On Thursday, in a powerful video for the Root, Rep. Ayanna Pressley revealed she has alopecia, an autoimmune disorder characterized by hair loss.
"I am ready now because I want to be freed from the secret and the shame that that secret carries with it, and because I'm not here just to occupy space. I'm here to create it," Pressley explains in the video.
Last fall, during a hair appointment, Pressley explains she learned she had bald patches. From that point on, it accelerated.
"I'd been waking up every morning to sinkfuls of hair," Pressley says in the video. "Every night I was employing 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 on the night before President Trump's impeachment in the House of Representatives, the last bit of Pressley's hair fell out.
"I was completely bald, and in a matter of hours was going to have to walk into the floor, the House chamber ... and cast a vote in support of articles of impeachment," she says. "I didn't have the luxury of mourning what felt like the loss of a limb. It was a moment of transformation not of my choosing."
Elsewhere in the video, Pressley describes how before becoming an elected official, she tried different hairstyles, from wigs to extensions. A few years ago, she switched to Senegalese twists.
"I got these Senegalese twists, and I feel like I met myself fully for the first time," Pressley says in the video.
She explains how she recognized her twists "could be — would be — filtered and interpreted by some as a political statement that was militant," but also that she wasn't prepared for the acceptance and affirmation she received. Pressley isn't alone — black women with natural hair can face bias at work.
In the video, Pressley also explains how she felt she had to go public about her alopecia as an explanation to the little girls that look up to her for her twists. Towards the end, she looks boldly into the camera, her head now completely bald.
"I am making peace with having alopecia. I have not arrived there. I am very early in my alopecia journey. But I'm making progress every day. And that's why I'm doing this today," Pressley says. "It's about self-agency. It's about power. It's about acceptance."
Topics Social Good Politics
