Chloe Bean was just 8 years old when she started losing her hair.
At first, she was diagnosed with alopecia areata — “just bald spots” — so “I would just wear hats and headbands to cover it.”
But her condition progressed, and by junior year of high school, Chloe, now 25, tells PEOPLE exclusively, “the alopecia made me go completely bald.”
Courtesy of Chloe Bean
“I was losing my eyebrows. I was losing my eyelashes, and at one point, my hair was probably as thick as my pinky. I would look in the mirror and it was so hard for me. So my dad was like, ‘You need to do something about this’ and we came to the conclusion I needed to shave what was left of my hair off.”
The decision to shave her head, she said, left her with conflicting emotions.
“It was …