Cultural Expectations and Hair Loss

By Maryanne Makredes Senna, MD and Brianna De Souza, MD

Some time ago I was first asked to give a lecture to our residents on diagnosing and treating hair loss disorders. As I prepared my lecture, I typed “attractive women” into a search engine, and what returned were images of young women with tons of long, flowing hair.  Although, a similar search for “attractive men” yielded images of men with hair and also included pictures of bald men like Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Bruce Willis, and Jason Statham.  These images were promptly used in my lecture to portray an important, increasing phenomenon that I see every day in clinic:  hair loss is becoming a largely female problem.

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“A considerable number of women are at risk of developing female pattern hair loss (FPHL), and it has been shown that women with alopecia bear a greater emotional burden compared to men with hair loss.”