Ahead of Beauty is a 501(C)(3) charitable organization established in 2022 by Founder, Asia Chapman. It specializes in producing and procuring high quality cranial prosthesis units for individuals experiencing hair-loss due to chemotherapy, radiation treatments, alopecia, burns and other medical circumstances.
Our Story
Since Asia was a child, she has struggled with a multitude of autoimmune diseases (a condition otherwise known as Multiple Autoimmune Syndrome). As anyone with an auto immune disease will tell you, stress is a major contributing factor to keeping illnesses in remission. Each time a new health issue would arise, Asia would seek the appropriate medical care and manage to get things under control.
In 2015 Asia found herself smack in the middle of the highly publicized, legal battle involving who at the time we didn’t know was the eventually exonerated (in 2020), Adnan Syed. The stress of the emotional connection to the situation, coupled with just that of everyday life, proved to be more than Asia anticipated and in March of 2017 Asia’s autoimmune system began to rebel. As a result Asia’s white blood cells began attacking her hair follicles and Asia began experiencing what is called Alopecia Arteria. As a result of the illness, Asia began to loose hair in various spots all over her scalp. Unlike many people who discover they have Alopecia; Asia did not experience a initial gradual onset of hair loss. In fact, she was not initially aware of the hair loss because at the time she had been wearing her hair in what is called a “protective hairstyle.” and her scalp was not immediately visible. One morning she washed and blow dried her hair and upon parting it in her normal fashion, noticed a quarter sized bald patch missing in the front of her scalp. In disbelief, she rubbed the spot as if rubbing a genie lamp. Hoping, and wishing that the hair would somehow magically reappear. To her horror it did not. Over the course of the following hour, she scoured her scalp with a variety of parting patterns, searching for more bald spots. To her disbelief, she uncovered more bald spots, all varying in size from that of a quarter, to that of a grain of rice. Needless to say, she began to panic.
After gathering her tears and emotions, her first course of action was to Google search the topic of hair loss in women. At the time she was not familiar with Alopecia Arteria and had no idea what she was experiencing. After doing a bit of research and reading tons of possible causes, she quickly surmised that seeing her dermatologist would probably be the best course of action. During that first dermatology visit, she was introduced to the term Alopecia Arteria, and began a series of sets of steroid injections into her scalp that would prove to be helpful but very painful. In the meantime, she hid the baldness and I told no one. Not even her own husband.
During this “hiding phase”, Asia’s hair loss became so pronounced that she took to wearing a series of combover styles, then hair extensions and eventually wigs to hide her thin hair. Unfortunately, at that time she was not able to spend thousands or even hundreds of dollars on hair prosthesis, so she found myself stuck wearing itchy, low quality synthetic units that seldom lasted a month before becoming brittle, tangled and completely unmanageable. Fed up with her options, she began learning everything she could about the components of human hair wigs and just why they were so expensive. Asia began having lots of conversations with professional wig makers and stylists. She learned how and where to purchase the necessary wig materials, equipment and how to construct and style her own human hair wigs. After much practice, Asia was able to build wigs to the caliber of the wigs she had seen selling for hundreds and even thousands of dollars on the internet, for a fraction of the cost.
Thankfully after many many steroid injections Asia’s hair began to regrow, and the bald spots eventually filled in. Although she no longer found herself needing to wear wigs, she continued to make and wear wigs simply for their versatility. Although Asia’s hair returned, she never forgot the feeling of what it was like to suddenly loose hair. She never forgot the daily panic of trying to cover largening bald spots, on a shoe string budget. With that experience in mind, Ahead of Beauty was established in order to help others suffering from hair loss.
In early 2022 Ahead of Beauty was founded with the support and efforts of Anthony Morgan, Ashley Petrou and Phillip Chapman.
Our mission is to provide high quality, human hair cranial prosthesis to lower-income individuals undergoing chemotherapy, radiation treatments, alopecia, burns and other medical circumstances outside of their control.
We understand how traumatic it can be to lose hair. For many people, particularly women, wearing their head bald is not a desired option and everyone deserves to feel attractive, confident, and comfortable; Especially when faced with a major health challenge.
Every day, a sadly astronomical amount of people wake up to the realization of needing cancer treatments and other illnesses that affect their ability to maintain their natural hair. Sadly, from what I have uncovered, a substantial portion of no-cost wig options available to these patients are frankly ugly, uncomfortable and very unrealistic looking. To make matters worse, many people cannot afford the alternative, which is to spend tons of money on both their healthcare treatments and a hair prosthesis that is both high quality and composed of natural looking hand tied human hair.
Ahead of Beauty’s goal is to help alleviate the stress of something as simple as just having a head of hair.
Right now, our volunteers are steadily constructing and procuring third party cranial prosthesis for patients. These units are then styled and made available to patients no matter their income or accessibility to health insurance.
Thanks to the generous grants and donations from people like you, we are increasing our impact in the lives of the patients we serve.
