Shear Generosity: Helping Breast Cancer Awarness
This month, join the Essence Team as we cut off our hair and find special treatments to give back to our friends and family members in the fight against breast cancer
By Tasha Turner


Credit: Jennifer Livingston
(L-R) Jocelyn Allen, Nazenet Habtezghi and Cecilia Evans before they lopped off their locks.


Every October, Essence helps raise awareness about breast cancer and organizations that support survivors, caregivers and others. The beauty team reached out to those who are facing the disease to ask them about the unique beauty and wellness challenges they endure during recovery. Then we put our resources and contacts—stylists, physicians, beauty experts and our own staff—to work finding solutions that will help those living with the disease to look good and feel better.


ESSENCE staffers Jocelyn Allen, senior web designer (left), Cecilia Evans, sponsorship assistant (right), and Nazenet Habtezghi, assistant editor (center), are making an even more personal gesture. They bravely volunteered to cut off their long locks and donate them to Pantene Beautiful Lengths, a program that creates human-hair wigs for women living with cancer.


You, too, can share a gift from the heart—check out the wonderful beauty products we feature this month. Your purchase helps fund research toward a cure. Caring is beautiful!


Coping with temporary hair loss

These organizations offer great-looking wigs for free, just for cancer survivors:

Pantene Beautiful Lengths
The program invites people to donate their healthy hair to furnish wigs at no cost to women who have lost their hair because of cancer treatment. Donated hair must be at least eight inches long, cannot be bleached, permanently colored or chemically treated, and cannot be more than 5 percent gray. For more details, visit beautiful lengths.com. To learn how to get a wig, call the American Cancer Society at 877-227-1596.

Couture for Cancer
This nonprofit partner of hair-care giant Redken provides custom-made wigs completely free of charge to any person suffering from hair loss due to cancer and chemotherapy. For more information, call 877-462-7461.

Breast Cancer Awareness Month Related Links:

Meet four women who survived breast cancer »

Paint Your Life Pink: Buy these products during October »

Check out great hairstyles for any hair length in our hair galleries »




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What do you think


To add your comments or to view all comments click here.

-5 latest comments

Thank you sooo much .I have been trying to get black women to donate their hair. I'm not having any luck. My goal was to get women of all types to donate. I live in Texas. i have been able to get donations from alot of hispanic women. ( I'm collecting for Patene) I know that it is difficult for some women to grow hair. It makes me proud to see a great example of caring. Maybe this will give courage to other women of color to give.

-T. Laureano

I am 40 years old. At my request, I received my first mammo 1 month before my 39th birthday. I had a previous mammogram in February of this year and the mass was not detected. However, I began to have pain in my left breast a month ago. After having another mammogram, a sonogram and biopsy, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and do not have a history of the disease in my family. My faith in God is giving me the strength to endure the path that I must now take to prepare for surgery and treatment. I urgeevery woman to take

-A. Scott

I applaudand appreciate what the ladies has done for their act of kindness. I also would like to donate my hair for the cause, but I had my thyroid taken out over 3 years ago (that was cancerous) and I am starting to lose my hair and then last year I learn that I had multiple myleoma (cancer of the bone marrow), was in remission for 5 months and now I am back on meds when the number went back up. But I just had to send in my remarks about the unselfishness those young ladies has sent out to the world. God Bless

jp, washi

-penny118

Thank you Ladies! As a Breast Cancer Survivor of 1 year and 3 months, I thought people had forgotten about me and other women in the fight! You all made my day and I love your new looks!! Thanks again and God bless you!

-Melissa Reed

I applaud these lady's for their unselfish acts of support. I just had my mammogram and found to have a non cancerous mass, that will be watched, however, I do have a thyroid cancer which required me to have surgery 2 yrs ago, and as a result, have beenbeen placed on life-time medications which is attributing to my hair loss, which has caused me to go natural.

We as women know that our hair is our beauty & glory, but I had to look at it that it's just hair, it doesn't change who I am as a person, in fact it's made me mor

-Jasmin in Ft. Lauderdale, Fl