Hair Systems For Women

Hair systems are quite effective in dealing with hair thinning but some African American women may have to seek different solutions.

Women suffer from genetic thinning more often than outright baldness, with perhaps 15 per cent of women experiencing frontal balding and developing a pattern similar to Norwood classifications Class IIIA or IVA pattern of balding, which is more often seen in men. What this type of hair loss means, is that the balding goes from front to back, and when a woman suffers from this type of hair loss she may or may not lose the front 1/3 inch of hair but the hair extending as far back as about 3 inches may become very bald or very thin.

When women suffer from this type of genetic hair loss or thinning of the hair, they tend to treat the condition themselves using hair systems which clip onto existing hair. The use of these types of hair attachments is more often than not a styling decision intended to thicken finer hair, because the holy grail for women is to achieve thick, luxurious hair. This is the type of hair which is promoted in magazines and television ads at a cost of billions of dollars every year.

For women there are three main options for attaching a hair system to your natural hair:

1. Clips which attach close to the scalp.
2. Weaves, in which a small hair system is woven into the hair.
3. Wefts, whereby long strips of hair are glued into the base of the hair.

African women can all too often be prone to alopecia, which is the medical term for hair loss. The use of thermal or chemical hair straightening products and hair braiding or weaving are styling techniques which can often place African American women at greater risk of various forms of traumatic alopecia than their Caucasian counterparts. For example, tight braids which have been used to pull back the hair since early childhood can cause a substantial amount of traction alopecia in African American women. This has resulted in many African American women having to wear full wigs because the hair on both sides (which is often lost from the traction alopecia) can not be easily hidden with even a small wig or any other hair replacement system.