Influencer Dani Austin Shared an Emotional Video About Her Hair Falling Out and Getting Her First Wig

Samantha Lauriello
Influencer Dani Austin Shared an Emotional Video About Her Hair Falling Out and Getting Her First Wig

Two words: Hair loss. Guys talk about it all the time, but women? Not so much, even though women experience it, too, and it can be very upsetting. Now, influencer Dani Austin is speaking out about her own hair loss.

Austin recently posted an emotional video on YouTube. It opens with her crying in the car, saying through tears, "I'm frustrated with myself because I don't want to care so much." She goes on to say, "I'm just embarrassed." Then the camera flashes to outside of the car, and we see that she's sitting in the parking lot of a wig shop.

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Austin then explained that her hair has been slowly falling out and thinning for years. She doesn't know exactly what caused her hair to disappear, but she pins the blame on a combination of factors—particularly a habit she had in college of pulling out her hair when she was stressed. After a hair-pulling episode, she would bleach her hair or get extensions to try to cover it up, which she now realizes may have made things worse in the long run.

Earlier this year, she noticed that her hair seemed to be falling out more than usual. So after many tears, her husband finally suggested she look into wigs. "I felt really uncomfortable when he suggested that because I didn't know anything about wigs. It was a totally foreign concept to me," she says in the video.

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Getting her first wig was a very tense experience for Austin, as the clip shows. "When I first started to deal with it, I was like, I want to quit. I don't want to show my face on Instagram or YouTube ever again. What are people going to say? They're going to now call me the wig girl, or make fun of it, or maybe sometimes it'll be off [center] and people will say something about it," she said.

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Hey there. Whether you are new or old here I felt like I should come clean that I now wear a wig. Geez, even after I posted a whole YouTube video about the journey it is still hard for me to say those words. There is this pressure that we all feel as women to fit into some standard of beauty. Instagram doesn’t help sometimes....I’ve personally never fit perfectly into the standards. I’m bowlegged and part of the #ittybittytittycommittee. In 2019 my hair started falling out. I tell the whole story on YouTube so I’ll spare you details here, but for the past 2 months I have been an emotional mess. I don’t know how to explain what it feels like to be a blogger, where your image and job is to look a certain way, with perfect hair and cute clothes everyday, and to be losing your hair. My husband and I talked about me quitting altogether, hiding, and giving into the feeling that I now realize was shame. But each time the Lord puts me through something like this... trust me, 2019 has had a lot of tribulations... he’s encouraged me to be open and transparent about it only to realize I’m not alone. He’s ALWAYS made all things work together for good. One step at a time on my hair loss journey I removed my extensions, cried, got a wig, cried, shared my story with all of you, cried, realized THOUSANDS of you relate and are going through the same thing, cried, realized there was always a plan, cried... I have realized just in the 24 hours since I posted my story on YouTube that shame and fear are two of the worst liars there are. I’ve realized that no matter what you are going through there is another sister walking through it too. I’ve always found community in confessing the truth, only to realize I was never alone in the first place. Thank you to everyone here who has kept me going on the WWW. Y’all are my girls. I used to cry thinking I was gonna be that “fashion blogger that wears wigs now”.... But now I smile because I know I’m not even close to being alone in this.... and also, Ariana Grande lyrics just became my anthem...”You like my hair? Gee, thanks, just bought it.” #lacewigs #hairloss #wig #fauxhairdontcare #lacewig #wiginstall #dallasblogger #itsawig #hairstyle

A post shared by Dani Austin (@daniaustin) on Jul 7, 2019 at 8:01am PDT

But that was a few months ago. Now she owns two wigs (which she named Kim and Stephanie) and is in the process of growing her wig closet and experimenting with different styles. From the beginning, she said she wanted to get to a point where she could share her hair loss and wigs with the world and have fun with her personal experience—and that's exactly what she's done.

"I don't really have any specific talents on my platform," Austin tells Health. "I'm not a singer or a dancer. I'm not really good at makeup or really good at hair. But I was like, this is going to be my talent, it's going to be my thing, just using my life stories and what I go through to try to help other people."

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She's added "The girl w/ da wig" to her Instagram bio and posted stories of her trying on different wigs that she ordered on Amazon (including a long pink one). She's also shared her new wig closet accessories, like a wig tripod and, of course, wig hangers.

"I now say that my hair doesn't own me, I own my hair," Austin says. "That Ariana Grande lyric is my new motto. 'You like my hair? Gee thanks. Just bought it.'"

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