CHICAGO – Rosie Quinn, 8, was diagnosed with the autoimmune disease alopecia when she was 2. All of the hair on her head and body fell out within three weeks and never grew back.
She was largely unfazed.
"My husband and I would say, 'If you want to go bald or wear cute little hats or anything, either way we are totally supportive,' " Paula Quinn, Rosie's mom, said.
"I did not want to wear cute little hats or anything," Rosie remembers thinking. Too scratchy, too fussy, too much to keep track of when you're busy being 2.
But a year or so later, the stares and the questions were starting to weigh on her.
"Around age 3-ish, her little flame started to extinguish," Quinn said.
Kids would call her a baby. Strangers would mistake her for a boy, which she didn't like. Customers would approach her mom at Starbucks and ask whether she was receiving cancer treatments, why she wasn't wearing a wig, whether it was healthy to let her go around with her bare head uncovered.
"As parents, we were trying to wrap our heads around waking up one day and having a bald child in a society where everyone places so much focus on exterior beauty and not much focus on inner beauty," Quinn said. "It was challenging to make Rosie feel special and awesome."
