7 Things I Wish People Knew About Female Pattern Hair Loss
Key takeaways:
Rachel Anne Warren started experiencing female pattern hair loss when she was 19.
By the time she was in her early 20s, she had lost about 30% of her hair.
Today, she is a wig maker who advocates normalizing hair loss.
When performing in her rock band, Rachel Anne Warren, 39, from Frederick, Maryland, would often wear funky-styled wigs. But what her audience didn’t know was that she has had female pattern hair loss (FPHL) — also known as androgenic alopecia — since she was 19.
As soon as Rachel would leave the stage, she’d take her wig off and wear a baseball cap wherever she went, even to bed.
Female pattern hair loss affects about 30 million women in the U.S. It’s the most common cause of hair loss. While it usually starts later in life, it can also affect teenagers.
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After having a stressful year and bottling up all her emotions, about 30% of Rachel’s hair began falling out. It continued to fall out until she was about 22.
For the next 2 years, she avoided thinking about her hair loss as much as possible. But with the type of alopecia Rachel had, her hair would never grow back. She tried Rogaine and all types of lotions. She says her dermatologist couldn’t help, either. When nothing else worked, she found that camouflaging her hair loss worked well. However, she refused to look at herself without her head covered because she found it so upsetting.
Though she rejected the idea of wearing a wig at first, Rachel began considering them as a potential solution in 2017. At the time, she was living a healthy, intentional life. Her motto that year was to, “Look in the mirror, look at yourself — and not just your hair but your whole self.”
As someone with a background in sewing, Rachel was intrigued by wigs. She began taking them apart to figure out how they were made. She used her sewing experience to begin making them herself. Eventually, she found a master wig maker and began studying privately with him.
Because wig making is such a time-consuming process, she would practice 50 hours a week (a single wig takes about 100 hours to make by hand). Through this process, she became more comfortable with showing her hair to her family. Some days she wears a wig, and, on others, she wears a hat or no head covering at all.
Rachel now owns a medical wig shop, where she creates wigs and hair pieces for people with medical hair loss as well as various forms of media. She also frequently writes about hair loss.
Here are seven tips Rachel has for dealing with hair loss:
1. Accept yourself the way you are
For years, Rachel says she “hid under a baseball cap.” Her process toward becoming more comfortable with herself took some time. She tried everything from shaving her head to empower herself to wigs and experimenting with her looks. Then, she started to help others.
“I now own a medical wig shop, and I build wigs and hair pieces for TV, movies, theater — but mostly for individuals with medical hair loss,” she says.
2. Protect the skin on your head
“I have people that come to me for every kind of hair loss. It shouldn’t be a surprise, but it was to me that so many women have skin cancer issues on their head.
She advises people to wear a wig, a hat, or at least sunscreen to protect their exposed skin.
“Remember that your head has skin, and it needs to have some SPF (Sun Protection Factor),” she says.
3. Find the right head covering for you
Rachel usually recommends a lightweight bamboo hat. These can keep your head cool on a hot day or warm on a chilly day. The bamboo material offers natural ultraviolet protection and is breathable. Rachel has found that 95% bamboo hats are best for her.
She also is selective when she looks for turbans or scarves to find something with a grip that will stay on her head.
4. You can mix up what you wear on your head
As a wig maker who works with a lot of cancer patients, Rachel finds that people are often self-conscious when they’re wearing scarves or turbans.
“They’ll call it a ‘cancer cap.’ They don’t want everybody knowing,” she says.
So, she recommends options that can help build confidence, like a cap with a partial wig built in.
“They’re really cool, temperature-wise,” she says. “And it gives you that appearance of having a little bit of hair under your cap.”
5. Use a gentle brush or comb
Rachel uses gentle wide-tooth combs and recommends them for anyone with thinning hair.
“They’re the most gentle at detangling without pulling hair out,” she says. “So, you want to avoid anything with fine-tooth combs. You want to avoid brushes that are sharp bristles or dense bristles.”
6. You can get a prescription for a wig or a hairpiece
Not every insurance covers it, but Rachel says some people are unaware that they can get a prescription for a wig or a hairpiece.
Some wigs are toppers that sit on top of your head and clip into existing hair as an option for covering female pattern baldness.
When choosing a full wig, Rachel weighs the pros and cons of human hair versus synthetic hair. Human-hair wigs are more expensive and require more maintenance but look more natural and last longer, she says. Synthetic wigs cost less and are great for experimenting with your style.
7. It can be therapeutic to talk about your experience
As problematic as social media can sometimes be, Rachel has also found it to be a place of support for dealing with hair loss. Some groups are private, so not everyone has to know about your hair loss, she says.
“Usually, people come in shrouded in secrecy and insecurity, and we shut the curtains, and we ironclad the room,” she says. “My biggest message to them is: ‘You have no idea. There are people all around you that are having the same thing.’”
Rachel has found opening up to be therapeutic. She’s written personal essays about it and has been able to connect with people going through similar experiences.
“The more we talk about it, particularly in safe spaces, the better off we are.”
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