National Post
NOTE: Bethany Duimstra is a Continental Hair client.
Glenn Lowson, Weekend Post
Model Bethany Duimstra is wearing, a European human-hair, hand-tied wig ($1,800);...
Glenn Lowson, Weekend Post
...a synthetic, hand-tied wig ($750);...
Glenn Lowson, Weekend Post
...human-hair, hand-tied wig ($2,500);...
Glenn Lowson, Weekend Post
...and custom-made, European-human-hair, hand-knotted wig ($2,600).
Glenn Lowson, Weekend Post
Model Joni Nicholas is wearing European-human-hair, hand-tied wigs ($1,900;...
Glenn Lowson, Weekend Post
...$2,500;...
Glenn Lowson, Weekend Post
...$1,800);...
Glenn Lowson, Weekend Post
...a synthetic machine-made wig, $450. All wigs from Continental Hair.
Chris Bolin, Weekend Post
Cynthia Prins won't wear a wig unless it's a special occasion. 'I don't want pity. There's nothing wrong with me except I'm bald.' Prins says she 'blames the doctors for making my mother feel guilty. They said she was creating too much stress in me and this is why my hair fell out.... What bothered me most was losing my eyebrows.'
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July 28, 2001
Women with a secret
'Can't you do something with your hair?' my husband asked. 'You look like Flat Top in Dick Tracy.' Worse than that, I'd seen revealing bits of pink scalp on the back of my head on a television program. My friend sent me to wig expert Michael Suba, who told me about some of his clients, women who'd lost all their hair. It was through Michael that I met my alopecia ladies
Sondra Gotlieb
Weekend Post
Is it still true that "A woman's hair is her crowning glory"? Certainly, now, a size 2 figure enhanced by breast implants appears to have taken precedence over this Victorian sentiment. Nonsense. Today's woman wants it all. We still fret as much about our hair as the size of our hips. We dye, straighten, curl and artificially lengthen the hair we've got. No decent celebrity travels without his or her hairdresser.
My hair has never been my crowning glory. It's thin, straight, and there's not much of it. But until I saw the back of my head on a television program, revealing bits of pink scalp after it had taken me an hour to curl, blow-dry and spray, I hadn't realized I was struggling in vain. If I don't go through this torture, my husband says, "Can't you do something with your hair? You look like Flat Top in Dick Tracy." Sometimes he says this even after I've had my hair done.
A friend who has lovely thick hair told me she had noticed my bald spots on TV. "Buy a fall. It's a portion of real hair. I stick it on when I want to look special." I was dubious. My friend Polly in Washington had once bought a fall and her husband asked her what kind of animal she was wearing on top of her head. "She must have got a cheap one," my Toronto pal said. "Go to Continental Hair and they'll fix you up."
Michael Suba of Continental Hair in Toronto -- the gentlest of men -- told me that what I needed was a postiche, a portion of hair, which, to look as natural as possible, would be made of hair from women from Eastern Europe, woven in the Philippines, and further touched up by Michael and his assistant, Lisa. This would take two months and cost me $2,200. I swallowed and asked him who precisely were his clients.
"One third of our clients have thinning hair, one third have had chemotherapy" (in fact, a small bald child was in the shop, being fitted for a wig), "and, of course, one third, mostly women, have become bald because of alopecia."
"What's alopecia?" I asked. "It's an auto-immune disease," he replied. "Hair falls out for no reason and often never returns. This usually happens when women are very young, sometimes after a trauma like a car accident. But not always. It's often genetic. Depending on the kind of alopecia, it doesn't come back. In our society bald men are taken for granted. But believe me, being a bald young girl or woman is not something society readily accepts -- except when a singer shaves off her hair to attract attention in show business. Alopecia in women, although men get it too, is a secret." Michael was correct. I've read more about women with genital herpes than about women with alopecia.
I couldn't make up my mind about the postiche, but I really wanted to know how alopecia affected women.
Before interviewing anyone about alopecia I had to learn a little about a disease that is as common as diabetes yet almost unknown outside the medical world.
There are many different kinds of alopecia. When the scalp hair loss is less than 50% in the patient, there is a very good chance of the hair growing back and staying after cortisone injections or other treatments by dermatologists. When hair loss is greater than 50%, as in the case of alopecia totalis (baldness) or alopecia universalis (baldness, loss of eyebrows and body hair), treatments are a lot less effective. However, Dr. Charlene Linzon of Women's College Hospital in Toronto says she has had success with women suffering from the most severe forms of alopecia, other than the scarring kind in which the hair follicles themselves are destroyed. She says she has had great success with hair regrowth in women who have more than 50% hair loss but much less with women who have 100% hair loss. One of her patients has had full hair regrowth after 90% of her hair was lost. Dr. Linzon has been treating alopecia patients with a chemical called DPCP at the University of Toronto Hair Clinic. She sees patients only by referral, and these are usually the most extreme cases. Although she has been using DPCP for about five years, Dr. Linzon agrees there is as yet no real cure for alopecia. Eighty percent of her patients are women, and they are often in a bad emotional state. Her goal is to give them hope, treatment and education.
