What losing my hair taught me about stress, structural sexism, and women's health
Let's connect the dots.
I was combing my hair when I first noticed my part seemed wider than usual. I leaned in curiously, moving my hair this way and that and winced when I saw that it was also pink. Very pink. I told myself I’d look into it later, parted my hair differently, and went about my day.
I had nowhere to be and because my brain prefers to doom spiral when I’m in a time crunch or trying to go to bed, I knew I would soon spend hours researching it at the most inconvenient time. Plus, I already suspected that the hair swirling my drain was more than usual, so this was just further confirmation and I didn’t want to deal with it.
Later, when I had dishes to do and laundry to fold, my brain kicked into overdrive and I went all in on scouring the Internet for possible explanations. I’m 42, so it could be age. Or hormones. Or a byproduct of an infection, such as COVID. It could also be alopecia, genetics, sun damage, microplastics, a nutritional deficiency, or chronic dehydration.
Once I moved to the forums and social media, I was met with doomsday scenarios for all of the above, but thankfully they could be solved if I bought this or that supplement or serum, most of which just so happened to come with a handy affiliate link.
Bleary-eyed, I logged off and instead called my dermatologist the next morning to make an appointment for a frustrating few months later.
In the meantime, I bought none of the supplements but did start using a biotin shampoo, made sure to take my good, old-fashioned multi-vitamins, and upped my abysmal water intake. I stopped dying my roots, stopped straightening my hair, and avoided tight ponytails. Worried that my hair was in too fragile a state to be pulled and tugged, I invested in a variety of no-pull claw clips and stimulated my scalp’s blood flow with a little wire head massager.
Still, my head got pinker and itchier.
My hair continued to fall out.
By the time I made it to the dermatologist a few weeks after the inauguration, I had a dime-sized bald spot and visibly thinner hair on the crown of my very pink and still randomly itchy head, the discomfort so normal by then that I surely downplayed it, remarking offhand something along the lines of fascism forcing my hair to give up while bracing myself for a diagnosis of some permanent hair loss condition.
He nodded solemnly as he took the hair pick to my head, neither confirming nor denying my assertion, the silence hanging between us for what seemed like hours.
I was used to the awkward silence. Making weird comments to fill the anticipatory space before receiving potentially bad news is my specialty, my nerves, anxiety, and questionable impulse control joining forces against my will to launch benign but irrelevant words out of my mouth that I will recall at 2 a.m. for years afterwards.
In the real world, it took him less than 30 seconds to figure out why my head was on fire and my hair was jumping ship, or more scientifically, why my scalp was so inflamed that scales started to grow, subsequently damaging my hair follicles and essentially pushing it out.
The cause? An autoimmune condition that is often triggered by…. stress.
Turns out, perhaps it was the downfall of democracy?
//
Sebopsoriasis.
That’s the condition I was diagnosed with.
It’s an autoimmune condition that is a combination of psoriasis and seborrheic dermatitis, only I wasn’t presenting in any of the ways I would expect either of these conditions to present. I didn’t have any big bumps or scales or excessive flakiness - just a dark pink scalp and the type of prickling itchiness you get when your head starts to sweat.
Sometimes my hair would hurt in the way it does when you let your hair get too dirty or keep it in a high ponytail too long, but it was manageable. Plus, I have a lot of thick, curly hair so it was easy to convince myself that no one else noticed, even if it was obvious to me, the person counting my hair follicles in a brightly lit, magnified mirror each week, much like I did as a teen inspecting my pores post-Apricot Scrub.
He sent me home with a bottle of clear gel that I would apply topically twice a day for 10 days and a mixed bag of news: sebopsoriasis is a lifelong condition that will come and go but also, my hair should start to grow back in a few months and there’s no indication of a permanent hair loss condition.
To drive the permanency of the condition home, my prescription came with refills and a reminder to try to keep my stress levels in check.
Suffice to say, I have not been doing a great job following directions.
//
Around the same time I was going down this rabbit hole,
published “How Inequality Damages Women’s Health in Unexpected Ways”, a fantastic piece about how structural gender discrimination leads to poorer health outcomes for women, both in terms of how care and medicine are researched and administered, but also the specific harms it causes.That stress negatively weaves itself into our bodies isn’t new, nor is the gendered nature of it. Nearly 80% of those with auto-immune diseases are women, and even for conditions like psoriasis where rates are similar amongst men and women, the psychological impacts tend to be worse for women thanks to beauty standards that result in higher levels of stress, shame, and depression.
