TikTok star Chloe Bean was bullied as a child when she lost her hair due to alopecia.Photo:Courtesy of Chloe Bean
Courtesy of Chloe Bean
Chloe Bean was just 8 years old when she started losing her hair.
At first, she was diagnosed with alopecia areata — “just bald spots” — so “I would just wear hats and headbands to cover it.”
TikTok star Chloe Bean shared that she was bullied after losing her hair to alopecia.Courtesy of Chloe Bean
“I was losing my eyebrows. I was losing my eyelashes, and at one point, my hair was probably as thick as my pinky. I would look in the mirror and it was so hard for me. So my dad was like, ‘You need to do something about this’ and we came to the conclusion I needed to shave what was left of my hair off.”
The decision to shave her head, she said, left her with conflicting emotions.
“It was definitely empowering for me because I no longer had to see my hair falling out on pillows or in the shower,” Chloe tells PEOPLE, “but at the same time, it was devastating.”
“I was from a small town,” says the Midland, Mich., native, “which is where I started getting bullied. Hair is the center for femininity. So it was hard redefining beauty standards at that age.”
TikTok star Chloe Bean shows followers the effects of alopecia.Courtesy of Chloe Bean
The bullying got so bad that “I almost [switched to] home school because of it. But I realized that, you know, I shouldn’t let these people win over me.”
Her struggle withalopeciahas been “unpredictable,” she says, adding that when she was getting bullied, sheunderwent treatmentsto help her hair regrow. “I was getting steroid injections in my scalp, which eventually did help my hair grow back, but in college, I lost my hair again. Then I tried it again and my hair fell out the third time.”
“So I was like, Okay, obviously I’m just not meant to have hair. I need to stop fighting for something that isn’t meant to be.”
TikTok star Chloe Bean.Courtesy of Chloe Bean
She started documenting her life on TikTok@chl0ebean, saying it was “like a form of therapy for me, sharing what I was going through.” But soon, Chloe says, she realized “people were reaching out to me and I was finding so many people that were going through the same thing. So it’s almost like validation for my younger self. It just helps my self-esteem.”
Her first brush with viral fame came during theCovid-19 pandemic, when she posted a montage of her physical changes throughout the years.
“I woke up to it just blowing up overnight,” she tells PEOPLE of theTikTok video, which now has more than 36 million views. “It freaked me out in the beginning but I was like, wait. I can make social media a positive environment for people facing similar challenges like myself.”
“One problem with wigs — the cap construction is too big, too bulky or too small. As a bald girl, wigs can be itchy, and uncomfortable,” she explains. That’s why she teamed up with tech company Parfait, which can customize a “a perfect wig cap so it’s really good and tight on your head” based on the customer’s head size.
“Growing up and not having good experiences with wigs, it was very hard,” Chloe tells PEOPLE, sharing that she “came home and just cried” after getting her first wig.
“I know how important it is to feel good about your wig," she says.
She’s also launched a line of temporary eyebrow tattoos, developed after she drew her eyebrows on with a makeup pencil and “wiped my eyebrow off throughout the day on accident.”
These days, Chloe — who plans to move to Miami — says “I feel like I’ve just come to terms and I’m so happy. If I had hair, I don’t think I’d know who I was.”
“I love having no hair,” she adds. “I don’t have bedhead. I can wake up, get ready so quickly. I don’t have to worry about my hair.”
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source: people.com