A bit about baldness

My conscience had an arduous task last week: it had to ponder if it is morally correct for me to write about receding hairlines.

Should I: ‘yes’ – talk about the follically challenged or; ‘no’ – avoid this sensitive topic; or simply get myself off the laptop and allow someone else to write my column?

In the end, my conscience gave me the go ahead, seeing as, of late, male baldness has beenthe talk of town after some press conferences.

But before I go on, please let me first assure you that my conscience is not an elastic band that changes with hair (or lack of) quantities.

There are on the whole quite a few fringe benefits of being bald – the principal one being that you don’t have to worry about your fringe or any other part of your hairstyle. Despite this, for some men, even if they are, say, leaders of a flock, it is a big deal.

This could be because the process of going hairless is not necessarily a quick one. For many men, the dragging bit where they are half bald is a testing time which can make them or break them.

They can either take it in their stride: “Receding is like retreating; you know the ultimate battle is lost and you just want to get it over with,” said a friend who started losing his hair in his 20s and now can’t even imagine himself with hair.

Or else it becomes an embarrassment: you know you’re losing your hair, we know you’re losing your hair, but you want to maintain the polite fiction that your hair is simply on a short vacation.

These are the kind of men who would be sitting at a ‘luxury’ hair salon having an extremely expensive ‘haircut’ with one of the senior stylists even though their hair is down to three mini-tufts.

This is the bald-man-in-denial. Some years ago, a male friend of mine, who was on the verge of going egghead, appeared with his (remaining) hair, black. It had been brown the week before, and all the years before that.

When I commented on the hair dye, his straight-faced reply was: “I know, isn’t it weird? It’s just gone darker, all by itself.” You don’t say.

Only later under duress, did he admit it was a silly attempt on his part to camouflage his hair loss. He was in the throes of feeling that his success with women was going downhill because of his lack of lush hair.

But why? Granted, it’s not that when we look at a bald man we are thinking Bruce Willis or – for the sake of the older generation – Yul Brynner. But that doesn’t mean that we are less likely to fall in love with a baldie.

The fact is women really don’t care that much what men look like. We’re keen on basic hygiene, obviously, and not big on ear wax or obesity, but beyond that, we’re quite easy to please.

Wit, sense of humour, charm and kindness are what interest us. In short, our eyes rest on the laughter lines and crinkly eyes.

We do, however, hate bald men who comb over; we dislike men who gel their last few spikes or use that extension hair-spray; and we hate wigs and pieces.

And we do detest the chat-up spiel on the lines of bald men being better in bed than their more hirsute brothers because of excess testosterone. It is a myth and I have it on good authority, so don’t go there.

At the end of the day what we don’t mind are men who don’t mind. But what do you do if you don’t have the poise to carry off your hair loss? If it restores your self-esteem, then, I say, go for a hair transplant. It will leave a hole in the pocket but ultimately there’s nothing like a happy man out there.

The only thing is you need to do it with a certain lightness of heart and have the confidence to talk, and preferably joke, about it. You can never hide the fact that you’ve had a transplant – even though nowadays it’s a real neat job – you can still tell.

So if you insist on flicking the ‘it’s all natural’ card, then the knee-jerk response can only be: “Oh dear, you are slightlyridiculous”.

Don’t let it be the thing everyone is talking about behind your back. Because you know what? When you enter the room and open your mouth, no one will really be paying attention to what you are saying: everyone will be eyeing your hairline instead.

Show us confidence by admitting it. It will do wonders for your conscience too.