We all complain from time to time that our hair cannot be styled or combed, but 7-year-old Melbourne, Australia resident Sheela Calvert-Yin faces this problem every day.
Sheela is about one in 100 people on the planet who have the so-called "uncombed hair syndrome". This is a very rare genetic abnormality in which hair, due to its special structure, simply cannot be combed.
Usually, with this anomaly, which manifests itself in early childhood, the hair is silver or straw in color. Shila's blonde hair is dry, very finely curly, tangled, naughty, chaotically sticking out in different directions. And they are completely impossible to pack. In adolescence, Sheela's hair may “fall away”, but whether this will happen is still unknown.
Sheila has a very popular Instagram account, where the girl's mother uploads new photos. She has over 12 thousand subscribers
As the girl's mother, Celeste, told TODAY.com, her daughter was born with completely normal brown hair, but by the age of three months, blonde "needles" began to break through them. The generic hair fell out, and the “needles” continued to grow at right angles to the head, becoming lighter and lighter.
Sheela's hair reached its current length by the time she was two years old and has not grown since then. Although uncombing hair syndrome is often inherited, no one in the Calvert-Yin family had hair like Sheela. Her older brother, 9-year-old Talan, has straight brown hair. It was only a year ago that the family found out that Sheila had “uncombing hair syndrome”.
According to Celeste, her daughter noticed that her hair was not the same as that of other people at the age of 4, and the increased attention that children and adults paid to her hairstyle was not easy for her. But over time, thanks to the support of family and friends, Sheila fell in love with her unique hair and is now proud of it.
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“She often told us that she is like a unicorn, because these are the same special, different creatures like her,” says Celeste. "Sheela is an incredibly confident individual and her hair matches her personality very well."
True, people on the streets sometimes continue to ask Sheela to take a photo with them, make comments or touch her hair without permission, which is not very pleasant.
But, according to Celeste, “in these cases, we now try not to get angry, but to talk about the 'uncombed hair syndrome' so that as many people as possible know about this anomaly. Usually at first everyone thinks that we are joking, but we answer - google, and you will find out that this is true."
However, hair care is a big problem for Sheela and her parents. The girl, according to Celeste, hates brushing her hair every morning, which can take 10 to 20 minutes. Celeste applies a special detangling spray to her daughter's hair and very carefully brushes them with a comb with rare teeth.
What Sheela loves most is when her dad blow-dry her hair to make it super fluffy. Usually the girl wears her hair loose or braided, she had to refuse hairpins or elastic bands, since they hurt her.
To strengthen their daughter's confidence, her parents opened an Instagram account for her, which already has over 12 thousand subscribers.
“Thanks to social media, Sheela no longer feels isolated, she knows that there are still people in the world with the same hair as hers,” says Celeste.