Dear Me,

There are so many things I want to tell you: Eat your vegetables, don't lose your Cantonese, write every day (sing every day), learn to love the snow – because you're going to be living in a lot of it in the future.

But I also want to talk to you about something that I know is on your mind. You're probably at that age where you don't look like "you." Your eyebrows are gone, your hair is falling out, and your parents – though they have the best intentions – just end up making you feel worse.

You'll be angry and lonely, and you probably don't want to hear this, but trust me (and I wouldn't lie!): this isn't the end for you.

It isn't the end when people talk about you, rather than to you; when that teacher humiliates you in the hallway because you won't take the scarf off of your balding head; when a makeup artist tells you you'll look "better" with eyebrows drawn on your face. 

It's painful, I know, and you'll want to hide away. But don't be angry at the world. The world isn't against you. As you grow up, you'll meet amazing people – people who will celebrate the things that scare you about this unique condition that bonds you with people all over the world (some you'll even get to meet!). You'll be encouraged. You'll find communities of strength.

And sure, there will be setbacks you'll encounter throughout your life, and even at age 30, you'll carry a fragment of insecurity inside your heart. But don't let that harden you. Don't close up and close off from the world. There is so much to experience in life, and I know that I've lost out by being afraid in the past.

So when the setbacks come (and they will come) don't give up. You've got a lot of living ahead of you, and the world is ready for more of you – no matter how you look.

Love,
Me

I have no idea how to draw on eyebrows. I'm not sure if it's something I should've sat down and learned early on. When I was 11 and getting fitted for my first wig by Miss Peggy Tom, she put a plastic stencil to my face and brushed dark brown powder to create an arched brow – first on the left, then on the right.

It didn't look good. Miss Peggy, with her wide smile and bright eyes, assured me I was beautiful, but that it was also my choice. She let me go home with the eyebrow kit anyways and told my mom to let me try it if I wanted to.

I tried – once – and it looked terrible. The brows were uneven and the powder began to smear almost immediately after I removed the second stencil. I immediately washed it off and went back to studying celebrities' faces on magazine covers in the grocery store, hoping it would inspire me to try again.

Backstage at school plays, when the volunteer moms would cake on the wrong foundation and try to glop mascara onto my thinning lashes, my lack of brows became something to argue about: I didn't want anyone to draw them on me, no matter how "good" they thought they could make them look. (Honestly, I just didn't trust anyone!) As a kid, my aunt suggested I get eyebrows tattooed on so I'd look "normal." In 2013, despite my protests, a professional makeup artist convinced me to let her draw on brows before a TV appearance.

"You'll just look better," she said.

Are you sensing a pattern for what came next? I hated it, of course, and asked her to remove them. She did, but for the rest of the time I sat in her chair, she made comments about ways I could look more "complete."

Sometimes I look at my reflection and still see the things first that are missing from my face, the things that make me "incomplete." Most days, though, I'm perfectly happy with the image staring back at me and I truly have no interest in trying to keep drawn-on brows above my eyes or fake lashes glued to my lids. I used to think I had no choice and that those were things I needed in order to "look complete." But it's not what makes me comfortable. It's not really me.

A couple years ago, I was co-hosting a show online and in the comments section for a clip posted to Facebook, someone wrote: "Does she not have eyebrows??"

I responded that I didn't, and that I have alopecia. "It's a choice," I wrote, "but I'm happy with it!"

The original poster came back quickly with a reply and said she loved the look. She herself chose to shave her own eyebrows off for cosplaying purposes, she said.

It made me smile. I'm glad I made the choice too.

Credits: @alopeciamua, Olivia Mowry/USC, Lisa Lefkowitz

One of the most common questions about alopecia I've gotten is: "Why do you wear a wig?"

It's funny, because 20 years ago, the answer would've been a no brainer. I started wearing wigs because I didn't want to be bullied anymore or stared at everywhere I went. I was never equipped with what to say when someone asked me why my hair was falling out, and I definitely wasn't equipped with the confidence on how to say it.