It was through Michael Suba, whose family has been in the hair business for 40 years, that I met my alopecia ladies, Cynthia, Claire and the identical twins Noreen and Nicole, each with her own story.
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CYNTHIA'S STORY
I met Cynthia Prins at a Tim Hortons coffee shop. She had told me on the telephone, giggling, "You will have no trouble recognizing me. I probably won't wear Michael's wig." A slim, handsome, bald young woman waved me over to her table and told a story that fascinated not only me but the other coffee drinkers nearby. Although alopecia can be genetic, there is no one in her family, she said, who has ever had it. When she was 16 years old, she was in an automobile accident and broke "a few bones." Nothing else. Within one week all her hair had disappeared, including eyebrows and eyelashes. But she didn't worry all that much at the time because she believed her hair would come back; it did return within a year. But the bad news was to come. Her hair stayed for two months and then fell out again within two days. "That was my worst moment," she said. "But somehow I got over it quicker than my mother did. I blame the doctors for making my mother feel guilty. They said she was creating too much stress in me and this is why my hair fell out." (According to the National Alopecia Areata Foundation in the United States, alopecia is not a nervous disorder. Those who suffer from it have not caused it; nor can it be caused by others. It falls within the category of so many other auto-immune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and asthma.)
Cynthia gaily recounted to me her failed attempts at getting her hair back -- Rogaine, oral steroids and injections as well as "a man-made form of poison ivy" applied to the head, which she found very painful. This is the chemical DCPC Linzon uses. According to Linzon, it must be rubbed into the scalp twice a week for six months to be effective. "Many patients are uncomfortable with this and would rather remain as they are," Linzon says. In any case, Cynthia, despite all these treatments, never got her hair back, became anemic and hasn't seen a doctor in eight years. "What bothered me most," she said, "was losing my eyebrows."
Cynthia is living proof of the truth of that clichι of the power of positive thinking.
"I consider alopecia support groups a bore," she said, "but it does help to relieve the anxieties of those persons who are really upset about their baldness and relieves their parents' sense of guilt."
At first, Cynthia wore a wig all the time. She disliked the synthetic wigs, but when she was 19 she discovered Michael Suba and his real-hair wigs, which, she told me, were "perfect." When she does wear a wig, she will only wear one from Suba. Her preference is to go bald because she finds wigs itchy and they tend to fall off. The first day she attended the University of Toronto she decided on doing the full monty, going bald in public. Michael's wigs are for special occasions -- when she wants to remain undercover, so to speak. If she attends a funeral or wedding, for instance, she doesn't want to draw attention away from the dead person or the bride.
I asked her about protection from the sun. "No baseball caps," she said. "[People] would think I'm a cancer kid. I don't want pity. There's nothing wrong with me except I'm bald." To avoid the sun, she sometimes wear a wide Tilley hat.
Cynthia is now 26 years old and an occupational therapist for spinal cord injuries. She has a boyfriend and they are getting married. "I'm not wearing a wig at my wedding," she told me. "Friends don't know me with wig hair -- I'm not me when I wear a wig."
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THE TWINS' STORY
Nicole and Noreen (not their real names) are identical twins in their late teens. I asked the twins to tea at a downtown hotel, but at their request we met at a Starbucks. I saw two extraordinarily pretty girls with beautiful long light-brown wavy hair sitting at a table. The twins were brought up by their mother in a single-parent family. Their story and their attitude were quite different from Cynthia's.
Clearly genetic, the alopecia totalis started with Noreen when she was five years old. She lost a small patch of hair and it grew back and stayed until she was nine and then all of her hair disappeared completely over the course of the summer. Nicole has been bald since she was six, when she contracted a fever and her hair fell out. She does not even remember ever having hair. School life was hell. Even though they wore wigs, the other children would tear them off and the girls were bullied and beaten by their schoolmates. Listening to them recount their school life was like hearing Lord of the Flies for girls. They were pariahs. No one wanted to play with them because they thought the twins were going to die. Their mother often went to school to talk to the teacher about the twins' alopecia but no matter how much she pleaded, the teasing and bullying were ignored by the teachers. "They would see someone tearing our wigs off and look away." Being twins made their life bearable -- at least they had each other. When they got to high school, it was even worse. They became depressed -- "We hit rock bottom" -- and they refused to leave their house. A high-school teacher unhelpfully announced that "everyone must be res-ponsible to themselves." The twins considered this statement the teacher's excuse for not taking any responsibility in trying to prevent the sickening behaviour of the other students toward them.
