Publicist Yasmin Martinez learned early on to deal with prying eyes about her alopecia, something that affected the way she saw herself.
“My biggest pain was always this: not looking at myself with affection, because of the way others saw me”, says she, who has suffered from alopecia since she was 8 years old. The autoimmune condition involves the loss of hair or body hair in both men and women and can be caused by several factors – in Yasmin’s case, the cause was never clear.
After going through several ineffective treatments, today, at the age of 28, she discovered her self-esteem and helps other women in this search on her social networks. “Now I know it’s not my hair that will tell me whether or not I’m worthy,” she says.
Yasmin Martinez was just 8 years old when she noticed the first flaws in her hair. After a few consultations with dermatologists, she was diagnosed with alopecia areata, a condition in which the immune system attacks the hair follicle, leaving gaps in the scalp. Two years later, the hair began to fall out more intensely and, when looking for help, he discovered that his condition had evolved into alopecia universalis, that is: the loss occurs in any hair on the body.
That’s how, at age 10, she decided to shave her head. “It was really bad to take a shower and see my hair falling out. I knew I wouldn’t have much of a solution, so I decided to shave it myself with a razor. And at that moment it was peaceful, it seemed like the solution to a problem that had been hurting me for some time,” he recalls.
Throughout her life, she tried several treatments to alleviate the condition. However, due to the aggressiveness of the processes and the excessive use of strong medications, she decided to stop. “When I was a kid, I didn’t see myself as something super different. But when I started to understand that people saw it as an aberration it started to exert a power over me. I started to see myself differently,” he says.
At the time, her mother went to school to advise teachers and parents about the disease, but not everyone reacted well. “Some parents of students saw that situation and thought it was something that could be contagious”, says she, who suffered a lot of bullying.
Finally, when she changed schools at age 14, she had the chance to reinvent herself. “I told people I was a redhead, but I wasn’t, my hair was very brown. I always bought in the same tone to create this identity and people wouldn’t realize it was a wig, you know? I didn’t talk about it with anyone,” he says.
Social media helped to regain self-esteem
In 2018, with the help of social media, Yasmin started to get in touch with other people with alopecia. “I ended up reaching many girls who have alopecia, which brought me a legal proximity to the community, even universal. Not that I think about becoming an influencer about it, but helping people who go through this is my greatest pride,” she reveals.
For her, the process of “self-love” was not easy. “I’ve always compared myself a lot and had a lot of demands on myself, mainly because I thought that, because I didn’t have hair, I was at a disadvantage in some way. So it was very little by little that I started to understand myself as a unique being and I started to stop comparing myself to other people”, he says.
One of the key points on this journey took place in early 2020, when she was preparing for a trip with friends to Bahia, and she decided not to take her wig, her faithful partner. Since then, she started to assume the bald spot that, very different from childhood, today is accompanied by a smile.
But of course, not everything is rosy. “There are many absurd situations that are difficult to deal with. Sometimes people arrive yelling at me, saying I’m bald; on the subway, people get up to give the seat and fight me saying that I’m sick and I need to sit down”, he vents.
Yasmin admits that her self-esteem still suffers ups and downs, but in a very different way than it was in the past. “For a long time I saw myself in a very cruel way, I was very bad with myself”, she says.
“From the moment I started to see myself the way I really was, I was able to see that, as much as all this has brought me a lot of pain, it managed to transform me into the person I am today. It was a process, it has been and will always be, but I believe that more and more I walk towards a moment of tranquility. But it was really hard to get here.”
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Reference: CNN Brasil
