Bravo TV Star Jordan Emanuel's Alopecia Journey Is Way More Than Skin-Deep
When Jordan Emanuel began filming the latest season of Bravo TV’s Summer House: Martha’s Vineyard, she wasn’t sure if she’d share that she’d been battling alopecia areata. But a divine voice spoke louder than her trepidation.
“When I went on Summer House to talk about it, I didn’t know if I was going to,” she admits. “It just started to not even be an option, honestly. To me it was like The Universe was screaming, ‘Girl, you don’t have a choice, so you just gotta push and do it.’ And I’m so glad that happened, because every day, I get a message from at least one person being like, ‘Thank you so much. I feel seen.’”
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Studies have found that nearly half of Black women experience hair loss. Emanuel’s own journey began with a flare-up after relaxing her hair at 20 years old. When the treatment left her with small bald spots, she decided to cease her use of the notoriously-coined “creamy crack.” “Six months later, my hair started growing back,” she recalls. “I was like, you know what? I’m not getting any more relaxers. I’ll just get my little blowout, whatever. That was good for six years—until I had to get a relaxer for a job.”
From being crowned Playboy’s “Playmate of the Year” to competing for Miss Black America, Emanuel’s beauty had been at the forefront of her career. At the same time, she occupied a space where Black beauty was constantly mishandled — from hair, to skin to body types. Too many Black starlets have faced horror stories as a result. Emanuel’s own took place during one fateful shoot, where the young model crossed her own boundaries and relaxed her hair yet again. The incident caused severe burns and hair loss that has been painstakingly irreversible since.
“As soon as that relaxer hit my scalp, I was like, ‘Oh my God, we gotta take it out.’ And pretty immediately there was scabbing, there was all this damage and I never recovered.” Two months later, Emanuel was formally diagnosed with alopecia areata, a hereditary autoimmune condition that causes hair loss, often in patches.
Despite the devastating diagnosis, Emanuel has now applied her penchant for philanthropy to alopecia awareness, making vulnerability her superpower.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
SheKnows: On Summer House, you mentioned that your alopecia was hereditary. Did you see someone in your family go through this before you actually went through it?
Jordan Emanuel: So ironically, myself, my aunt and my great aunt all got hit with our autoimmune diseases at the same time. They were all triggered at the same time. So when my mom passed, my grandfather passed six months later and it was just a domino effect of a lot of loss in our family. And my aunt actually doesn’t have alopecia; she had vitiligo. So she started seeing her skin losing pigment around the same time I started losing my hair. Maybe two years after I had that perm incident, my grandmother had passed and her sister, my great aunt, told us she had been losing her hair for quite some time and that she also had alopecia.
Oh my God.
Yeah. So alopecia and vitiligo are actually the same thing. They just attack different follicles. (Editor’s note: though they look different, both alopecia and vitiligo are autoimmune diseases with “striking similarities” in what triggers them and how they develop in the body, experts say.)
Wow. I didn’t know that. What I find very interesting is that your experience, the one that you haven’t been able to turn back from, was directly related to how Black women’s hair is treated in the entertainment industry. How many of your experiences as a Black woman in entertainment have been just, not great—people not knowing what to do or how to do your hair?
I mean, it’s not even just the hair, it’s the makeup, the styling, the fitting, all of it. When I was running for the Miss Black America pageant, that was actually my talent, it was a poem. And I was talking about how nobody knows what to do with Black beauty. This was pre-Fenty Beauty, this was pre-Cécred and all these things occurring now. I’ve had my skin tone not match, or the foundation is dry. When you go to the hotels with the conditioner—what conditioner?—it just dried my hair completely out. The burning of the hair, the not knowing what to do with your hair.
Even from a young age, I went to private school, so I was with predominantly white students. One girl had a birthday party at a salon, and they truly didn’t know what to do with my hair. They ended up just curling it and I felt good at the time. But looking back on it, it was like everybody was done within 20 minutes. And I’m there an hour later getting my hair done. So it’s been a thing my whole life really, but especially in the industry.
I want to hear about a positive experience you’ve had with your hair being styled by someone who knew what they were doing with your hair and how that changes your entire work experience.
