These are the questions that random passers-by on the street would ask me.
My name is Marina Zolotova-Basa, I am 44 years old, and I have been your neighbor since 2019 after I married my beloved husband and moved here from Moscow.
People usually think I have cancer, or I shaved my head to make a shocking impression on the world. Nope, I don’t have cancer or I didn’t mean to stress the world out with my bald shiny head. I simply have been living with alopecia for the last 28 years. Alopecia areata is an autoimmune disease that causes hair loss and is not treatable. Alopecia can happen to anyone, regardless of age or gender. One day you may find a bald patch on your head, and this is the beginning of an unpleasant process called alopecia.
I somehow got used to all of the same questions over and over, again. I understand that people just don’t know much, if anything about alopecia even though there are 148 million alopecians in the world. And this number is constantly growing. It’s actually the entire population of my home country, Russia. It’s such a large number, yet you don’t see many alopecians out on the streets, do you? The reason is because many alopecians are hiding from you and from ourselves while wearing wigs and scarves to avoid unwelcome attraction and questions such as: “Are your a survivor? Do you have cancer? Are you sick? Why are you bald?”
It turns out that hair is a big deal, especially for kids and women. Kids might be bullied at school, and women suffer from losing their so called, beauty. When we watch Hollywood movies, we see beautiful actresses with gorgeous hair and this is the part of the stereotype of a beautiful woman. Many women strive to be like them. Believe me, it’s really hard to undo this stereotype of a “beautiful woman”. I understand that these stereotypes make it hard for women like me and the other millions like me.
I started developing alopecia when I was 16 years old. It was a disaster for me. At times, I was hysterical and didn’t go to school for several months until I was able to get my first wig. My mom’s friends cut their braids for me so that a wig salon would be able to make a wig for me. I was lucky to go to school in a wig just a little before my graduation. There are stories of other women from my alopecian community who developed alopecia while going to school that were bullied, and had other kids from their school who tore the wigs from their heads just to make fun of them. Luckily, I didn’t have that. I had a supportive family and family friends. Despite that support, I still felt ugly. I hid my alopecia for 22 years. Throughout these years I became a single mother, received a master’s degree in journalism, became a radio correspondent, and then a tv documentary producer, and for the last five years of my television career, I was a producer for a news channel. Due to my profession, I had to have a presentable and attractive appearance since I interviewed all kinds of people, including top businessmen, politicians, and famous artists, etc. In all of these professional roles, I felt compelled to wear a wig to fit in. I had to purchase expensive wigs because cheap wigs wear out quickly and look like wigs, while expensive wigs last a long time and look like real hair.
Over the years, I learned how to answer uncomfortable questions such as: “Where do you dye your hair, or why do you always have the same hairstyle, why don’t you try cut your hair, or what time do you wake up to do such a chic hairstyle?”. I had created multiple lies to answer all these questions. Sometimes curious female colleagues came up and tried to touch my hair. Every minute of every day I was in constant fear of being discovered. A bad weather day brought me so much stress: rain, snow, wind, especially wind could be disastrous. When we were shooting segments outside and it was very windy, I had to figure out how to keep the wig on my head so that it would not fly off. However, one day it did fly off in front of the entire film crew. This was one of the worst and most embarrassing days of my career and life. I came home and I cried all night. That’s when I realized that something needed to change in my life.
I remember the moment I payed $3,000 in cash for a new blond wig and I felt how I was terribly tired of hiding my bald head under any wig. I was tired of paying that money to make myself feel secure and I was tired of being afraid to be myself. I was tired of lying to people. I honestly didn’t like wearing wigs because my head would ache after a while and when I took off my wig at the end of the day there were deep marks on my head from the elastic bands. I have no hair on my head, nor anywhere on my body, it forced me to try to wear fake eyelashes, but I developed a strong allergy to any eyelash glue which made my eyes swollen and irritated.
