Up until this point, my appearance had never been a concern: growing up in the rural Suffolk countryside, I had little interest in anything other than climbing trees and drawing pictures—I was completely naive to my visual identity and the power it holds. Suddenly, though, my appearance was everything. It was all that defined me to others. People were either embarrassed and pitying, or cruel. Strangers assumed I had cancer, which made me feel guilty, as I felt that suffering was not mine to own.
Alopecia affects about two in every 1,000 people in Britain. It is an autoimmune disorder thought to be linked to inflammation in the body and occurs when the immune system attacks the hair follicles, which can trigger episodes of hair loss that range from patches to the whole body. There is no evidence of a cure and no way to predict the hair loss. The only treatment offered to me by the dermatologist was steroids, which was only a temporary option and strongly opposed by my loving parents.
I was terrified and didn’t know what to do. At first, I started to wear a headscarf to school, but my teachers forbade it, claiming it made me too different to the other students: they wouldn’t let someone dye their hair, so why should I be able to wear a headscarf? Ashamed of my appearance, I felt I had no choice but to wear a wig. To get one, my mother and I had to go to a shop for cancer patients—the kind of place where you have to ring a doorbell to get in and everyone speaks in hushed voices. I chose a short bob in my natural color, hoping that it would deceive the eyes of others better than the long, flowing hair I wished for. It was a very unsettling experience and, at 10 years old, it made me incredibly uncomfortable. My mum told me I looked like Twiggy in a bid to make me feel better. The reality was that even that word—“wig”—made me wince: it felt so old-fashioned and unglamorous. It still makes me cringe to say it today.
Meanwhile, at school, I was aggressively taunted for the way I looked and I navigated each day with dread and despair. The name-calling was one thing, but the constant threat that someone would rip my hair off meant I never stood still for long. The school darkroom became my sanctuary: it was there, behind a locked door, that I learned how to use a camera and develop my own prints. I would spend every spare moment I had safely tucked away learning about the delicate craft of photography, my newfound passion.
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