- I got out of the shower,
and I went and I looked in the mirror,
and I was like, I don't even recognize this person anymore.
(light music)
- Hello everybody, I'm Christie Valdiserri,
I am a professional dancer,
a fitness instructor, and a model
out in Los Angeles, California.
And this is my hair loss horror story.
Three years ago, I was in college.
I went to Penn State University.
I'm from Philly, Pennsylvania.
And I was in a sorority, I had long, blonde hair,
I was dating an athlete.
I really felt like I had it all during college.
And I knew myself as this bright, bubbly blonde.
And then, June 1, 2016, so it was about three weeks
after I had graduated, I found one, tiny little,
bald patch on the top of my head out of no where.
I've never had any.
And I was really like, this is nothing,
it's probably just from the sun
or me pulling my hair back too tight.
It's nothing, it'll go away.
So I moved to New York City to pursue dance
and my relationship at the time was falling apart,
and I was under a lot of stress and anxiety
because of that.
And my hair's continuing to fall out,
and fall out, and fall out.
And I find a dermatologist in New York City
and she is shocked by how much hair is falling out.
And I'm like, I don't care what it is,
I just need to figure out what we can do to fix this.
So she throws around the word alopecia,
and I'm like, okay, well I've never heard of that.
Never heard this word in my life.
So alopecia is an autoimmune disease,
and originally she thought it was areata,
meaning circular patches.
But I don't really care what it is,
this is my story and I don't have hair now,
and I don't care what it's called.
I don't like to define myself with alopecia.
So I got steroid injections all over my head.
Probably 30, all over my head,
'cause I was talked into it,
and I was young and didn't know anything about this
journey I was going on.
And I was hopeless and I wanted some sort of help
or glimpse of light to be like,
this is gonna be okay, and your hair's gonna grow back.
My dream at the time was to dance on a cruise ship.
My whole life I'd grown up going on cruises with my family,
and watching these performers on stage, on a cruise,
traveling around the world, making money.
I was on cloud nine, out of this world,
I was so happy and grateful and appreciative,
and felt like I was exactly where I needed to be.
And thought the heartbreak and the hair loss was in the past
and this alopecia thing was behind me.
But now I'm going on this cruise for eight months,
I'm gonna take time to heal myself.
It was so much fun on this ship.
I had the best cast members.
We traveled all around.
And I felt like I was doing my job above and beyond.
And then one night, after a show--
We had the best show,
all of the cast was on such a high again.
And a guy in my cast, the company manager,
and said, "I don't know how to tell you this,
"but they're firing you tomorrow."
And I was like--
I literally had no words.
I was completely speechless.
This was one time in my life I had nothing,
not anything to say.
So the next day, I was kicked off the ship at 6:45 a.m.
The only concrete answer I got was--
I mean, I saw some emails.
Said that I stood out and I pulled attention away
and he wanted me removed from the ship.
And the only thing that I can validate
or understand as to why that happened
was because of my hair loss.
So they were aware, I had let them know
that my hair was falling out and I needed a wig.
They had told me that they had ordered a wig for me.
So they were aware of the situation.
And I remember sitting on a hill in Seattle
with my five suitcases
and I watched my castmates, my friends,
get in their Uber and I said bye to them,
never knowing when I was gonna see them again.
And they were going back to live the life
that I had loved living.
And I had no apartment to go back to.
I have no job, and just about no hair left.
So within three weeks of being fired,
this was my new look.
And this is what I looked like after three weeks.
My hair had completely fallen out
from the trauma and the stress.
I could get upset right now,
but it was an insanely low point in my life
that I was on such a high,
I knew myself as this blonde,
and now my look is being taken away from me,
I went through a heartbreak,
and now my job was taken away from me.
So something in me was like, Christie, you have to go to LA.
I was considering living at my parents'
and waitressing or moving back to New York
and subletting someone's apartment,
but something kept telling me, you have to go to LA.
I got glue and glued a wig on,
glued a blonde wig on and booked a one way flight to LA,
like a week later, and came to LA.
Again, I didn't have a job set up or an apartment,
and I figured it out.
And I continued to hide under this blonde wig
that I was trying to hold to the girl
that I used to know myself as.
And if someone were to find out about my hair loss
or ask me if I was wearing a wig or extensions,
I would say, yeah, I am,
but please, don't tell anybody that I am.
This is so personal and private and I'm so scared
for the world or anyone to know,
so please, keep it in between us.
And I remember I met with my agent, my dance agent,
and I felt like it was time for me to tell her
and maybe get some feedback on to how I could
spin this to make it benefit me.
And I remember leaving that meeting
not feeling the way I should have felt
after leaving that meeting.
And she made a comment like,
there's no need to get bald head shots down.
Like, let's just keep to this look.
And that was like, two years ago,
and I'm still holding on to that,
because now I'm at the point
that I'm sharing my story,
and it took a lot of people looking at me
and telling me that they see my strength
and they see my personality and they see who I am,
not what I look like.
For the first time ever,
I spoke about what I had been through
that had led me to that point.
I took my wig off in front of them.
I wasn't gonna let this hair loss,
this alopecia, dictate my life or dictate my career.
So it was extremely scary.
