While some may say that hair is "just hair," there's no denying that this particular feature is defining and important for many women.
Whether you embrace and love your natural hair or find joy in dyeing it to express yourself, hair (and particularly, having "good" hair) can often make or break the way you feel about yourself on any given day.
Personally, I know this all too well. I've been dyeing my hair and experimenting with wearing it at different lengths ever since my early teens. In a lot of ways, it's a form of self-expression that can even help you find yourself as a young woman.
Hannah Forcier, a YouTube vlogger with a large following, has also experimented with her hair over the last several years. Unfortunately, a traumatic experience with a drugstore product led to the loss of her locks — and now, Hannah is speaking out about what happened to her.
Scroll through to learn more about Hannah's heartbreaking story.
Thumbnail Photos: Instagram / Hannah Forcier // YouTube / Hannah Forcier
[H/T: Bustle]
Hannah is a YouTuber based in Los Angeles with over 100,000 subscribers.
Over the years, Hannah has dyed her hair multiple times.
As she explained in one of her videos, Hannah initially had very long brown hair — her natural color — until 2016.
At that point, Hannah decided to cut it shorter and bleach it out so that she could dye it pink.
She experimented with a few creatively colorful shades before settling on the bleached-blonde, medium-length look she's had for much of the last year.
Unfortunately, all of Hannah's experimenting with her hair color left it pretty damaged.
She decided to use a drugstore hair relaxer to "help" her fried hair. That's when things took a tragic turn.
The 21-year-old revealed in an emotional YouTube video that she'd wound up losing all her hair after mistakenly using a product not meant for bleached or damaged hair.
Hannah couldn't hold back her tears as she recounted the horrible and traumatic experience of witnessing her hair falling out in the shower.
She said:
I covered my hair in the cream and waited the correct amount of time and I got in the shower. When I turned around in the shower and felt all the water rushing through my hair, I was trying to wash it out, and it started feeling really clumpy. And it started falling out.
I could feel my hair coming out and going down my back, and you could hear it splashing in the water. It started just coming out in patches. The more I tried to wash the product out to make sure that it was gone, the more I felt like it was coming out.
I didn't realize how bad it was until I got out of the shower and I already knew it was really bad because I could see that the water wasn't going down the drain anymore. So I got out and put my towel on and I wiped off the mirror and you could see that the whole side was gone.
Obviously, this would be a devastating experience for any woman. Hannah rushed to the salon to see if her hair could be salvaged at all or if she could get extensions, only to be told that there was nothing they could do — her hair was far too damaged and too short to have extensions attached.
So Hannah's previously long hair was buzzed off to even it out.
In follow-up videos, Hannah declined to name the exact product she used, because she realized she was at fault for using a hair relaxer product that wasn't mean to be used on bleached or damaged hair. She didn't want to "slander" the company, mentioning that they did include a warning not to use the relaxer on damaged hair.
"I guess I just didn't know how damaged my hair was until I used it," she said.
In the meantime, Hannah is slowly getting over what happened to her, experimenting with wigs and rocking her buzzed hair au naturel.
Hannah's video revealing her terrible mistake was viewed over 5 million times, and the social media star has been moved by the overwhelming response.
"It was Tuesday October 10th at 3:30pm when my world changed. I went from this bubbly, fun bleach blonde to a timid, self loathing broken girl. I didn’t feel like me anymore, which is hard for some people to understand," she explained in an Instagram post. "When I posted my video I was afraid but everyone responded with such love it made me realize how lucky I am to have you, all of you, in my life. I am feeling more confident by the day."
Hannah's story is an important reminder to be very careful using drugstore products on your hair if you aren't a professional and to follow all directions and warnings closely.
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