Hair tattoos restore pride and beauty
MICROPIGMENTATION: New procedure offers clients an alternative to balding scalps
For the last few years, Tammy Zielke has applied a layer of eyeshadow to her scalp every week, blending black and brown to create a head of hair.
“I love your hairstyle,” strangers would say. “Where do you get your hair done? I wish I could do that.”
They change their mind when they find out Zielke is largely bald, having lost her hair to alopecia areata, an autoimmune condition that causes her body to attack the hair follicles and makes hair fall out in patches.
Zielke, 39, has had a love affair with her hair — and heartbreak over its loss — for her entire life. So recently, she ponied up the cash for what she hopes is a permanent solution: hair tattoo or, more specifically, scalp micropigmentation.
The specialized technique is exploding in the U.S. — with Scalp Aesthetics (one of the leading companies) opening salons in more than 20 American cities since 2011.
Zielke was able to have the process done in Edmonton, where she lives, by Kay Manuel, a professional TV makeup artist who opened Canada’s first Scalp Aesthetics franchise location in the city’s downtown. At her shop, Manuel has started tattooing hair on balding clients and men with receding hairlines, and others with scars spanning ear to ear from hair transplantation or brain surgery.
Scalp micropigmentation can give the illusion of a moustache over a scar left from a cleft lip, for example, or a beard over a chin scar from childhood. It can also work for people who have lost hair from post-traumatic stress disorder or cancer.
An entire scalp typically costs between $4,000 to $6,000, while covering one scar could cost about $1,200, although that changes depending on how dense the tattooed dots or points are applied.
Frank Bonafide from Rochester, N.Y., who travels to every new location of Scalp Aesthetics to train people such as Manuel, estimates he applies about 1,500 dots per square inch of skin area.
The ink, handmade from charcoal, has no purple or blue tints in it like common tattooing ink, Bonafide said. It’s injected less than half a millimetre into the skin or epidermal layer, rather than down three layers of skin to the dermis, where tattoo ink is injected, he said. The shallow injection prevents ink from bleeding or spreading as it might in tattoos, and the ink stays intense in each tiny spot.
Only one fine needle injects the ink through a modified tattoo gun, Bonafide said, rather than the typical three needles used to draw a fine line in traditional tattooing.
Bonafide has seen some examples of work done badly: people with blue heads from regular tattoo ink. A man who came in with a hairline that looked like it had been Magic Markered on. Another man whose scalp looked like it had been stamped with a repeated design, since the “artist” had used an instrument equipped with several needles, trying to speed things up.
For Bonafide, Manuel and Scalp Aesthetics, hair must be done one follicle at a time.
“I’m not giving (a client) a smiley face (tattoo),” Bonafide said. “I’m giving him hair.”
Manuel, who did scalp micropigmentation for 18 months before joining the Scalp Aesthetics franchise, said she’s met men who have lost so much self-esteem along with their hair that they couldn’t look her in the eyes.
“For some, it’s awful” going bald, Manuel said. “Not all men are happy shaving it down.” Those who have tried hair transplantation have had mixed results, including significant scarring from the harvested strip that runs from ear to ear around the back of the head.
“It’s so painful and invasive and this is an answer,” Manuel said of micropigmentation. “You would not know it’s not hair. … You see people get their confidence back.”
Zielke’s confidence has been buoyed by her husband’s reassurance of her beauty, but she wore wigs for many years. She once shaved her hair into a mohawk, but when the bald spot at the centre of her head grew too big, the mohawk split. She tried a weave — having long hair woven into her own hair, which was braided in a spiral along her scalp — but her own hair was too thin to maintain it.
“My hair was everything to me,” said Zielke, who once had dreadlocks to her waist. As a child, she would tie a fringed poncho to her head to give herself bangs and tossable locks. “That’s what makes girls beautiful. Hair is what makes a woman.”
The eye shadowed hair line has worked: after shaving her scalp, she applied the eyeshadow in full once each week, using hairspray to keep it in place, then doing daily touch-ups. But rain, swimming pools and sweat were her nemesis. She carried hats with her everywhere.
Now, she has new hair in pronounced ash (the tint used for people with dark skin and dark hair) and can wipe off her brow without a thought.
The founder of Scalp Aesthetics had his micropigmentation done 10 years ago and the tattooed follicles still look great, Bonafide said.
Manuel said: “It’s a permanent thing that makes people feel good for a long time.