TikTok's Toupee Queen battles stigma around men's hair loss

Emily Cheney's videos of non-surgical hair transformation routinely draw millions of views

- Nicole Stock

SAN DIEGO, United States — As Mr Luke Williams looked in the mirror from his salon chair, he debated how short to cut the hair on the sides of his head. The top was already shaved in preparation for his new hairline.

He told toupee artist Emily Cheney that he would defer to her expertise because she is the professional.

"Cause I'm the queen!" she exclaimed in response.

Ms Cheney, 25, the self-crowned monarch of non-surgical hair restoration, has developed a strong brand thanks to the 1.4 million people who follow her on TikTok and Instagram, where her display name is Toupee Queen.

In a small one-room salon tucked inside a building in downtown San Diego, California, Ms Cheney fits men — most of whom are in their late 20s — with toupees. Her work, which she has been documenting on social media for five years, routinely draws millions of views, with videos that showcase the before and after of a toupee installation.

Toupees, which have been re-branded by some as hair systems and are called cranial prostheses by medical professionals, have become an unexpected fixture on social media, with both clients and stylists documenting the low-risk method of reinventing a hairline.

"I was struggling to come up with something using the term 'hair system'," Ms Cheney said about how she landed on her title. After some deliberating, Toupee Queen was born, with a pink neon sign on her wall making it official.