These days, the answer is a little more complicated. I've been lucky to get to meet others with alopecia and to interact with the parents and guardians of children with alopecia too. Many of them choose to go without wigs, and a lot of the public media about individuals with alopecia often showcases how "bald and beautiful/proud/strong" they are.

In the past when I would see that, I used to feel bad about myself because it felt like I wasn't beautiful/proud/strong if I was "hiding" under a wig. How could I be an out and loud alopecian if I'm wearing a wig every day?


But then I discovered Molly Burke on YouTube, a vlogger who is blind, and I loved how candid she was in her videos about her disability and the highs and lows that come with representing that community too. In her videos, she talks often about how there are different ways to represent her community and how blindness – the experience of it and the outward appearance of it too – is different from person to person. The stereotype we often see in movies and TV of a blind person who wears sunglasses and uses a walking stick is not always how blind people appear or engage in the world. And it doesn't make someone any less blind if they don't appear that way.

I thought about how that applies to alopecia: there isn't one way to be an alopecian. These days, I don't see wearing a wig as "hiding" anymore. I wear wigs because it's what I've done for 18 years and it's what makes me comfortable. It doesn't mean I'm not proud to be an alopecian; it's just a preference. I like being able to try new styles and change my appearance day-to-day. (It's also why I like makeup: it's just a different avenue to express myself!)

There are so many ways alopecia manifests itself: some people lose all their hair, others only lose it in patches (or some have diffuse alopecia). However it presents, and however we choose to present ourselves to the outside world, it doesn't take away that we are alopecians. That part of our identity (and I do see it as an identity) doesn't go away because our alopecia is or isn't visible.

If you have alopecia, you have alopecia. The amount of hair on your head doesn't define whether or not you're part of this community. The way you choose to express your alopecia doesn't change that you are a part of this community.

The last time there was a photo of me with my natural hair on my head, I was 12.

I cried a lot before picture day that year. I wanted to stay at home or ask if the yearbook photographer could use my photo from last year instead. That was a battle I lost, but I did get to wear a dress I loved and, for the first time, got to wear lip gloss to school.

I've always loved makeup, but never felt like it was "for me." In all of the magazines where they taught you how to do your makeup, the tutorials always featured girls with light skins and large eyelids. For school plays, the moms who volunteered to do makeup never knew what to do with girls like me and I always came out too pale or with various eye products smeared down my cheeks.

And then my hair started to fall out and no one, including my family, knew what to do with me at all. I believed that makeup was for covering up flaws, and there weren't enough products in the world to fix what I felt everyone was implying was "wrong" with me.

But I wanted to wear makeup. I wanted to feel as confident and as beautiful as the girls in the magazines, and I wanted to be able to look in a mirror or at a photograph and not hate what I saw. If you saw my school photos between 1999 and 2001, you'd be shocked at how suddenly the smile disappeared: 5th grade was the last time I took a photo with a somewhat-full head of hair. By 2000, the wisps that remained were covered by headscarves, and when junior high came, I refused to leave the house without a wig.

Through all of that, and all through high school, I would still scan through Seventeen and Teen People, and I would wander up and down the makeup aisles at Target and wished I knew how to use the products that gave those other girls their smiles.

The moment, for me, where it started to change was 2006 during a cycle 6 episode of America's Next Top Model. The contestants had a challenge where they wore bald caps to model Swarovski crystals – and those photos were gorgeous. I suddenly felt seen in a very real and very visible way. I didn't have to just be "the bald girl." Maybe I could also be a CoverGirl?

In the early days of experimenting with products (both bought from drugstores and "borrowed" from my mom's Shiseido stash), I had plenty of missteps and I still cringe when I see those photos buried in albums and in boxes at my parents' house. Thank God for YouTube tutorials and blogs to guide me through college – those were the first times I ever saw someone who looked like me putting on makeup, teaching, talking about products that worked and didn't work. It was like a whole new world that I didn't think I could ever enjoy.