The twins were told by doctors to "live with it" and not much more.
For the past two years the twins have been seeing a naturopath, whom they consider very helpful. She put them on a cleansing regime and a special diet -- no sugar, no carbs and an anti-viral supplement. What they like about the naturopath is that she listens to them and gives them personal attention. "She listens to us cry," Noreen says. According to the twins, the naturopath has given them hope their hair will grow back. Noreen, the more assertive twin, is now going to school and taking a course in media and marketing. She finds campus life better than school because it is more impersonal. She is even going away from home for the first time, to California for two weeks for work reasons. Nicole, who, for a time, would not even visit the mall with her sister, sees how well Noreen is doing and is now thinking of going back to school, too.
Both twins went to many wig-makers but they were not satisfied until they went to Michael Suba, who worked with them over a period of time to produce hair they love. Their style is identical but, as they say, "we tend to like the same things."
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CLAIRE'S STORY
I met Claire (not her real name) at a Starbucks far from the centre of the city (I don't know what it is about alopecia ladies but they seem to like Tim Hortons and Starbucks). Claire, a registered nurse, is happily married with children. At the age of 12, she developed bald patches, and like the twins, she was traumatized by the bullying at school in Thunder Bay, Ont., where her family lived. Like Cynthia, no other member of the family had alopecia. Then a miracle happened. Gradually her hair grew back, thicker than her original hair and blond, rather than her former black. Twenty-three years later -- when she was married with two toddlers -- she felt the same tingling sensation she had felt the first time her hair fell out. Claire looked in the mirror and found a bald spot. She took steroid injections and her hair lasted two more years. She developed more bald spots, was treated with more injections and managed to have some regrowth. During this period, she lost approximately half of her hair, her emotions were a roller coaster and her self-esteem hit basement level. Two years ago, her hair loss escalated and wads of hair fell out in the shower. She had alopecia universalis, and lost the last of her remaining hair. She was desolate. Her follicles inflamed, she needed antibiotics to combat the infection. No treatment was effective. During all this period she never took time off from her work in an acute cardiac care ward.
But as a nurse, Claire had a certain perspective on the disease. "It is not life-threatening and I have a great husband," she told me. She searched the Internet and found Michael Suba's Continental Hair. When Michael put a charming black wig on her head, she cried with joy and relief. At first it felt itchy but Michael put in a satin insert that relieved her discomfort. She stopped asking herself "Why me?" and accepted the situation. She has two wigs and wears one all the time.
"The only difference it has made to my life," Claire told me, "is that a windy day has new meaning for me. Also people occasionally ask me why I shave my eyebrows off."
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WENDY'S STORY
Compared with the others, Wendy (not her real name) really has no story, no alopecia, no dreadful childhood. She just has long thinnish hair. "Really, when I went to Michael for a hairpiece, it was like wanting a new haircut." Wendy is 27 and was getting ready for her wedding when I spoke to her. She had tried hair extensions, which, I'm told, are fussy to deal with -- you have to be prepared to spend a lot of time at the hairdresser. Wendy got rid of her hair extensions and bought a postiche, which gives bulk without fuss to thinning hair. "Before, I was blow-drying, spraying and curling. Now I just stick on the postiche." Suba's hair stylist Lisa sews on tiny combs to secure the postiche in the hair. "People who saw me every day complimented me on my new haircut." She bought the postiche three years ago and liked it so much she got another, just to change styles. "I like having two. I can even wear different colours." Wendy doesn't sit around at a hairdresser's any more. She leaves the postiche with Lisa, who curls it (although Lisa says you can do it yourself at home), and then picks it up the next day. "I just put it on like a hat." Lisa is doing Wendy's hair for the wedding.
As for me, I'm Hamlet. Postiche or not to postiche? That is the question. Better to wait? Better now?
When I think of my alopecia ladies, the question is of no importance.
The telephone number of the Toronto Alopecia Support group A.A.S.I.S.T. is (416) 410-5462.
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Meet... MICHELLE
Michelle underwent chemotherapy. She came to Continental Hair to get herself a wig during her treatment. Michelle was very pleased with her processed human hair wig. [ learn more]
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Testimonial from another client
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It was an enjoyable and fun experience as the staff are light-hearted and understanding. I left Continental Hair feeling fabulous and confident...
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