At first, I blamed the hairstylists. For several years, my hair had been flat, the cowlick too pronounced, the texture different. I kept switching salons in search of the perfect cut, the miracle product or, ideally, both. Then, as I ticked off my complaints to a new stylist, he ran his fingers through my hair and shrugged. “It happens,” he said. “We get older. The hair thins.”

What?

Just a few months later, Ricki Lake, 51, revealed her own struggle with hair loss — an irony for the actress who found fame as the star of “Hairspray.”