One of the many things we love about Amy Schumer is that the 40-year-old comedian has never held back when it comes to sharing private details of her life that many other celebs wouldn’t dream of sharing. Not only did the I Feel Pretty star let the world in on her health struggles with endometriosis, but she also unashamedly told fans about her surgery, both in terms of her regrets (i.e., her face fillers) and the surgery she was delighted with (i.e., her liposuction.) And most recently, she got candid with her fans about her trichotillomania, which she said she suffered with from as early as middle school.
The Trainwreck star first mentioned her heartbreaking secret battle with the hair pulling disorder in her semi-autobiographical Hulu show, Life & Beth; and she has now gone into further detail about her struggles with it when she was growing up, telling Howard Stern that it made her feel “ugly and unlovable.” She said: “When I was 13, I pulled out so much hair that I needed to get a wig and wear a wig to school. And it was humiliating, and it was really hard.”
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Schumer went on to say that the bald spots that presented themselves after she had pulled out too much hair made her feel "deformed," which was something she said other children in her school also made her feel. "I ate my lunch in the nurse's office because I heard someone say that I made them sick," she said, before adding that she then realized that she had to overcompensate and put on a strong and confident front to hide her insecurity from the rest of her classmates.
"I was extra confident, I always had a boyfriend, I was always like, 'Everybody cool has no hair.' I thought I was okay. I didn't realize that I was not okay and the hair pulling was a symptom of that. I would not even realize I did it and just look down and there would be a pile of hair." The mom of one then went on to say that her own mom was "especially horrified and upset by it," adding, "She would help me do my hair before school every morning, and she would be crying while she helped me with my hair."
Even though Schumer still suffers from the condition and has admitted that she still only has "half the amount of hair" that she should have, she said that she is extremely grateful that things like wigs and hair extensions have been normalized, which makes her feel less alone and embarrassed. "I'm lucky that extensions have become so normalized," she continued. "Every woman you see on camera in any movie is wearing a wig or has a lot of added hair. That's just how it works in the business. It's not even strange."
Schumer continued: "I used to be embarrassed about having these little clip-in extensions, but I just think all these things that we've been ashamed of and hiding — we put on makeup, we put in extensions, we put on Spanx — it's all good. Just doing whatever you want to do to feel good." We couldn’t agree more!
