There’s a version of me standing in front of a mirror holding a hair topper with the tags still on it, absolutely convinced she’s about to put it on wrong and somehow make everything worse. She’s been watching YouTube tutorials for two hours. She’s got seventeen browser tabs open. She’s read the same Reddit thread four times.
That was me. And I wish I could go back and say a few things to her.
Not the stuff you find in the FAQs. Not “make sure your base size matches your hair loss area” (though yes, do that). I mean the other stuff. The things I had to figure out the hard way over years of wearing toppers and wigs and making expensive mistakes and occasionally crying in ways that had nothing to do with the product itself and everything to do with everything else.
So here it is. What I’d actually tell myself at the start.
You’re going to feel like a fraud at first. You’re not.
The first time I went out in public wearing a topper I was absolutely certain everyone could tell. Every person who looked in my direction, I was convinced they knew. She’s wearing something. I can see it. Look at her.
Nobody could tell. Nobody was looking. People are extraordinarily wrapped up in their own lives and their own heads and their own commutes, and they are genuinely not clocking your hairline. I know that’s hard to believe when you’re new to this and hyperaware of every gust of wind. But it’s true.
The fraud feeling fades. I promise it fades.
The first piece you buy probably won’t be the right one. That’s fine.
I didn’t land on my perfect fit first time. Not even close. My first topper was a learning experience, which is a polite way of saying I picked the wrong base size, chose a colour that was slightly off, and had to figure out blending entirely by trial and error while watching women on YouTube make it look effortless.
It didn’t put me off. It educated me. I knew so much more going into my second purchase than I did going into my first, and my second was miles better, and by my third I finally felt like I knew what I was doing.
Don’t expect to nail it immediately. Budget for the learning curve if you can. And maybe start with something mid-range rather than spending a fortune on something you’re not sure about yet.
Stop waiting until it’s “bad enough.”
This one I feel strongly about. I put off doing anything for so long because I kept telling myself it wasn’t bad enough yet. Like I needed to hit some threshold of loss before I was allowed to seek solutions. Before I’d earned the right to want to feel better about how I looked.
That threshold doesn’t exist. There’s no minimum requirement. If your hair is affecting how you feel every day, that’s enough. That’s more than enough. You don’t have to wait until you feel worse to decide you deserve to feel better.
The grief is real. Let yourself have it.
I don’t think I properly grieved my hair for a long time because I was so busy trying to fix it. Products, treatments, research, appointments, more research. All of it useful. None of it a substitute for actually sitting with the fact that something had changed that I hadn’t chosen and couldn’t fully control.
Hair is loaded. Anyone who tells you it’s just hair has never lost theirs. It’s tied to how you see yourself, how you’ve always seen yourself, the version of you that exists in every photo from before. Losing it, or watching it thin, is a grief. An actual grief. And you’re allowed to treat it like one instead of rushing past it to the solution stage.
I wrote about this properly in this post if you want to go deeper on the emotional side of it, because I think it deserves more than a paragraph.
The community will save you. Find it early.
I found the hair loss community online later than I should have. The first person I came across on Instagram was @the_strandie, which is Suran, and honestly her content was one of the things that made me feel like this was all actually navigable. She also runs Silk or Lace, a marketplace specifically for wigs and toppers that’s worth bookmarking if you haven’t already. Her website strandie.com has a load of useful resources too. She was one of the first people I saw talking openly about this stuff and it mattered more than I can explain.
Beyond Instagram, Reddit is genuinely underrated for this. r/femalehairloss is an active, honest community where real people ask real questions and get real answers. Mostly it’s just people in the same boat, which is exactly what you need at 11pm when you’ve convinced yourself of the worst.
Find these spaces. Don’t wait years like I did.
You’re going to spend money on things that don’t work. Make your peace with that now.
I have tried things that did nothing. I have used serums religiously for months and seen zero results (I literally just wrote about this, you can read it here). I have bought products with incredible reviews that did absolutely nothing for my particular scalp and my particular follicles and my particular flavour of hair loss.
Before you spend a single penny on anything, though, please go and see a doctor or a dermatologist first. I mean it. Hair loss can be caused by so many different things, anaemia, thyroid issues, hormonal imbalances, nutritional deficiencies, and if that’s what’s going on for you then no serum or growth treatment is going to fix it. You need to know what you’re actually dealing with before you start throwing money at it. Minoxidil is generally considered the standard treatment for androgenic alopecia and it does work for a lot of people, but even that is a conversation to have with a professional, not something to just start because you read about it online.
(I should be very clear here: I am not a doctor. I am a blind-ish balding big girl on the internet writing words. Please consult an actual medical professional.)
Once you’ve got a diagnosis and a plan, yes, you’ll probably still try things that don’t work. That’s just how this world works. Hair loss is so individual that there is no universal answer, and finding what helps you involves some amount of trying things that turn out not to help you. It’s annoying and expensive and occasionally demoralising and also just unavoidable.
Don’t take it personally. Move on and try the next thing.
(And if you want my completely unsolicited opinion on Monat products? Horrible. Just horrible. Don’t do it. I’m begging you. Don’t.)
Wearing alternative hair is not giving up.
I want to end on this one because I think it’s the one I most needed to hear.
There’s a narrative around hair loss that says treatments and growth products are the real solution, and that wearing a topper or a wig is somehow the consolation prize. Like you tried and failed and now you’re covering it up. Like you gave in.
That is absolute rubbish and I reject it completely.
Wearing alternative hair is a choice. A practical, sensible, often brilliant choice that lets you get on with your life and feel like yourself and stop spending every morning fighting with your reflection. It’s not giving up on your bio hair. You can do both. Plenty of people do both. Treat your scalp. Look into options. And also clip in a topper and walk out the door feeling good. Or shave your head and rock the bald look! (I can’t pull it off myself, wish I could.) These things are not mutually exclusive.
I wish someone had told me that clearly and early instead of letting me feel for years like wearing something was admitting defeat.
It’s not. It’s just adapting. And adapting is the most human thing there is.
If you’re right at the beginning of all this, honestly, I’m glad you found this corner of the internet. It gets easier to navigate. And if you’ve got questions you’re not sure where to ask, I’m always on Instagram @neveen.wood.
Discount Codes
If you’re ready to start shopping for your first (or next) piece, here are my current codes:
UNIWIGS – use code NEVEEN for 15% off. My most-visited wig site by a mile.
HAIRCUBE – use code NEVEEN for 30% off. Great for experimenting with colour and style.
JBEXTENSION – use code NEVEENWOOD for 10% off.
All codes in one place: neveenwood.com/discount-codes
