MY SECRET SHAME
T STARTED out as a harmless habit – I plucking a stray eyebrow here, pulling a couple out-of-place strands there. Yet it wasn’t long before the urge to yank out “just a few” hairs became an all-consuming obsession for Carla Bernardo.
The 29-year-old from Cape Town suffers from trichotillomania, a hair-pulling disorder that often results in bald patches on the head, eyelashes or eyebrows. In severe cases, sufferers also pull out the hair in their pubic areas.
Carla, who works as a writer in the University of Cape Town’s