Even time is gendered with women, particularly mothers, taking on the majority of the mental load, which is stressful and decreases our ability to access the relief we need to counteract that stress because that, too, would require time.
Here’s a real doozy Katie dropped in her piece:
“The Journal of The Alzheimer’s Association investigated the memory performance of over 20,000 people in the US and found that women born in states with greater structural sexism experienced faster memory decline in later years compared to those born in states with less structural sexism. The difference between being born in the most versus the least sexist state was equivalent to… nine years of cognitive ageing.”
NINE YEARS!
For anyone paying attention, it’s not hard to figure out which states are ranking high on the not-good-for-women scale these days. They also tend to be the states that are rolling back protections, access, and opportunity for girls and women, which will exacerbate the laundry list of existing impacts ranging from higher rates of chronic conditions, worse physical function at age 40 and 50, and even looking older.
The real kicker is that the same states putting money and effort into policies that maintain or increase the structural sexism that inflicts long-term harm on women are the same states putting money and effort into policies that dismantle systems of care in our later years.
Not only are we being made sicker, but we will have fewer options when it happens.
It’s all yet another insidious way to sideline women so that patriarchy can maintain it’s power and control.
So what can we do about it?
I don’t have any magical solutions, but we do need to talk about it. And not just online, but also in our personal lives.1 Far too many people simply do not care enough about what is happening to other people to speak up, so let’s talk about how this is going to harm us all, particularly those of us in our forties and younger.
Let’s talk about how the current trajectory of health policy isn’t actually going to make us or our kids healthier, and how it’s going to cost more both financially and in terms of “'wellness” in our older years.
After all, if we are sicker and can’t access care, then we’ll spend more of our limited dollars on unregulated supplements, which is good for business but bad for funding organizations that advocate for us.
Let’s name the hypocrisy of the “good enough for me, but not for thee” mentality of the previously vocal pro-family, pro-children, pro-mom women who have retreated into silence now that we are faced with actual policies that criminalize miscarriages, terrorize children, and kill pregnant people because it doesn’t impact them (anymore).
Let’s talk about supporting and electing more women up and down the ballot who will prioritize the health and wellbeing of women and children by supporting and passing policies that will ensure we have the care we need as we age.
And let’s be real, women may bear the brunt of the harm, but men will benefit from these policies, too, both in terms of better access to care but also healthier wives to care for them.
Lastly, let’s talk about how it’s all connected.
Far too many women think these attacks on our rights won’t impact them, that they’re safe because they live in the “right” state2. But they live in the “right” state because people who think differently than them are fighting for them, anyway, not to mention a lot of these state policies are going national.
And sure, a lot of women would never seek an abortion, but if you plan to get older and go through menopause, you will want a doctor who understands what that means for your reproductive and mental health, just as you may want treatment options, including HRT, to be available and affordable.
Ditto for prescription medications.
If you cognitively age faster, you will want access to skilled care workers, not face a worsened staffing shortage because people can’t afford the tuition or student loans required to go into the field (not to mention we already have a shortage of gerontologists).
If you want to retire, you will want Medicare and Social Security to be there for you. And if you want to work until you die, you may want flexible work options that allow you to Zoom in from the beachfront condo your grandkids visit you at each summer.
If you want your children to be independent, to choose how they live their lives, then you want to make sure that you will have the healthcare and agency you need to choose what’s best for you so that they are not forced to upend their lives in order to take care of you.3
Unless you make the kind of money that makes it easy to pay for all of the above out-of-pocket, then structural sexism will impact you (and me). Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually.
And our children? They will be left to watch us suffer and pick up the pieces.
So yes, we need to talk about how all of this is connected and why it matters, even when we think it doesn’t.
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Online is great, too, but not everyone is comfortable with that, nor are they safe to do so. There are many ways to be part of the conversation, the important thing is to pick one.
In my experience, these are always white women married to white men.
Caregiving is important work and I am by no means saying children shouldn’t do this, my point is that there should be choice and agency in that decision rather than it being the byproduct of failed policies.