*Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley has revealed for the first time publicly that she is struggling with the hair-loss condition called alopecia.
In a new interview with The Root, Pressley, D-Massachusetts, explains why her “black hair story is both personal and political.”
“I’m trying to find my way here, and I do believe going public will help,” Pressely says as she shows her bald head. “This is my official public revealing. I am ready now because I want to be freed from the secret and the shame that that secret carries with it.”
She added: “I am making peace with having alopecia. I have not arrived there. I’m very early in my alopecia journey. But I’m making progress every day, and that’s why I’m doing this today.”
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“My twists have become such a synonymous & a conflated part of not only my personal identity & how I show up in the world, but my political brand. And that’s why I think it’s important that I’m transparent about this new normal & living with alopecia.” — @AyannaPressley pic.twitter.com/jqraqZeiKr
— The Root (@TheRoot) January 16, 2020
Pressley recalls waking up to sink-fulls of hair, and she tried to solve her hair crisis by using “all the tools that I had been schooled and trained in throughout my life as a black woman because I thought that I could stop this.” But nothing worked.
“I didn’t not want to go to sleep because I did not want the morning to come where I would remove this bonnet and my wrap and be met with more hair in the sink and an image in the mirror of a person who increasingly felt like a stranger to me,” Pressley said.
The last of her hair fell out on the eve of Trump’s impeachment last month.
“And so I didn’t have the luxury of mourning what felt like the loss of a limb,” Pressley said. “It was a moment of transformation, not out of my choosing. But I knew the moment demanded that I stand in it and that I lean in.
“I exited the floor as soon as I could and I hid in a bathroom stall. I felt naked, exposed, vulnerable. I felt embarrassed. I felt ashamed. I felt betrayed.”
Hear Pressley tell it via the clip above.
Alopecia affects nearly 7 million people in the U.S, according to the National Alopecia Areata Foundation.
In 2018, Pressely, 45, became Massachusetts’ first Black woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.
She recently announced plans to seek a second term representing the state’s 7th congressional district.
