Interior designer Sheila Bridges, who Time Magazine calls "one of design's greatest talents" was first featured on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in 2002. She was at the top of her game and hosting her own TV show when suddenly, she began to lose her hair. She was later diagnosed with alopecia areata.
Bridges tells "Oprah: Where Are They Now?" how she went from mourning the loss of her hair to embracing a new view of beauty.
"I've had to redefine beauty -- because if you look to the outside world or to the media to define what's beautiful, I'm certainly not that," Bridges says.
"I think as women, we're always looking for inspiration about beauty," she continues. "And beauty is aspirational. And so we want to be thinner, we want to have longer hair. We want to do all these things which, a lot of times, is just not attainable."
Other than "the alien on Star Trek," Bridges says she couldn't find any positive portrayals of beautiful bald women in magazines or the media. "And so because I did not have that reference point, I had to find it inside myself," Bridges says. "Because otherwise, I'd look in the mirror and think I'm ugly because there's no references."
Bridges says this process was an important part of her healing. "Beauty, to me, should transcend hair. It should transcend hairlessness as well. Beauty is about feeling comfortable in your own skin. Beauty is about having strength and courage to be yourself. And that's how I define beauty.
"Oprah: Where Are They Now?" airs Sundays at 10 p.m. ET on OWN.
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