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If One of Us Is Going to Go Bald, I Need It to Be Him
There’s a lot more of a cultural context for it
I don’t know when it started. Maybe 10 or 15 years ago. The few strands of hair that would show up in the shower drain started to multiply. They were darker than mine, right? They were obviously his.
“I think you’re shedding,” he said. Those may not have been the exact words. But the implication was clear.
“Me? Those aren’t mine. I have plenty of hair.” Feeling to reassure myself it was true. Have you seen the crown of your head lately? Hopefully, I was kinder than this. It’s entirely possible I wasn’t.
If one of us has to go bald I need it to be him. Sir Patrick Stewart, Common, Pitbull, Andre Agassi. All bald, all beautiful. While Prince Harry called his brother’s lack of hair alarming, The Sun even named Prince William the sexiest bald man in 2021.
Currently, there is no award for the sexiest bald woman. A bad joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s scalp resulted in a moment that Will Smith will spend the rest of his life trying to erase from memory. There’s a movement afoot to elevate and de-shame women who deal with hair shedding and hair loss. The men, however, are way ahead of us.
I get that men don’t necessarily love going bald. Julius Ceasar apparently had a big ole bare patch and he was bothered by it. Hence the perennial laurel crown on his noggin.
When the French King Louis XIII started balding in his mid-20s, he did what kings get to do — get all the wig makers very busy. It’s a good thing that he made those wigs fashionable because the 16th century brought a big batch of untreatable syphilis, along with head sores and hair loss. Ain’t nobody gonna feel good about that.
Balding men nowadays have their own cheering section. An article in Men’s Health profiled the Baldcafe channel on YouTube, which “promotes positivity and confidence for guys who are balding.” A video on that site shows more than 100 men before and after shaving their heads. They all looked great.