It was one of my Playboy shoots. Those were always great. They always knew what to do with my hair. I never had to say anything. I never had to check in. They were like, yes, we do this. And one of them I still work with now. So there are those great people who are versatile in their craft and take it to that level.
And I’m sure that changes the way you get to show up on set. It’s one thing less to worry about and you get to do your job even better.
Oh, absolutely. I mean, everybody loves to be like, ‘Oh, inner beauty…’ No, when we look good, we feel good. That’s just what it is. I went to the National Alopecia Areata Foundation and they’re running ads on my posts that I did for them. And a lot of comments are like, ‘But you’re beautiful. Why does hair matter?’ And I’m like, it’s always people that have never experienced it that are going to say that. When you lose something that you’ve always had, whether you think it’s superficial or not, that’s a part of me that is no longer. There is a grieving process and an adjustment process to deal with what that means. Because not just how I look, it’s how I interact with people. Do I tell the men I’m dating that I don’t have hair? Are they going to be surprised when we’re in the bedroom and things are wiggling off? I don’t know. Those are all conversations that I never had to have before.
Your entire life changed.
Correct.
I remember when my hair first started falling out, honestly, it was so much of a shock that I kind of downplayed it. Talk to me about the shock of losing your hair at first and how you responded.
I think it was really an ongoing process. I don’t think I had one big initial reaction. I’m somebody who was very much like, ‘Okay, well now what are we doing? Okay, I need a wig. What do I get?’ I’m very much like that. And so it’ll happen later in waves—like when I take the wig off and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, who am I looking at in the mirror right now? Who is this?’ Everything’s growing back, but it’s so thin. There’s so many gray spots now. Because that’s a whole other thing, is when it does grow back, it grows back gray a lot of the time. It’s so thin. I’m like, how do I make it look presentable? I have to spray it in. And I looked at the mirror and I’m like, ‘You know what? You gotta be happy you even have this little bit of hair. You gotta be happy just for even this, because we didn’t even have this at one point. And so it’s still an ongoing thing. And mentally I remember feeling and still do, it’s like, ‘Damn, can I at least have my hair?’
Oof, I feel that. What are some other things you’ve learned about alopecia since you’ve gotten a diagnosis and have been treating it? What are some things you just didn’t know that you’ve learned because you’re experiencing this?
Well, I didn’t know how many people were affected by it. I had no idea. When I initially posted maybe five, four years ago, I had no idea how many people were living in the dark with hair loss in general. Not even just alopecia, just general hair loss. I also didn’t know how many different types of hair loss there were. I have a friend that I grew up with who has alopecia totalis, which means she has no hair on her body. I’ve never had that, I’ve only ever had areata, which is the round circles and some thinning, and maybe the eyebrows, but nothing crazy. The eyebrows pretty much grow back. And so that shocked me. And it made me sad because it also made me realize how many people were living in silence about it, hiding. And I think I got another wave of that with the show. I still didn’t understand the impact until the show.
Losing your hair really is a confrontation of self. It’s a confrontation of “How do I feel about myself and my own beauty?” It rattles your confidence!
Even a step further, it makes you realize—well, for me, because mine is so emotions-based—it makes me be like, ‘Oh my God, you’re hurting this bad? That anxiety is this bad?’
Whew, yes. And Black women in particular were so used to carrying stress and carrying pain that when our hair falls out it’s like, “I was that stressed?” That’s a word.
Right, because I’m like, ‘This isn’t normal stress? Y’all aren’t feeling this way?’
I do want to know how hair loss has maybe changed some self-care rituals for you. Have you had to take on new affirmations for yourself? Have you had to do new self-care rituals? Have you had to go to therapy about this in particular? How have you had to take care of your mental health through this challenge?
Well, I’ve always been a therapy girly. I lost my mom at 17, so it was like there was no choice for me. And so I’ve always continued to go to therapy. I’ve battled anxiety and depression, what feels like forever. […] For me, I felt like my birth control was causing me more anxiety than I had naturally. I don’t know what it was, but my spirit was just telling me I need to get off of everything and see what I do. And so before we started filming last season, I had actually gone to visit my dad and I forgot my pills. And so I was like, you know what? This is a sign. Let me just see what goes on. Immediately I felt relieved, just enough to be like, ‘Okay, I can maintain these moments of anxiety in a different way than I could before.’ Before, it felt like I had no control in a way. Now it was like, I had more tools in my toolbox to work with than before.
