Tallulah Willis candidly addresses hair loss during anorexia battle
Tallulah Willis has shown pictures of how thin her hair got when she was in the grips of anorexia.
Tallulah Willis has candidly opened up about "balding" as a result of her eating disorder.
The 30-year-old star - whose parents are Bruce Willis and Demi Moore - has spoken openly about her battle with anorexia in her 20s and she's admitted she used to view her thinning locks as a "badge of honour" but amid her recovery, Tallulah now values feeling "sexy" with fuller locks and the "comforting" feeling of piling her hair up on her head.
Sharing a set of photos, she wrote on Instagram: "I wanna talk about when I was balding because of my severe anorexia.
The first photos were taken in summer 2022 in Austin TX while I was at Driftwood recovery. I want to talk about how I for a long time in my life I would have seen those patches of bare skin blurring through sparse hairs as a badge of honor. ‘I was sick enough to make you look’ :(
"While I was at driftwood I temporarily needed a wheelchair to walk because my leg muscles had atrophied so badly. I’m still working to build back the muscles decimated during those many many years. I had such breakable and fragile hair, so thinned I had to use thousand clippies to keep things in place. And usually they slipped off because they nothing to grab into.
"I chose to crop some of them because for me this truly isn’t a stage to show off how I nearly starved to death (publicly!) , but I think the photos serve as a teaching tool."
Tallulah admitted looking at more recent photos of herself made her smile because of how much better she feels now.
She added: "I went searching for the “AFTER” pictures from the last few months and smiled the whole time. The these photos are from spring of this year. I didn’t realize how comforting a big bun could feel like, how sexy it feels for your hair bounce a little when you walk. I didn’t value myself or my health but I am of the lucky who have made it to the other side. I made my disorder public and now it only feels right to make my recovery as well. I want to heal and hug and soothe every busy mind that’s out there still hurting.
"Keep going I love u all [hug emoji] (sic)"
Tallulah has been open in the past about her battle with anorexia, noting that "restricting food has felt like the last vice" she has to "hold onto" after getting sober a decade ago.
In May 2023, she told Vogue magazine: "For the last four years, I have suffered from anorexia nervosa, which I’ve been reluctant to talk about because, after getting sober at age 20, restricting food has felt like the last vice that I got to hold on to.
"When I was 25, I was admitted to a residential treatment facility in Malibu to address the depression that I had lived with through my adolescence.
"It was a largely therapeutic experience; for the first time, I grieved the 15-year-old misfit me, the ugly duckling. I was also diagnosed with ADHD and started on stimulant medication, which was transformative."
