On The Pull In Cambridge

Hi there, my name is Joanna. I’m a second-year English student. I like singing and laughing and dancing like a moron in Fez. I also enjoy ripping out large clumps of my hair on a daily basis.

Perhaps this is overly cynical, but I’m assuming most readers have already judged me a bit. Not just on my academic pathway (my degree will get me a job…one day) but mostly because I rarely last an hour without mutilating the follicles on my scalp. Most would classify this as disordered behaviour; destructive, painful and counter-intuitive. Others would go further, wondering why I just can’t stop. A select few (at least, I hope they’re few) might deduce from my habit that the infernal deities of Tripos have smited me with an ultra-niche form of insanity, or that my mother never loved me enough as a child.*

The truth is very different. Compulsive hair-pulling – or ‘trichotillomania’ to assuage the nerdy – is actually a very common condition, especially in people experiencing abnormal stress or anxiety…sound familiar, anyone? It’s difficult to find legitimate statistics of its prevalence due to a lack of research, and because of the stigma attached to the issue. But the evidence compiled by my extensive medical investigation (Google Search) agrees that between 1-3% of Americans experience it at some point in their lives.

So why aren’t people talking about it? Perhaps it’s because most hair-pullers – like myself before I came to university – are too ashamed of their problem to bring it up. Not just because it’s different and complicated and a little bit weird. And not just because of the emotional backlash familiar to every trichotillomaniac who guiltily hides each handful of hair they’d promise themselves not to pull. But mostly, hair-pullers are scared because it’s so easy for preconceptions to attach themselves to this kind of disorder. Just as it’s easy to dismiss an overweight stranger as being ‘greedy’, it’s easy to hang all sorts of reductive epithets – ‘undisciplined’, ‘weak-minded’, ‘masochistic’ – on people who hurt their hair.

While follicle-tearing is hardly the worst habit to pick up, it would be wrong to underestimate its negative effects. A Slightly-Shitty-Can’t-Kick-My-Hangover-Day might involve my gin-laced voice resounding round college as I loudly complain to my friends how I’m eventually going to end up ‘in Slough; fat, alone and bald.’ But the rare Truly-Hideous-Bike-Got-Stolen-Days invariably result in the loss of what feels like half my hair, and a very sad Joanna retreating to her room because she’s too embarrassed for anybody to know what’s happened.

I shouldn’t complain, because I’m one of the lucky ones. Thanks to the fabulous support of my open-minded and loving friends, I feel comfortable talking about my hair-pulling. Most of the time. But I know there are others that feel denied of this freedom. One funny thing about being a hair-puller is that you become overly-conscious of other people’s hair habits. If, like me, you initially doubted the above statistics so generously provided by Dr Google, have a check on the people in your college library every so often. Not in a creepy way, please. But maybe what you see will prove my point, that other people do, consciously or not, twist, damage or pull their hair when under stress. It is a thing.

I’m writing this late at night and there are many more hairs lying abject in the bin than there were an hour ago. I always pull most when I’m tired or worried (exam term has been a blast) and boy am I worried about how this article is going to be received. Just earlier this week, I oversaw (is that a word?) two post-grads pointing me out in the library, miming how my hand is permanently attached to my scalp as I work. I was crushed; not because they had ‘found me out’, but because they didn’t have the balls to come over and talk to me and ask the basic questions.

If this article is capable of doing anything, I hope it can raise both awareness and understanding. Everyone can be affected by trichotillomania; no one is immune due to their age, gender or race. But, difficult and pervasive as it is, it doesn’t have to define who you are.

The short version is: pulling my hair out doesn’t make me a freak. My extensive collection of pug teddies may make me a freak. My ability to recite every single word of ‘Baby Got Back’ may make me a freak. My pleasure in sorting Cheerios into colour order before mixing them up again in the bowl may make me a freak. But trichotillomania doesn’t. It’s just a challenging, tedious and occasionally funny part of my everyday life. It’s also a habit I share with plenty of people in this world, so why don’t we all get a bit more comfortable with it?

*Don’t listen to them Mum, you’re great. (But I still maintain I’d be a more stable person today if you hadn’t let me go to school sporting cornrows in Year 6.)