It was scary to show such a vulnerable side
when my whole life I was known as this blonde girl,
and that's who I wanted to be.
I kind of still want that, you know?
So I've wanted to heal myself.
Physically, mentally, and emotionally,
I really had been going through it,
and I wanted to just be free of it.
I felt like I kind of put my career and my life on hold,
'cause I didn't care.
All I wanted was my hair to come back,
that's all I wanted.
So I looked in the mirror and was like,
this is gonna be my new look.
You're gonna stand back up, and do it again.
And then a couple months later
I submitted for "Sports Illustrated Swim"
and I was walking on the beach in the video,
and took my wig off, and spoke about how much beauty
is not about what you look like.
And next thing you know, I was down in Miami
and I made it to the top 17 and got to walk on the runway
with "Sports Illustrated Swim",
and ripped my wig off at the end of the runway,
and I can't even explain that moment that I felt,
it was like, I was finally being celebrated
for what society, media, people, my agent
were telling me to hide.
And telling me was something to be ashamed of.
And I was finally celebrated and free,
and felt for the first time in like three years like myself.
For so long, I thought, I can never have a dance career,
I can never be a model, I can never live the life
I wanna live with my hair falling out,
and I can gladly say, sitting here,
I'm living the life that I want to live,
because I just keep pushing forward, and you can too.
When there's a will, there's a way.
- Hi, I'm Megan and this is my hair loss horror story.
So I've always had very long, very curly hair.
I got it from my dad, my whole family is very curly,
and growing up that was kind of my identifier.
People were like, "Go talk to Megan."
"Who's Megan?"
"She's the one with the curly hair."
Of course, growing up I hated my curly hair.
The grass is always greener on the other side
and I wanted straight hair.
So starting in college, I got it relaxed
and I started straightening it,
and then I would straighten it and then curl it,
then I got bangs, then I had front bangs,
and for years that's how people knew me
was straight, but curled hair and front bangs.
I hated my hair basically up until I was 25.
I stopped being a morning show reporter for the news
and I didn't have to have a certain look.
And I came and I started working at Buzzfeed
and really felt inspired to be more comfortable with myself.
And so one day, I was like,
I don't wanna spend the rest of my life
being afraid of water and having it curl up publicly.
I felt like I wanted to put in the effort
to love myself the way that my hair grew out naturally
from my head.
And so that Halloween in 2015, I wore my hair curly
and I was lion, and it was like my foray
into loving my hair.
I started making a ton of curly hair content
and got really interested in it.
Ironically enough, I even made a video
where I wore a bald cap for a day,
just to test my sense of femininity and identity
without my curly hair.
The last video I made
before I was diagnosed with colon cancer
was a curly hair routine.
And I would soon lose all of the curly hair
that I was teaching you all to take care of.
So in 2018, I was diagnosed with colon cancer.
I'm all good now, things are chill.
So I got that cancer diagnosis,
and unfortunately, like with most cancers,
it's never just cancer, it comes with a million other things
and ways that you have to prepare your body for chemo.
Even before chemo started,
I noticed that my hair was falling out.
So my hair was falling out a lot once I started chemo,
and I started to feel self-conscious about it
and felt like other people might start to notice.
So I went to see the dermatologist
to talk about it
and she basically said that I has telogen effluvium.
Telogen effluvium normally happens
two to three months after a traumatic or stressful event.
And the hair that falls out that's normally replaced
with new hair, your body is in shock
and trying to fix other things,
so it just doesn't grow your hair back for you.
So I remember one day in particular,
I was going to buy a new car.
And I took a shower, and I washed my hair,
and that day particular, I had a lot come out.
And I got out of the shower,
and I went and I looked in the mirror,
and I was like, I don't even recognize this person anymore.
Acknowledging that your body isn't doing something
that feels so basic feels bad.
And that took me a long time to come to terms with.
So that night, I went home to my then boyfriend,
and I said, shave my head,
because I was ready to take control of the situation
that had been taking control of me.
I thought I looked really good,
and for the first time in like five months,
I felt like myself again,
and I felt truly beautiful,
and that was a really powerful turning point
in my hair loss journey.
And as you can see, I mean, this isn't a wig,
I'm lucky enough that my hair did end up growing back,
which is what normally happens with telogen effluvium.
After enough time has passed between the trauma,
your hair starts growing back again.
I had a shaved head for a couple months
before you could see noticeable hair growth,
and I'm kind of embarrassed to say
that I was embarrassed to go outside
and I was nervous because I didn't wanna look
like a cancer patient, though being a cancer patient
is like the most bad ass thing you can be.
There's like no stronger person,
so now looking back, I would be proud to walk around bald.
Now I have a small wig collection of like eight wigs,
and I have purple wigs and blue wigs,
straight wigs, curly wigs,
and I'm really glad
that I have embraced that side of things.
Your hair loss is out of your control.
And the sooner I let go of the things
that were out of my control,
and started doing things that were in my control,
like shaving my head, and choosing wigs,
and makeup, and finding ways to make me
feel like myself again, I started to heal.
So that's the best piece of advice I can give people
is mourn your hair loss, feel sorry for yourself,
it sucks, it's really hard to deal with,
but then take control of the things
that you do have control of.
(light music)