HAIR says many things about us, they give us security, make us feel attractive, allow us to change when we want to symbolically “cut” with the past and communicate it to the world. For many they represent an important trait of their identity, and that is why when we see them fall or go out, we feel discomfort and discomfort. Then when intensive therapies such as chemotherapy damage them, alopecia becomes the representation of the disease and is experienced as a trauma that is added to the shock of the cancer. They tell it well in the book “A clean cut. The gift of hair “(Harpo publisher, 2022), to be released on March 31, Giusy Giambertone, entrepreneur and art director expert in the creation of wigs with natural hair, founder of ATRI (Advanced Tricology Research International) Onlus, and clinical psychologist Paola Napoleone.
Together they gave a voice to those who have experienced the trauma of hair loss due to chemo, and to those who had the courage to voluntarily deprive themselves of it to donate them to cancer patients, by joining the Smile Project. The book is dedicated to this solidarity initiative – born by ATRI Onlus with the support of Tricostarc and the Prometeus Onlus Foundation – which since 2011 allows you to donate your hair to make wigs at the cost of processing only. Those who donate can leave a thought, a message or a drawing, a “smile” precisely, for the recipient of that gift, who can respond in the same way, creating a symbolic bond of solidarity.
In the book, the theme of hair donation is addressed in all its aspects: social, psychological, entrepreneurial, economic, historical and legal. The story starts from the experience that Giusy Giambertone had with her cancer: a tumor of her took away her husband Mauro, hitting him in the pancreas. The emptiness and the pain of its loss are unbearable, but they are also an inspiration for the birth of the Smile Project and the Banca della Wig (created to donate wigs on loan for free to all those who do not have the opportunity to buy them) : ideas that came to life in hospital wards.
With a simple writing and an empathic style, the two authors tell the moods of all these people, men and women – but above all women – who live the drama of aesthetic damage and do not want the disease to affect all spheres of life. daily. The book is full of touching testimonies from patients and donors on the moments lived – such as the clean cut of the hair to be donated, or the natural wig worn for the first time in front of the mirror – and on the meaning that the experience of giving and receiving the gift had in their lives.