Metro Pulse/Snarls/The Bald Truth

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When things were hairy

by Scott McNutt

Hairbrush. Memories of longer, thicker locks. Comb. Reminder of when portable hair management was a necessity. A half-empty 7-ounce bottle of Helene Curtis Salon Selectives Spritz Fixx Ultrahold 20 Non-Aerosol Hairspray. A lifetime supply for me now.

All of them, detritus of a bygone, follicle-filled era.

Oh, I've heard all about how sexy baldness is. My response, never voiced, has always been, "If baldness is so appealing, why aren't there hordes of coiffure-endowed dudes lined up at barbershop doors demanding total-head electrolysis?"

So I'm balding, but I neither cherish nor despise the condition. A friend, a balding convert to the shaven-pate look, could not convince me to go all the way, even with his account of a beautiful, unknown woman approaching him and rubbing his head on the first day after he shaved it. I'm pleased for his pleasedness with the pleasure he received from the incident. However, whether hair-full or hair-less, I've never desired my appearance to be an invitation for complete strangers to get intimate with my noggin. I just want my hair, whatever there is of it, to be my hair.

Besides, were I completely shorn, I fear that I'd just look like a giant penis. Appealing as that may sound to some guys, I don't want to be viewed simply as a phallic object. After all, I have my dignity.

Mind, I'm well aware that if baldness is the worst affliction I face over my lifetime, I am lucky man, indeed. And there are benefits to to the hairless lifestyle. Morning prep time is faster. Hair care is a smaller portion of the budget. There's no "morning hair" to futz with. Hair-pulling is a non-issue in a fight. Plus, there's the old saw, "Bald men don't waste their hormones on hair!" In line with that, if you're bald, your hair doesn't fall in your face in the missionary position (possibly distracting you at a most inconvenient moment).

So I espouse the idea of learning to live with one's looks rather than trying to change them. Nonetheless, it should be acknowledged that, traditionally and historically, baldness has been something to hide, since the first balding caveman invented the first woolly mammoth hide toupee. Why? Because, ridiculous as it may seem, baldness is a favorite target of mockery.

Just ask Elisha (of 2nd Kings fame), who summoned a ravenous bear to devour some punk kids who made fun of his baldness. Sure, God gave his prophet what-for afterward, but it just goes to show that coping with the heartbreak of baldness drove even holy men to pull their hair out. Or consider that Julius Caesar gave us the Julius Caesar look because he was so embarrassed by the thinning locks on the imperial bean that he took to combing his hair forward to disguise it. It was probably his constant fretting over such a trivial detail that convinced Brutus that his old pal had gone wussy and therefore had to be whacked. What's not generally known, though, is that Brutus himself was hiding baldness. (Caesar's last words, " Et toupee, Brute?" seem to have been garbled in the translation.)

I could note that famous pop culture villains, like Lex Luthor, Egghead, and Dr. Evil are bald. I could analyze the implications of Samson's hair shearing and subsequent power loss. I could go into some detail about the symbology of baldness and its association with sterility, age, and death. I could, but I won't; I'm getting very depressed.

So anyway, maybe modern guys should be cut a little slack if they obsess a bit over that receding hairline and pray for a remedy to their ills. On the other hand, we balding types should be careful what we pray for. You see, a solution to baldness has been around for a long time.

In the fifth century, B.C., the father of modern medicine, Hippocrates, was searching for a remedy to his hairlessness (his own topical tonic, a mixture of opium, horseradish, pigeon droppings, beetroot, and spices, didn't work). But in his researches, ol' Hippo (as his close friends knew him) observed that "Eunuchs are not affected by gout, nor do they become bald." In 1995, researchers at Duke University confirmed Hippo's observation, simultaneously acknowledging the limited appeal of such a prescription: "While castration may be a cure, it is not commercially acceptable." Who knows, though? They might still try to market it. If you encounter a baldness cure named something like "Eunique Solutions," well, (as Caesar might say) caveat emptor.