And that was something that took me awhile to fully understand: it is a world to be enjoyed. I started to see that makeup wasn't about hiding behind something. Just like putting on a good pair of shoes or a T-shirt you love, makeup is about expressing yourself. It can be fun. It should be fun.

I think that's partially why I started @alopeciamua: to experiment, to play, and to hopefully reach at least one person out there who's thought their whole life that they needed makeup to "fix" them. For my entire life, I've never fussed with fake eyebrows or fake eyelashes or eyelid tape, even though those would've helped me get on the path toward what I'm told is "normal" and "beautiful."

For the first time in nearly 20 years, I'm starting to feel good again. The photo set above represents that: these words were just some of the things I was called growing up, and I no longer want to let those things hold power over me anymore. It's been 17 years since I last let there be a photograph of me without a wig, and this account is just one small step toward reclaiming who I am.

A post shared by Trey (@alopeciamua) on Jul 26, 2018 at 4:12pm PDT

There should be more positive content about alopecia, in my opinion, so I figured I'd use this week's blog post to highlight a few of those things. These are 100% based on my own experience, so if you have others, share away!

1. No need to panic about finding the right hairdresser.
OK yes – there's a lot of drama around figuring out how to handle your hair (or lack thereof). Wig? No wig? Headscarves? But if there's one thing I've gathered from my friends and relatives who haven't yet found that perfect hairdresser who gets them, it's that there's a lot of stress that comes with finding your Hair-y Godperson. And even if you find that person, what happens if you move? Or they move? Just hearing people discuss this makes me anxious. I don't even like buying a new brand of soap.

2. You can see how the back of your hair(style) will look.
There's honestly nothing more relaxing than being able to sit in front of the TV and curl your hair while it sits on a stand in front of you.

I was 7 years old when my hair started falling out. It was a really hot day and my school was this 100 year old building that didn’t have central A/C. So we were having this quiet reading time and I reached back to tie up my hair into a ponytail.

A few minutes later, I started hearing this whispering behind me...and then it started getting closer and closer, and it turned into laughter. A girl tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to my head.

“Maybe you shouldn’t tie your hair up,” she said.

I wasn’t really sure what to say. And then she said, “You’ve got a bald spot.”

I quickly pulled the hair tie off my head and sunk back into my book, mortified. When I got home that day, I asked my mom about it and she said that it’s normal for people’s hair to fall out. But it’ll grow back. That’s just how it is.

Except...it didn’t grow back. It actually kept falling out. I started wrapping my head in scarves and tried to disappear as quickly as my eyebrows and eyelashes did from my face. I spent recesses on the bench reading, and at lunch, the librarian would let me spend the period inside the library instead of having to be outside with the rest of the kids.

Through some complicated game of telephone when I was 13, my mother got word of a Vietnamese herbalist in San Francisco. It was 2002, and after months of spraying that awful Rogaine formula on my head with no results, my parents were ready to try something new.

My mother made every trip to the fabric store an adventure. We would walk up and down each aisle, playing "I Spy" and commenting on everything: the ribbons, the cross-stitch patterns, the cake molds. We never needed any of these things, but if we made the trip an exciting outing, it would seem less mechanical and tiresome.

By the fifth grade, I wore headscarves daily. The materials we chose were often dark and subtle so that none stood out too much. My mother informed my teachers and school administrators about my condition because headscarves were not part of the school's dress code. But among the white polo shirts, navy pants and gray jumpers, my headscarves always stood out.

"'T' is for 'Traci.'"


My father picked up a square stuffed tiger and handed it to me as a baby on an early shopping trip. If it weren't for the triangular stripes on his face and the black 'T' on his stomach, he would be mistaken for an oddly-colored mouse.

My parents laughed at how strange the toy looked, but I wouldn't let it go--no matter how many flashy toys they tried to make dance in front of my face.

Tiggy has 22 strands of orange yarn sewn to the top of his head for hair. I took him everywhere as a child, and would braid his hair or tie it in knots as I listened to my sister tell my parents about her day or as I tried to fall asleep at night. As I grew older and my hair fell out, I stopped tugging at the orange yarn in fear my tiger would be bald someday too.

