I Was Bullied as a Teen for Having No Hair Due to Alopecia. Now I'm a TikTok Star with My Own Wig Line (Exclusive)

• TikTok star Chloe Bean shares her life with alopecia — which she first developed as a child — with her 2.7 million followers
• Chloe tells PEOPLE she was bullied as a child and began documenting her life as a "form of therapy," saying it was "validation for my younger self"
• She's now launched a wig and beauty line, and says she's "so happy" these days

Chloe Bean was just 8 years old when she started losing her hair.

At first, she was diagnosed with alopecia areata — “just bald spots” — so “I would just wear hats and headbands to cover it.”

But her condition progressed, and by junior year of high school, Chloe, now 25, tells PEOPLE exclusively, “the alopecia made me go completely bald.”

“I was losing my eyebrows. I was losing my eyelashes, and at one point, my hair was probably as thick as my pinky. I would look in the mirror and it was so hard for me. So my dad was like, ‘You need to do something about this’ and we came to the conclusion I needed to shave what was left of my hair off.”

The decision to shave her head, she said, left her with conflicting emotions.

“It was definitely empowering for me because I no longer had to see my hair falling out on pillows or in the shower,” Chloe tells PEOPLE, “but at the same time, it was devastating.”

“I was from a small town,” says the Midland, Mich., native, “which is where I started getting bullied. Hair is the center for femininity. So it was hard redefining beauty standards at that age.”

The bullying got so bad that “I almost [switched to] home school because of it. But I realized that, you know, I shouldn't let these people win over me.”

Her struggle with alopecia has been “unpredictable,” she says, adding that when she was getting bullied, she underwent treatments to help her hair regrow. “I was getting steroid injections in my scalp, which eventually did help my hair grow back, but in college, I lost my hair again. Then I tried it again and my hair fell out the third time.”

“So I was like, Okay, obviously I'm just not meant to have hair. I need to stop fighting for something that isn't meant to be.”

She started documenting her life on TikTok @chl0ebean, saying it was “like a form of therapy for me, sharing what I was going through.” But soon, Chloe says, she realized “people were reaching out to me and I was finding so many people that were going through the same thing. So it's almost like validation for my younger self. It just helps my self-esteem.”

Her first brush with viral fame came during the Covid-19 pandemic, when she posted a montage of her physical changes throughout the years.

“I woke up to it just blowing up overnight,” she tells PEOPLE of the TikTok video, which now has more than 36 million views. “It freaked me out in the beginning but I was like, wait. I can make social media a positive environment for people facing similar challenges like myself.”

Now with 2.7 million followers on TikTok, Chloe Bean has created that community — and launched a wig line, Baldie Bean, inspired by what she wants in a wig.

“One problem with wigs — the cap construction is too big, too bulky or too small. As a bald girl, wigs can be itchy, and uncomfortable,” she explains. That's why she teamed up with tech company Parfait, which can customize a “a perfect wig cap so it’s really good and tight on your head” based on the customer’s head size.

“Growing up and not having good experiences with wigs, it was very hard,” Chloe tells PEOPLE, sharing that she “came home and just cried” after getting her first wig.

“I know how important it is to feel good about your wig," she says.

She’s also launched a line of temporary eyebrow tattoos, developed after she drew her eyebrows on with a makeup pencil and “wiped my eyebrow off throughout the day on accident.” 

These days, Chloe — who plans to move to Miami — says “I feel like I've just come to terms and I'm so happy. If I had hair, I don't think I'd know who I was.”

“I love having no hair,” she adds. “I don't have bedhead. I can wake up, get ready so quickly. I don't have to worry about my hair.”

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