Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), a member of the far-left group dubbed “The Squad,” revealed in a video on Thursday that she is now bald because she has a medical condition called alopecia.
“This is my official public revealing: I’ve only been bald in the privacy of my own and in the company of close friends,” Pressley said in a video. “In the fall when I was getting my hair re-twisted is the first time that I was made aware that I had some patches. From there it accelerated very quickly.”
“I’ve been waking up every morning to sink fulls of hair, 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,” Pressley continued. “I wrapped my hair. I wore a bonnet. I slept on a silk pillowcase and yet and still every morning, which I faced with dread, I did 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, in the mirror of a person, who increasingly felt like a stranger to me.”
The New York Times reported that “Alopecia — a medical term for baldness — is an autoimmune disease that causes hair to fall out from the scalp, face and other parts of the body” and that “most people with alopecia are otherwise healthy, but the hair loss may occur very rapidly and may cause severe emotional distress.”
“And so impeachment Eve the last little bit of my hair came out,” Pressley continued. “I was completely bald and in a matter of hours was going to have to walk into the floor the House chamber the House of Representatives and cast a vote in support of articles of impeachment and so 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.”
WATCH:
"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
Transcript of Rep. Ayanna Pressley’s (D-MA) remarks:
This is my official public revealing: I’ve only been bald in the privacy of my own and in the company of close friends. I’m congresswoman Ayanna Pressley and this is a word about why my black hair story is both personal and political. Before I was an elected official, I did everything, I wore wigs, I wore extensions, and then about four or five years ago I decided to get senegalese twist all the way down to my waist and what happened is that I got these senegalese twists and I feel like I met myself fully for the first time.
You know, I sort of looked in the mirror and I said, ‘oh there I am,’ and it felt good. So, what started out as a transitional hairstyle ultimately became a statement and something that I was very intentional about and I was very aware this hairstyle could be, would be, filtered and interpreted by some as a political statement that was militant or people said, people will think you’re angry and I said, ‘well they already think that.’ What I was not prepared for was the glorious gift and blessing of the acceptance and the community and the affirmation. Now I walk into rooms and little girls are wearing t-shirts that say my congresswoman wears braids and we receive letters from all over the globe of women who talk about their own emancipation that they feel that I’ve given them permission.
My twists have become such a synonymous and conflated part of not only my personal identity and how I show up in the world but my political brand. That’s why I think it’s important that I’m transparent about this new normal and living with alopecia. In the fall when I was getting my hair re-twisted is the first time that I was made aware that I had some patches. From there it accelerated very quickly. I’ve been waking up every morning to sink fulls of hair, 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. I wrapped my hair. I wore a bonnet. I slept on a silk pillowcase and yet and still every morning, which I faced with dread, I did 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, in the mirror of a person, who increasingly felt like a stranger to me.
And so impeachment Eve the last little bit of my hair came out. I was completely bald and in a matter of hours was going to have to walk into the floor the House chamber the House of Representatives and cast a vote in support of articles of impeachment and so 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.
But I knew the moment demanded that I stand in it and that I lean in and 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 and then I also felt that I was participating in a cultural betrayal because of all the little girls who write me letters, who come up to me, who take selfies with me hashtag twist nation and I thought of those t-shirts and I just kept revisiting that and I immediately knew that I was going to want to when I felt ready go public because I felt like I owed all those little girls an explanation. My husband says I don’t, you know, that everything doesn’t have to be political.
The reality is that I’m black and I’m a black woman and I’m a black woman in politics and everything I do is political. I think you might overtly intellectualize it and say it’s just hair. People are well-meaning and have been reminding me of the India.Arie song, ‘I’m not my hair, you are not your hair,’ and that’s true but I still want it. So, I’m trying to find my way here and I do believe going public will help.
This is my official public revealing: I’m 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 and I want to be free. 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. It’s about self agency, it’s about power, it’s about acceptance, right now on this journey when I feel the most unlike myself is what I am wearing a wig, so I think that means I’m on my way. I’ve been experimenting and so I have several units. One I call FLOTUS, because it feels very uh Michelle Obama to me, this one I call the og because this was the first one, I’m trying to get to a place where I give myself the space to be to find joy in options.