Celebrities Show There is More Than One Way to Contend with Hair Loss
Hair loss affects us all. Women, men, young, old, rich, poor — none are immune to the biological vagaries of alopecia’s many forms.
Even celebrities with their gilded lives and deific fame are vulnerable to hair loss. The list of reasons for hair loss is almost as long as the list of celebrities who have talked about their own experiences with it. The roster of big names who have dealt with hair loss goes on and on: Matthew McConaughey, Jaida Pinkett Smith, Tyra Banks, Viola Davis, Elon Musk, Charlie Sheen, Naomi Campbell, Elton John, Robert Pattinson, Gail Porter, Jude Law, Ashton Kutcher, Al Pacino, just to name a few.
Some of the most famous and beautiful people in the world battle hair loss every single day, but what that goes to show is that hair loss is extremely common, it’s treatable, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of.
Jaida Pinkett-Smith
Perhaps one of the most recent reminders hair loss’s prevalence among celebrities was the fiasco surrounding Jaida Pinkett Smith’s bald head at this year’s Oscars ceremony, where Will Smith appeared to slap comedian Chris Rock live on stage after he jokingly compared Pinkett Smith to the protagonist of the 1997 film “G.I. Jane,” alluding to her military, bald-chic hair style.
Pinkett Smith suffers from hair loss resultant of an autoimmune disease called alopecia areata, which causes the body’s immune system to attack hair follicles, resulting in hair loss. Pinkett Smith has been very open about her struggle with alopecia, a broad medical term for hair loss. In December, months before the Oscars snafu, she took to Instagram to explain her new bald look to her 11.9 million followers.
“Mama’s gonna have to take it down to the scalp so nobody thinks she got brain surgery or something,” she wrote. “Me and this alopecia are going to be friends… period!”
While Pinkett Smith has thus far taken a stylistic approach to dealing with her alopecia, she isn’t the only celebrity contending with hair loss. Celebrities across the gamut of fame have battled hair loss in their own way, whether it be embracing it through a new style or undergoing increasingly popular medical hair restoration and optimization procedures, which are quickly becoming just as common as other routine cosmetic procedures such as face lifts, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.
Chrissy Teigen
Eyebrow restorations are one of the newest burgeoning hair trends amongst the glitterati. Model and television personality Chrissy Teigen took to Instagram earlier this week to show off the six-month post-procedure results of her own eyebrow hair restoration procedure, which she underwent to remedy years of plucking her brows.
“Blessing and a curse, this eyebrow procedure,” Teigen said in an Instagram caption shared with her 38 million followers. “10/10 would do again lol.”
Teigen’s brow restoration was accomplished in a manner similar to that of a more conventional hair restoration, in which hair follicles are extracted from a donor area on the back of the head and grafted to the recipient area — in Teigen’s case, her brows.
Elon Musk
It may not look like it today, but decades ago tech business magnate and investor Elon Musk was on a fast track to losing his hair. Now considered the richest man in the world, the PayPal and SpaceX founder’s hair journey has been well documented over the years, and the resurgence of his youthful hairline has largely been attributed to a series of hair restoration procedures by an experienced team of medical professionals.
Experts speculate that Musk’s surgical hair restoration journey began as early as 2002, and photos of Musk appear to show a scar from a Follicular Unit Transplant (FUT) procedure, which was the most advanced surgical hair restoration method in the early aughts. Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) has since overtaken FUT as the most cutting edge approach to hair restoration, but Musk appears to have had multiple hair restoration procedures over the years, slowly building his hair density to what we see today.
John Travolta
John Travolta was one of the most famous actors of his day. At 23 years old, Travolta saw a meteoric rise into the limelight in 1978 with his watershed role in Grease, having already featured in box office hits such as Carrie (1976) and Saturday Night Fever (1977). Travolta was a veritable heartthrob, and perhaps the most striking element of his iconic appearance was his full, thick head of meticulously coiffed hair.
In 2015, a fan took a selfie with Travolta when he ran into him at the gym. Much to everyone’s surprise, the 62-year-old Travolta was seen for the first time ever with his hair loss on full display, leading many to speculate that the Hollywood actor may have been wearing hair pieces to public events for several years.
A year later, Travolta emerged back into the public eye with a very convincing head of hair. Hair restoration experts and media spectators everywhere trumpeted the extraordinary results of Travolta’s rumored hair restoration. Some even categorized the type of hair restoration, noting that the results of Travolta’s procedure appeared to be the product of a Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE), as opposed to a Follicular Unit Transplant (FUT).
FUT procedures differ from FUE procedures in that they focus on the individual extraction of hair follicles, as opposed to removing a section of the scalp to separate the follicles and transplant them to part of the head where hair growth is desired. Barber Surgeons Guild® uses ARTAS robotic technology to refine the identification of hair follicles prime for safe and effective extraction with artificial intelligence designed to maintain the most natural appearance possible in donor and recipient areas of the scalp.
Despite the fanfare around Travolta’s rumored hair restoration, in 2019 he debuted a clean, totally bald look — à la Pinkett Smith — and he has been true to it ever since.
“Listen, my new look came on a whim,” Travolta told People magazine at the time. “It was a New Year’s Eve idea. Because everyone liked it so much, I decided to keep it for awhile. So, we’ll see.” Three years later, Travolta is still rocking the bald look by popular demand.
Hair loss is a big part of many people’s lives, and celebrities show that there are as many medical and aesthetic solutions to hair loss as there are types of hair loss. Whether you want to reclaim your hair with a restoration or optimization procedure, or take a more stylistic approach and go totally bald like many celebrities today, Barber Surgeons Guild® is uniquely qualified to assist you on whatever path your hair journey may take you. With our master barbers and experienced medical staff, our team has the knowledge and skill to guide you every step of the way.