I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t let wigs control my happiness or the way that I felt about myself, so I finally decided to go out bald for the first time in my life. It was a tough decision and I was struggling with the decision as well as the reality of being bald in public. When I first went out without a wig it seemed to me as though I was walking naked out in public. I felt so vulnerable and was shaking nervously, covered in sweat. The Moscow city center is always crowded and people stared at me, some pointed at me, and someone laughed and tried to take a photo of me, thinking that I was some kind of bald freak. And then I realized that it is just impossible to change the world’s attitude towards a bald woman alone and that’s when I thought that there should be many of us, together. If there was some sense of unity of alopecians in my community, then it would be easier for us to find ways to live a full life and build self confidence. I started building our organization of alopecian women in 2014 and in 2017, we were able to film the first Russian social video about alopecia that we distributed through various media channels. In the social video, there were alopecian women from at least eight different cities in Russia from my community that came together to collaborate and create the video. Among these women there was one who took off her wig for the first time during filming and she sobbed with happiness because she felt freedom for the first time in her life. She wore a wig 24 hours a day and slept in a wig because she was afraid to show her bald head to her husband, not because her husband was bad, he was a good man, but because she was afraid that she would look ugly in his eyes. In the video there was another alopecian woman from a Siberian city who was bullied for her bald head by her neighbors. It was a glorious awakening of the spirit for many of us there.
I sent out hundreds of emails to different organizations trying to spread the stories of our alopecian women that were looking for support. The goal also was to set alopecian women free from stigma, so that they could go to work bald and wouldn’t be afraid to be fired for their “non-aesthetic look.” I feel that everybody has the right to feel that they belong in the world and community that they live in regardless of their differences. One day, I was lucky to meet the HR head of the Russian division of Sephora Cosmetics, who was absolutely overwhelmed by the stories of our alopecian women. Beginning in 2017, Sephora Russia has been sponsoring beauty events for our organization to promote beauty in all women. Later that year, I met Russian fashion designer Margarita Fedoseeva, who was inspired by the power and beauty of women living with alopecia, who have overcome difficult journeys of self-acceptance. In 2019 she created a collection devoted to alopecian women, and called her collection “Alopetianka,” the name which she took from the community that I formed also called Alopetianka. The collection was presented in a fashion show at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in Moscow. It was a great success and it was the first time in history that so many alopecian women (non- professional models) walked onto the runway at any of the Mercedes Benz Fashion Weeks in any country around the world. We had 11 proud, bald women from our community present the Alopetianka collection. The fashion show was covered by various magazines around the world which made me happy and proud. In addition to these large events and undertakings, we continue to gather together and hold multiple free professional photo sessions for alopecian ladies to help them build self-confidence. We also film documentaries about the community and have created a yearly pictorial calendar that feature our various members.
It has been a long time since I first stepped out of my comfort zone when I stopped wearing wigs while pretending to be who I am not. I am proud to say that the community helped so many women to change their lives forever. Some of them met their soulmates, got married, some of them started a family and some of them have made progress in their careers.
My future husband played a big role in my evolvement. We met by chance online in 2016 and although there was an attraction we became very close friends at first and then gradually our friendship grew into love. During one of my visits, he knelt down and proposed marriage to me at the airport upon my arrival. We got married in August 2019. It was a very beautiful private wedding. Since then, he has been always by my side, supporting me and giving me courage to make my way in a new life and home in Austin.
Looking back to what was done, I can say with the words of Elizabeth Gilbert from Eat, Pray, Love “when you set out in the world to help yourself, sometimes you end up helping tutti (“everyone” in Italian)”.
I decided to use all my experience, and my skills to help others gain their self-esteem to achieve their goals and build the future they want. Now, I am mastering a profession in life coaching. This June I will be a graduate of the Coach Training Alliance and will become a Certified Life Coach. For me, coaching is such a powerful support tool which has already helped so many people with different challenges in their lives. I know from my own experience how extremely difficult it is to move forward if something inside blocks you from becoming what you truly deserve to be and your best self. I know how hard it is to step out of your comfort zone especially at a low point in your life. I realize how hard it is to turn your pain into a powerful engine which may cary you to your dreams. If someone like me can do it, so can all of us. Life happens so fast and is so short that we all must strive in our ability to take our best bite out of life everyday.
Thank you for reading my story and thank you for welcoming me as a neighbor. If you know someone that is dealing with similar self-confidence issues or suffering from life’s challenges, please refer the to me. I would love to share my story with them and help them to realize that life can be anything you want to make it.