I WAS EIGHT years old when my favourite auntie (giggly-drunk on Christmas chardonnay) broke the devastating news: I was going to lose my hair. My glorious mop of honey-blond hair. She rolled her eyes and laughed with a condescending flair of maternal theatrics. It was hereditary, she said – unavoidable. Heart racing, I glanced across the room to my grandfather. Bald. My three uncles? Bald, bald, baseball-cap – presumably bald.
That was it. My idealistic views of success and masculinity, once anchored in the sanctity of youth, had been abruptly robbed in what felt like a cruel and premeditated genetic genocide. And matters only got worse. Throughout my tumultuous-at-best teenage years, I became increasingly gripped by a fear of the inevitable. I’d raise my mother’s soapy hand-mirror to my tassled crown and gaze for minutes on end.Had it happened yet? Every wayward strand or glimpse of exposed scalp felt like a crushing defeat, and I slowly resigned myself to the role of supporting actor in my own romantic comedy. After all, doesn’t the lead always have hair?
Baldness has become the everyday man’s menopausesynonymous with premature aging, weakness, unattractiveness, and perceptions of sexual incompetence. Aside from a few unwillingly elected poster-men (Vin Diesel, The Rock, Patrick Stewart) the most common depictions of bald men in film, television and the mainstream media appear strictly limited to the Dr Evils – sad, often sociopathic villains and undesirably tragic romantic suitors.