Alopecia: 'I'm ditching my wig in public after Oscars row'

Laura Mathias hopes the positive legacy from the Oscars row will be more awareness and acceptance

A woman who hid her alopecia for 17 years said she felt more confident to go out without a wig after the Oscars controversy raised awareness.

Laura Mathias, 30, from Manningtree, Essex, said she hoped other bald people could take a stand in defiance of Chris Rock's joke.

"The positive thing from this awful incident is that so many more people know about alopecia," she said.

"I normally get very anxious going out without a wig.

"But now I feel like enough people know about the condition and wouldn't presume I have cancer, or some other illness, and look at me with pity."

Ms Mathias says she was too scared to exercise or go to theme parks for fear of her wig falling off

A clip of Will Smith slapping Chris Rock in the face on stage at the Oscars has been viewed millions of times and sparked multiple conversations about the condition.

The comic made a joke about the actor's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, who had shaved her head due to alopecia. It is thought to affect at least 65,000 people in the UK.

Laura Mathias started losing her hair aged 12 and hid the condition for 17 years

Ms Mathias said in a post on Instagram, where she chronicles her life with alopecia, that the actor's violence was not acceptable.

She said Will Smith did the right thing in making it clear that joking about his wife's hair loss was not appropriate, but she wishes he had done it with words instead.

Laura hopes to ditch her wigs and bandanas more in public now that more awareness of the condition has been raised

"Even though this was a really horrible incident, it has been massive for the alopecia community.

"I'm so happy to see that finally people are asking the question 'what is alopecia?'

"I was so proud to see how glamourous Jada looked and the fact that she just responded with an eye roll to the joke, she really comes out of this with so much dignity," she said.

Laura says the joke from Chris Rock was very upsetting for people with alopecia but now they can reclaim it

Ms Mathias was 12 years old when she was first diagnosed, and doctors said her hair loss was triggered by the stress of her parents' divorce.

She stopped going to school for six months because she was so embarrassed and decided to get a wig after she returned.

She couldn't exercise or go to theme parks for fear it would fall off, and had a panic attack while getting ready for a friend's wedding.

During the lockdown she decided to remove her wig in public for the first time.

"I didn't take it off in public for 17 years but the pandemic changed things for me," she said.

She says the idea of interacting as a bald woman every day still scares her

"I started sharing images online of me without my wig, but being completely honest I have felt more confident posing for photos without it than I have going to the shops. Now I hope to change that."

She said the idea of interacting as a bald woman every day still scares her, but she is "working on it".

"I have wasted too much of my life being anxious about it," she said.

"This joke risked ruining that confidence for so many but really it has had the opposite effect.

"People won't do a double take when more of us go out without our wigs on."