And so on that note, I was like, you know what? Let’s go see a new dermatologist and see what happens. That’s when I started seeing Dr. Frank, who I see now. And he was like, ‘Oh, this isn’t even that bad.’ So he immediately had me starting on Minoxidil, and then he started doing VSEL and this is where I’m at now.
I wanted to talk about VSEL, because I’d never heard of it until I saw you trying it. So tell the girls about VSEL and how it’s going.
Essentially what they do is they take your own blood, they activate it, they spin it because there is a cell that we have that’s only activated with a certain trauma. So they take it out, they activate it, they put it in your spots. They put it in and then they activated it again with a blue light. Takes about six weeks to see the normal hair cycle to see what’s going on. You do it three times; I did it four just for safety. And then he also had me taking Minoxidil. And so where we’re at now is, this is the first time I have been in public with my own hair in over a year. (Editor’s note: VSEL stands for “very small embryonic-like cell”, a type of stem cell regenerative treatment. Experts disagree on whether these cells exist, but some clinics offer VSEL to patients with a range of conditions, including hair loss.)
I love that for you, Jordan! I know this is not easy to talk about. I can see it and I can feel it. So I really appreciate you talking about this with me.
Of course. Thank you for providing a safe space to do so.
This has all been a hell of a journey, but you have resolved to turn it into advocacy, which you did not have to do. It was not required. You did not have to do that. You decided to do that to help make other people feel seen on their journeys. Can you talk to me a little bit about some of the work you’ve done and maybe how it’s bringing some healing to you?
I’ve always been in philanthropy. It’s always been one of the things that I like to partake in, whether people know about it or not. And so my birthday’s on Christmas. I think that’s always been my gift, is that because I’m used to giving gifts on my birthday that I love giving gifts and it makes me feel good because I know again, how hard life is. And I just, if I could make somebody’s life a little bit easier, even if it’s for a second, that makes me feel like I have a purpose.
That’s so beautiful. So one upside to your hair falling out and needing to wear wigs, is that wigs can be fun! I want to hear a little bit about the wigs, the switch up, maybe some of your favorite wigs.
So I always name my wigs, and I actually call them ‘Wiglettes.’ And my cousin calls them ‘Sheilas’ — don’t ask, I don’t know, we have weird names for things. And so for the show, that was Toni, but everybody was calling me Jordy Braxton. That was my little Freaknik, little Salt-N-Pepa. When was I ever going to go with a little short little pixie? Never. So that was hilarious. And I ended up reusing the wig for a Halle Berry costume. So it’s like little things like that. And then I had a Freaknik party in New York and I had a red wig; we named her Ember. So it’s like you’re exploring different sides of yourself, different personalities of yourself. And they do bring out different sides, they really do. You carry a different essence. It’s almost like roleplay.
You said on the show, and it really hit me, “Alopecia changed me.” How has alopecia changed you?
Well, you become so much more aware of yourself, and sometimes it’s in a good way and sometimes it’s in a bad way. Because there are moments where you feel you have to overcompensate on things. There are moments where you’re like, ‘Oh, I’m more blah than I thought…’ Because you really do feel so vulnerable and naked whether people know you have it or not, it’s with you. I’m also usually an empath and I’m pretty sympathetic and empathetic to people, but it made it even more so.
Another thing that I didn’t know that I learned is that 50 percent of Black women suffer hair loss at some point in their life. And so I wanted to hear from you a message of love and empowerment that you can share with other Black women who are going through such an emotional hurdle like hair loss.
To me, it’s not even necessarily the stress of it all. Some of it is the societal pressure of it all. We’re still fighting to be able to wear our hair the way we want to in the workplace. We’re still fighting to get equal payment in the workplace, equal treatment across the board. All I can literally say — hair or not, hair loss or not — is we need to do our best, the best we can. That’s all we can do. F’ everything else and f’ everybody else. We need to hold ourselves to our own standards, and that holds the most value. That’s it. We are judged at the end of the day and we need to rule in our favor.
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