my hair lady

Hair loss—a problem traditionally associated with men is increasingly becoming an issue that women can’t just brush aside. From robots to cloning, we examine the future of healthy hair.

The Manhattan office of Bob Bernstein, just steps from Park Avenue, is the kind of space that makes successful men feel at home—a good thing for one of the country’s foremost specialists in hair restoration (and the co-author of Hair Loss for Dummies). The layout is part design statement, part science lab, slick with granite, slate, and glass and full of microscopes and high tech gizmos. Among the space’s most noteworthy gadgets is one of only twelve robots in the world programmed to help perform hair transplants, which has a home in Dr. Bernstein’s office.

Bernstein’s field has traditionally catered to males, but the patient in his waiting room on this sunny afternoon before Thanksgiving is Laurie Martin, a legal assistant with perky features and green eyes. Her brown hair is enlivened by blonde highlights and styled with a sweep of bangs.

In 1987, when Martin was 37, she noticed her part was widening. “I went to NYU’s dermatology department and, like all naïve women, I thought they would say I had a vitamin deficiency,” she recalls. “But they diagnosed me with hair loss based on my maternal grandfather, and said they would take out plugs from my scalp the size of pencil erasers. In my mind’s eye, that was just too big, so I went on Rogaine until my insurance stopped paying.”

“You should see it when it’s blown out,” she smiles.

Martin is one of a growing number of women suffering from hair loss, and taking action. According to the 2006 study by the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery, 28 percent of patients seeking treatment were women. By 2010, the number grew to 35 percent. Fortunately, technological advances are keeping pace with the demand.