I lost locks at 17... now I’ve ditched the wig to be a model!
WHEN Jess Newman lost her hair at 17, she thought she looked like an alien.
But during lockdown, eight years later, she bravely posted pictures of her alopecia online – and has now embraced her condition after receiving positive comments.
She has now abandoned her wig, applied to be a model and even decorates her head in bright colours.
She said of her Instagram snaps: ‘I felt braver because I wasn’t going out and having to see people.
‘I was nervous before pressing upload but I had some lovely comments. I spoke to other girls with alopecia and we now have a WhatsApp group.’
Doctors first blamed puberty when Miss Newman, 25, started losing her eyebrows at 15. But the hair loss sped up when she met her father, who split from her mother when she was a baby, for the first time in six years.
Miss Newman, of Colchester, Essex, went to a dermatologist who diagnosed alopecia areata, a condition where hair stops growing as immune cells attack follicles.
She followed advice to shave her head and get a wig but was so insecure she wore a beanie hat over it – and tattooed on eyebrows.
She skipped classes at college, didn’t socialise, and ‘cried before every shift’ at a restaurant where she was a waitress.
Miss Newman, who has an older brother and sister, said the support of mother Linda, 59, a financial administrator, and stepfather Richard Watsham, a 53-year- old fencing firm owner, helped her cope. But just close friends were told of her condition – and only when she reached 20. ‘Everyone was really nice about it but I thought I was ugly and looked like an alien,’ she said.
But last month she was asked by Alopecia UK to be one of their 15th birthday ‘champions’, which meant going out without her wig and sharing snaps. Her new outlook has also encouraged her to apply to be a model for the Models of Diversity charity.