Draconaei’s Blog

Just a quick post to share a moment of beauty I experience each morning:

My arrangement of headscarves.  Alopecia has turned out to be so much of a blessing in disguise.

The image of child baldness is used synonymously for childhood cancer.  Advertisers capitalize on this and the rarity of baldness outside of chemotherapy-induced cases to raise empathy, awareness, and funding for cancer research.  While perhaps a very successful campaign in raising the desired empathy, has anyone considered the psychological effects on another affected group of children?

Children with alopecia (hair loss due to an autoimmune disorder) struggle with identity and self-image from the onset.  Generally given wigs by their well-intending parents, they are encouraged to “appear normal” rather than accept their natural appearance.  During a time when the child is still forming their perceptions on appearance, being shown that their hair loss should be hidden teaches them that they are somehow genetically inferior, and they are encouraged to conform to the appearance of their peers.

Beyond the implications of “not looking normal,” there is a tight association with baldness and sickness, despite the fact that alopecia itself has no impact on a person’s overall health or fitness. Even though alopecia affects 2% of the world’s population, the most common mode of coping with the condition (hiding it by wearing a wig) renders the condition nearly invisible; this, along with the public knowledge of hair loss as a side effect of chemotherapy strengthens the association between baldness and cancer, especially in young people.  Now, with the use of bald children for the purpose of advertising, other bald children- with alopecia, but otherwise healthy- only see their image in the media as sickly and unfortunate.

While these advertisements aim to raise awareness of childhood cancer, and raise funding to aid in a worthy cause, they also unintentionally victimize an already overlooked group.  It’s unethical to benefit one group at the expense of another, so while children’s cancer hospital and research supporters should continue their pursuit with vigor, they need to reconstruct their means.

Really, the problem is two-fold: first, that advertising uses the image of bald children in connection with illness to raise pity.  Second and even more importantly, healthy children with hair loss, and even healthy adults for that matter, are discouraged from appearing bald in public.  All that a young child with alopecia sees, on the streets or in the media, is baldness in the sick and elderly.

While my audience might be limited: if you are young, healthy, and bald, appearing bald in public can and should be a viable option.  Every time you appear bald in public, you affect someone’s perception of baldness and its associations with behavior and health.  Though I can speak from personal experience when I say it’s not easy, and sometimes even frightening, or it may seem too simple, or not impactful at all… to a child with alopecia struggling to understand how their appearance fits into a strongly image-based society, you could make a world of difference.

*Props to the National Alopecia Areata Foundation for all my citations, and for helping me cope when I was first diagnosed.