LONDON  –  It started slowly, with handfuls of hair circling the plug hole in the shower. Then eventually British bodybuilder Tracy Kiss began to notice she could see her scalp when her hair was wet. “I always had really thick hair,” Kiss said from her home in north London. “It was kind of inconvenient that there was so much of it.” But shortly after the birth of her two children at 25, Kiss — who is now 38 — couldn’t believe that her “massive head of hair had become a whisper.”  In the mornings, choosing a hairstyle became less about self-expression and more about disguise. Kiss often tied her hair up flat to her head to hide the thinning at her temples, or cycled through extensions, wigs and hats. “In photos I would just look and think, ‘Oh my God. It’s getting worse by the day,’” she said. Her blood test results showed she was deficient in vitamins like iron. She exhausted hair supplements, specialist shampoos and even PRP injections (a dermatological procedure where her own plasma was injected back into her hair follicles in an attempt to stimulate growth). “It makes you feel so demoralised,” said Kiss. “You feel as a woman, your hair is your crowning glory. So to take that away, you almost lose your identity.” According to Harvard health experts, at least one third of women experience some form of hair loss during their life. While there are a myriad of causes, female pattern hair loss, which can stem from a complex combination of hormone imbalances and family history, also known as androgenetic alopecia — is the most common, with one study suggesting it affects around 40% of women in the US by the age of 50. CNN spoke to three women who decided to treat their hair loss through surgery. Hair transplants are the only cosmetic procedure where male patients significantly outnumber females, but the number of women opting in rose by more than 16% between 2021 and 2024, according to the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery (ISHRS). Kiss first came across the procedure in 2011 after researching treatment options for her boyfriend at the time who also struggled with hair loss. 

Interested in what a transplant could do for her, she enquired — but said she was rejected on the basis of her gender. “I consulted with surgeons, and they said hair transplants are only for men,” she remembered. “It wasn’t available at all.” It took her 11 years of research, around $3,400 and one willing doctor to finally let her go under the knife. “Initially they said no,” she said. “I just pushed hard enough that they said yes.” In 2022, she flew to Turkey to have 2,500 follicles implanted across her hairline and temples using a common technique called Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE), whereby clusters of hair follicles are removed directly from a designated donor area, usually on the head. Kiss said she had a quick recovery, going out for dinner immediately after surgery and weaning herself off pain medication just 24 hours later. According to plastic surgeon and hair transplant specialist Dr. Greg Williams, the surgery comes in many shapes and sizes. The women he sees include those experiencing traction alopecia, a condition sometimes caused by repeatedly tight hairstyles that damage the follicles and trans women looking to lower and “feminize” their hairline.

The leading cause of hair loss for cisgender women in both the US and the UK is genetics. Yet Williams says this camp is “often not an optimal patient group for transplant.” The condition, he explains, can worsen over time if not stabilized. “When I speak to women with female genetic hair loss about having a hair transplant, it’s about buying time rather than being a long-lasting solution,” he said. Hormones, pregnancy, post-lactation complications, stress, illness and nutrition, multiple factors “affect female hair much more” than male, Williams argues. “We don’t understand female hair loss,” he said.

Still, more women than ever are seeking out the procedure. Thirty-two-year-old Ayca Bozok from Germany traveled to Turkey, where her mother was born, to receive an FUE hair transplant across her hairline and parting. She remembers her hair started to thin around 15 years old, when she was still in secondary school. “It made some days worse for me in the morning to style my hair,” she said in a video call. “I was using a lot of bandana scarves to cover it up.” For Bozok, losing her hair when she was forging an identity was the most difficult. “You’re just developing as a female,” she said. “You just have your looks. You don’t even have an academic status, you don’t have a job, money, anything else.”