For 24 years, Chloe Walker lived in fear of falling victim to a gust of wind, lest the force of it disturb her strategically-placed fringe, revealing her forehead.
Since the age of 10, she had been self-conscious of her 9cm forehead, so at 34, she finally caved and spent £5,000 on reduction surgery.
‘I had a fringe put in and it gave me confidence, but it got to the point where I was too uncomfortable to go swimming with my kids anymore,’ says the mum-of-two, from Hornchurch.
‘Some people are uncomfortable about what they might look like in a swimsuit. I was just worried about if my hair got wet, if my head was on show.’
This insecurity was taking over Chloe’s life to the point she would edit the size of her head in pictures – even doctoring family photos she’d had taken with the kids.
‘I’d try to shrink it,’ she says. ‘I got married about three years ago and I still haven’t printed my wedding photos. I need to touch them up again.’
Looking back on her wedding day, the quantity surveyor remembers stressing about this feature in particularly, dousing herself in hairspray to stick her fringe down over it.
‘It didn’t move,’ Chloe recalls. ‘I’ve gone through thousands of bottles of hairspray over 20 years. I wish I did the surgery before then.’
It was this memory – coupled with the realisation her kids might come to think of her as unable leave the house without a cap – that prompted Chloe to go under the knife.
She initially considered a hair transplant to bring her hairline forwards, but was worried it would be unsuccessful and take too long to grow back. So in July this year, she headed to the Signature Clinic in Notting Hill, paying £5,000 for forehead reduction surgery that decreased it from 9cm to 6.5cm.
According to the clinic, the procedure takes about two to three hours and involves six weeks of recovery, starting with ‘marking and measuring the new hairline for a proportionate result.’
Next, an incision is made along the hairline and the excess forehead skin is removed, before ‘the hair-bearing scalp is repositioned to create a lower, natural-looking hairline’ and the incision is closed with fine sutures.
In Chloe’s case, recovery was difficult, and although she was initially pain-free, her forehead began to swell over the next three or four days.
She explains: ‘The pressure from the headpiece was unreal – I cannot explain that pain. I was really swollen.’ A week later I got to do my first hair wash.’
Regardless of the pain though – and not being able to wash her hair for a week afterwards – she couldn’t be happier.
‘It’s changed my life,’ the mother adds. ‘I instantly feel happier when I wake up. I feel free, like I can walk down the street and I’m a free person.’
And since then, Chloe has also taken to TikTok, sharing her story and documenting her recovery in order to ‘help other people who may feel the same’.
But social media hasn’t necessarily been kind to Chloe.
‘A lot of people are saying my forehead is still big and there’s no difference,’ she says.
‘I have had people say horrible things like, “oh if I haven’t got any paper I’ll just write my essay on Chloe’s head”. And I’ve been called spam-head.
‘That’s bothered me but then I think, “I know I’ve had 2.5cm removed so there’s not much they could have done and I need to accept this is me now”.’
While Chloe still sometimes looks in the mirror and thinks her forehead is too large, she tries to remind herself that it’s smaller since the surgery.
‘I need to just embrace who I am now,’ she explains. ‘I was getting to the point where I was a bit self-conscious to go out as much so I needed something instant. I was shutting myself away.’
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