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New Wigs Change the Game for Cancer Survivors
“For Black women battling cancer, losing their hair can take on more layers than our white counterparts,” Hope Giselle writes for Elle. Giselle profiles Dianne Austin, a cancer survivor who founded Coils to Locs, “a medical wig resource for women of color looking for our hair patterns represented.”
People of color are often underrepresented or ignored when it comes to depictions of hair. Austin points out that not finding a wig that matched her hair type was especially painful while she was going through chemo, an already excruciating experience. She talks candidly about the process:
I often say to people, I’m hoping 25 years from now, people will look back and say, that process is so barbaric. Putting chemicals in and killing all the cells, good cells and bad cells, in order to save someone’s life. But when you go through that process, there were times when I couldn’t walk two feet without having to sit down. In one case, I laid down on the floor because I just couldn’t take another step.
When you’re going through a terrifying and painful ordeal already, shouldn’t being able to look sort of like yourself be an option? Read the whole interview, in which Austin movingly answers the question, “Well, it’s just a wig, what’s the big deal?”