"He doesn't look like a tiger," my sister said once. I shrugged. Tiggy and I were kindred spirits, comrades against a world of judgement. It would never matter how much hair either of us had--or didn't have--on our heads.

Note: When I began writing about losing my hair as a child, I was surprised at how many detailed memories I had locked away in my brain. I think I got that ability from my mother (that, and my nose, apparently).

This is a new draft of an excerpt that I've shared online in the past. Writing is, after all, re-writing...right?

“That looks dangerous,” I said with worried eyes. I watched as Na climbed onto a small blue plastic chair and reach for the pair of scissors our mother kept on the kitchen counter.

Na didn’t reply, but grabbed the scissors and jumped off the chair. Her feet landed softly on the linoleum floor and she motioned to me. “Come on,” she said. I followed as usual. Na was almost two years older than I and anything she said, I did; anything she did, I wanted to do. At this particular moment in time, I watched as my ten-year-old idol swaggered from the kitchen to the living room with sharp scissors in her hand and an air of confidence surrounding her.

She bounced toward a bin that was filled with dolls and accessories. We had never been obsessed with Barbie dolls but we had plenty of them and plenty of Barbie-sized accessories: dresses, shoes, t-shirts and skirts. Na put the scissors onto an end table and reached into the bin. She pulled out a brunette doll in a yellow skirt and orange shirt.

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“Cut her hair.”

I frowned. It was technically my doll. My mother bought it for me after an enormous amount of pestering every time the commercial played. The doll was part of a trio of Glitter Hair Barbie dolls. Each doll came with a special comb and a tube of glitter. The commercial for the dolls showed young girls combing glitter into the dolls’ hair and then into their own hair. I used the glitter once before my mother realized how messy it was. She took the glitter away, but I didn’t protest. I wanted the doll for her neon red palm tree earrings and sleek yellow visor.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I told Na.

“I’m not gonna cut a lot of it,” Na replied as she prepared to set up shop. She turned Glitter Hair Barbie upside down and combed her fingers through the doll’s long brown hair.

“Give her to me,” I asked. Na ignored me. “Give her to me!” I shouted. I reached over and grabbed the doll from her hands. I could feel myself beginning to cry and turned away so Na wouldn’t see. Na never cried and I didn’t want her to make fun of me.

“You’re such a baby,” she said, rolling her eyes, and left the room.

I grabbed a Barbie-sized brush from the bin of dolls and sat down on the floor. I ran the brush slowly and gently through the doll’s hair, the same way my mother brushed my own hair. “You have to be gentle,” she instructed, “or you’ll pull more hair out.”

There were no more tears threatening to burst from my eyes and, instead, I felt proud of myself for saving the doll. Poor Glitter Hair Barbie, I thought. There was no reason she should lose any of her hair. She didn’t do anything to deserve it.

“What are you doing?”

I looked up. My mother walked into the living room and sat down on the sofa. Still holding the doll, I went to sit next to her as she turned on the television to resume the videotape of a Chinese drama she was watching.

“Mommy?” I asked after a few minutes of the tape. “Can you braid my hair?” I had seen her braid Na’s hair so many times. She used to braid my hair too, as well as curling it and styling it and pinning it up, but she stopped once my hair started to fall out. Now, she only touched my hair to cover the bald spots.

She tore her eyes from the television screen to smile her warm smile at me. It wasn’t a smile of glee or amusement; it was a sad smile, one she had worn on her face for the past year since my hair began falling out. “Here,” she said, motioning to the floor in front of her. “Chaw.”

I sat down on the worn, maroon carpet and my mother took a plastic comb off of the end table where Na had left the scissors. My mother was always careful when it came to my hair because she was afraid that any tension would pull more hair out. She didn’t want to cause any more damage in fear that one day my hair would all be gone and I would finally break down.

With her soft hands, she ran the comb slowly and gently through my hair. I knew that was all she would do. We sat quietly as the television played. I bent Glitter Hair Barbie into a sitting position, put her on the carpet in front of me and began to braid her hair.