It started slowly, with handfuls of hair circling the plug hole in the shower. Then eventually British bodybuilder Tracy Kiss began to notice she could see her scalp when her hair was wet. “I always had really thick hair,” Kiss said from her home in north London. “It was kind of inconvenient that there was so much of it.” But shortly after the birth of her two children at 25, Kiss — who is now 38 — couldn’t believe that her “massive head of hair had become a whisper.”
In the mornings, choosing a hairstyle became less about self-expression and more about disguise. Kiss often tied her hair up flat to her head to hide the thinning at her temples, or cycled through extensions, wigs and hats. “In photos I would just look and think, ‘Oh my god. It’s getting worse by the day,’” she said. Her blood test results showed she was deficient in vitamins like iron. She exhausted hair supplements, specialist shampoos and even PRP injections (a dermatological procedure where her own plasma was injected back into her hair follicles in an attempt to stimulate growth). “It makes you feel so demoralized,” said Kiss. “You feel as a woman, your hair is your crowning glory. So to take that away, you almost lose your identity.”
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