Interior designer Sheila Bridges[1] , who Time Magazine calls "one of design's greatest talents" was first featured on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in 2002. She was at the top of her game and hosting her own TV show when suddenly, she began to lose her hair. She was later diagnosed with alopecia areata[2] .


Bridges tells "Oprah: Where Are They Now?"[3] how she went from mourning the loss of her hair to embracing a new view of beauty.


"I've had to redefine beauty -- because if you look to the outside world or to the media to define what's beautiful, I'm certainly not that," Bridges says.


"I think as women, we're always looking for inspiration about beauty," she continues. "And beauty is aspirational. And so we want to be thinner, we want to have longer hair. We want to do all these things which, a lot of times, is just not attainable."


Other than "the alien on Star Trek," Bridges says she couldn't find any positive portrayals of beautiful bald women in magazines or the media. "And so because I did not have that reference point, I had to find it inside myself," Bridges says. "Because otherwise, I'd look in the mirror and think I'm ugly because there's no references."


Bridges says this process was an important part of her healing. "Beauty, to me, should transcend hair. It should transcend hairlessness as well. Beauty is about feeling comfortable in your own skin. Beauty is about having strength and courage to be yourself. And that's how I define beauty.


"Oprah: Where Are They Now?"[4] airs Sundays at 10 p.m. ET on OWN[5] .





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  • What is the significance of the title, 'The Bald Mermaid'?


    I’ve always had a fascination with all things aquatic. For me, mermaids represent this idea that we have as women about beauty. If you look at mermaids throughout folklore and history and literature, they are these powerful, mysterious, beautiful and sexy sirens of the sea. They tend to lure people into peril or they can bring them to safety. They’re like all women -- we have these multilayers of who we are. They also always have this long beautiful hair. So the idea was: Can I still be all of those things? Can I still be interesting and sexy or mysterious, all the things that women are, if I no longer have hair? Is there such a thing as a bald mermaid?




  • In the epilogue you say that writing this memoir is less about being the center of attention and more about finding the missing pieces of your life. What did you discover in the process?


    When I was in my twenties, I don’t necessarily think I gave a lot of thought to how I became the person that I came to be. I was just beginning to become a woman. I think when you reach midlife -- I’m 49 -- a lot of things begin to come full circle and you begin to reflect on your life and question and think about how you became the person that you now are as a fully-evolved woman. I think I am far more interesting at 49, than I ever was at 29 or even 39, even though at that point in time I may have thought differently. It was this journey of self-discovering in terms of exploring my own vulnerability, my own strength, things that I really didn’t even scratch the surface of when I was in my twenties or thirties.




  • The books functions not only as a recount of your life and your rise to interior design success, but also your hair journey. Why was it important for you to place the emphasis on your hair?


    The book is a combination of things. Design is the backdrop, because that’s what I do, but it’s not who I am. Hair is something that we all relate to because it’s such an important part of beauty in our culture, particularly for African Americans. I felt it was a great, relatable topic for people to think about what happens if you lose your so-called “crowning glory,” what it is that society says makes you feminine or beautiful or a woman. I’ve gone through every imaginable phase with my hair... After I was diagnosed with alopecia and chose to shave my head, it brought into question a lot of the issues that we all struggle with as women and that has to do with self-esteem and self-acceptance, beauty, feeling comfortable in your own skin. How do you do that when what we’re taught -- thanks to the media and society at large -- that what you look like is more important than anything else? Not only is it important what you look like, but our hair is probably one of the most important facets of beauty. To actually lose that at a pretty young age, it brought all of these issues to the forefront and I decided to delve into some of them.




  • As with your hair, your experience as a black woman is also widely noted throughout the book, alongside the many assumptions you faced because of it. How has that informed your approach to the notoriously homogenous interior design world?


    The design world is tough. There are not a lot of people that look like myself in the industry I’ve chosen to have a career in, so I think it was important that sometimes I rely on the same kind of skill set, or the same strengths that I rely on as black person, in dealing with the challenges that I feel I face in a profession which has generally not embraced us with open arms. That’s often the case in corporate America, in many venues. At the end of the book, I talk about this idea of my parents raising us as black children, as opposed to children who <em>happen</em> to be black. Right now, I think about that more than ever because of the whole Trayvon Martin situation. It’s important that you know who you are and sometimes that means how you’re going to potentially be judged by other people and the assumptions that are often going to be made about you simply because you are black. That is a different experience than a lot of people have and that goes along with the territory. I have often, throughout my career, gone into antique stores and various places all over the world and had people follow me around the store; tell me, if I asked the price on a piece of furniture, that ‘it’s very expensive,' but not give me the actual price. I have a hard time believing that that happens to white interior designers who are in the same place that I am. I’m still, at the end of the day, reminded that I am a black woman. It’s just an alternate reality that I don’t think people realize or think about. Those things happen to a young designer who’s just getting out of design school and they still happen to the 49-year-old designer who has a lot of professional experience as well.




  • You've mentioned that the takeaway from this book is really to trust your intuition about what’s important in life. What would you say that is for you right now?


    There’s always a perception that if you are successful by media standards that you’re life is perfect and you have it all, when actually, I’m still trying to figure it out like the rest of the world. For me, it’s about feeling comfortable in your own skin, living your own authentic life -- whatever that means -- and having the courage to move away from the expectation that everyone has of you. This journey has been about having the courage to live my life on my own terms, which is what’s right for me. As long as I feel comfortable with the choices I’m making for myself, that’s all that really matters. For me, that’s what having it all means as opposed to what my former definition used to be.