curl prep.
05:14This is going to give us something to pin into,
05:16so that the wig doesn't slide back or off or whatever.
05:19I am a working performance artist in Los Angeles.
05:22Sometimes I don't want to do all my hair by myself,
05:25and it's not a question of having enough hair.
05:26My hair is very long, but that actually makes it a pain to style.
05:30So having a dear friend who is a wig maker and stylist is extremely convenient.
05:37And then we're going to put a cap on you.
05:41Put your finger right there.
05:43Just the one.
05:43Yep.
05:44As it became more apparent that the cancer treatment was going to impact her ability,
05:50not just to work, but literally just to be able to move her arms.
05:56As a friend group, we wanted to get a fundraiser started.
05:59We raised several tens of thousands of dollars.
06:02Everyone was so happy to help because we all love chess.
06:05What do you think?
06:07Yes.
06:07Oh, it's wonderful.
06:08Yes.
06:08So I did have one question, and I've noticed that sometimes this curve here will sometimes
06:14kind of sag a little bit, like it's getting sleepy.
06:17Oh, okay.
06:18Yeah, I think maybe if it's starting to kind of like more of a, it's coming this way,
06:23sometimes you can just put a pin right here.
06:25Like almost like that.
06:26Oh, okay.
06:27Hair is such an individual thing for so many people.
06:35As a wig maker, I was prepared for it in a way that a lot of people I don't think
06:38are.
06:39I thought it would make it easier, and it probably did, but it still did affect me.
06:43It was still pretty emotional.
06:44I don't think there's any way around that.
06:46It's visceral.
06:49In this industry, there's a lot of focus on how you look and what you can do for others.
06:55It takes a lot of courage, a lot of courage and a lot of strength to accept help.
06:59That was the thing that was the most striking to me was that she was willing to accept help.
07:03It was really amazing to see how our entire community came together to support her.
07:08My body has done what it's going to do, and I have done what I can to get rid of
07:13it,
07:13and all I can do is live my life well and keep moving forward.
07:17Gladys!
07:30JET
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