Melanie Sykes proudly shows off her shaved head in a powerful new modelling shoot, which is her first since going public with battle against alopecia.
The TV presenter, 55, cut her hair earlier this summer after revealing that the condition had progressed significantly. Back in June, she debuted her new look on Instagram saying ‘Thank God I can laugh.’
Now the star has taken to the streets of Manchester to model a new sunglasses campaign in her hometown of Manchester.
Posing up a storm in the Northern Quarter, Mel head turned to the side so that her shaved head was on full display, and beamed as she wore a pair of Cubitts sunnies and a black leather jacket. Two other pictures, taken from the front, saw the star grinning from ear to ear and she looked just as happy in a close up of her face.
The star changed into a white suit and green shirt for more pictures and could be seen lifting her face towards the sun. She also brandished several pairs of sunglasses, and, in one image, adopted a more serious pose, with her collar coolly turned up against the breeze.
The shoot comes after Melanie spoke openly about her health. Prior to shaving her head, she said: “I’m two-thirds bald, really. Every time I say I’m bald I laugh, I don’t know why… Thank God I can laugh.”
There are several different types of alopecia. Alopecia areata is the most common and is an autoimmune condition that causes sudden hair loss on the scalp and other other parts of the body, including eyebrows and eyelashes. It occurs when certain immune cells mistakenly attack hair follicles. As well as hair loss, it can cause inflammation, itching or burning along the scalp, though that is less common.
While anyone can develop alopecia, it is more commonly diagnosed before the age of 40 and is often linked to other autoimmune conditions. Stress, genetics and family history are also thought to play a role, although the exact cause is not always clear.
When Melanie revealed she had the condition, she explained: “I’ve got an autoimmune condition, I am losing my hair, I keep having crazy inflammation all over and I am working on healing.”
She added that she had to step back from a meditation teacher training course she was doing as she was too unwell. “I was too ill to finish it like. The last two days of it I couldn’t do. It’s meditation teacher training, I don’t necessarily want to teach, but I can do…,” she said. “Mostly I’ve been living a very, very very spiritual existence.”
Melanie first spoke publicly about her diagnosis last year. The star said she developed an irregular heartbeat and “rapid” hair loss after being “harassed” when allegations surfaced against TV chef Gino D’Acampo, whom she worked with on the ITV series Let’s Do Lunch with Gino and Mel from 2011 to 2014.
“I went into the New Year with so much energy. I’ve slowed things down because I got a heart problem, which I developed during the whole Gino D’Acampo bull**** that happened in the news,” she said in the video. “And suddenly, the stress levels in my life shot up because I left that industry years ago but it won’t leave me alone.”
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