Beauty queen fights alopecia areata

At fist sight Kayla Martell is just another beauty queen, but if one takes a closer look, they will discover that she suffers from alopecia areata, an auto-immune disease that can result in hair loss.

Kayla Martell competed for the Miss Delaware, pageant four times until she was finally crowned, and three of the four times when she participated she was already bald. Her hair started falling when she was ten, and the 22 years old beauty queen prefers to be bald in her life outside the pageant competitions. She decided to buy a wig only two years ago because she felt that if she were to go bold at the Miss Delaware competition she will not win for sure and she also observed that people tend to be more friendly and approachable when she is wearing the wig, because seeing her bald makes them wonder what is the disease that she is suffering from. Martell is very comfortable both with and without the wig, but the beauty standard of most people includes hair and Linda Wells, editor in chief of the beauty magazine Allure says that hair is one of the first things you notice when you see someone and much of the first impression is based on the hair. There were psychological studies made on how a “bad hair day” influences women, and they say that if their hair looks bad most women feel that they are not good at anything that day.

Sheila Bridges, aged 46, is also an alopecia areata patient and started experiencing hair loss about six years ago. At that time she was a successful interior designer and host of her own cable television show and at first she started wearing wigs for her television apparitions because she feared that her contracted was not going to be renewed if she appeared bald in television. She wore the wigs, but she did not feel comfortable wearing them, she felt like she was having a wool sweater on the top of her head. After the TV season was finished, the television managers decided that it was not going to be continued and together with the end of the show came the end of the wigs for Sheila Bridges. She had to get used to the way people were looking at her and at first she felt insecure because most of the people thought that she had cancer and was receiving treatment so she decided to go public with the story and make photos for the Elle Décor design magazine so that everybody would find out that she was one of the 5 million Americans affected by alopecia areata. Both Kayla Martell and Sheila Bridges admit that this is a change very tough to deal with and it was very hard to get used to the new beauty definition. But beauty comes in different kind of packages and Kayla Martell is thinking about competing for the Miss America pageant in January.