When it's gone....

There is a piece on today’s BBC news website about Male Pattern Baldness - it’s actually quite interesting and far more newsworthy than the front page headline about Heidi Klum’s shitty Halloween outfit.

I grew up thinking this was how men should look, this classic Action Man head is in the V&A

It caught my eye for a few reasons. I lost most of my hair in my late 20s - practically overnight- and I’ve had years to get used to the idea, but it still rankles occasionally. For some reason (possibly my age), my Instagram and YouTube feeds are now populated by adverts and ‘experiences’ about hair replacement and ‘systems’ which mostly involve very expensive hairpieces being glued to your scalp (not for me - I struggle to even wear a hat when it’s cold). Also - and I have no idea why - I get hundreds of REELs about black women having life-changing ‘natural’ short haircuts or fantastically well-engineered hairpieces and weave/sew-ins. What’s remarkable about these is how emotionally important hair is for them; the camera lingers as a tired wig or weave is removed by a brilliantly skilled hairdresser (some of them are magicians) to show an untidy cluster of patchy natural hair, and on cue, the woman cries every time she sees her natural state. I get it, I can feel their pain. I’m no longer surprised by the number of women I know who have partial hairpieces or sewn-on sections. A close friend went through a really nasty break-up a few years ago and had an undetectable half scalp hairpiece that hid her stress-related alopecia and ‘saved her sanity’. She also looked great.

Last week, I watched the final Mission Impossible film. It was very well done, with all of Tom Cruise’s bravado at doing his own stunts in evidence, but during the final sequence, where he’s hanging onto the wing of a byplane, it’s blatantly obvious he’s wearing a hairpiece. Natural hair in tornado-force winds just doesn’t behave like that. Certainly - if I were in props or costume, I would have suggested wearing a piece at this point as well - it does look better and I have no idea if Tom is balding or thinning in real life - but it was ‘there’ and I could see it.

I am about 28 here - in the middle of my roughly 4 month hair loss ‘experience’. I’d already lost a lot from the front and the top was now incredibly thin in parts.

When I first started losing my hair, it was quite a big shock. I always had very thick, dark auburn hair and every time I had it cut, the barber would complain about how dense and unruly it was. ‘You’ll never go bald, ’ they always said. Of course I did, and in my late 20s, it was gone in the space of a few weeks. I was never particularly comfortable with my looks, but at least I had a full head of hair - and then it was gone. About the same time (this would have been the late 90s), I commuted by train and started noticing the number of men my age who had attempted to hold back time with hair transplants. I remember one guy, about my age, wearing a navy blue suit and reading a copy of the Telegraph. He was sitting opposite, so I could scrutinise his hairline - everything about him made sense except his hair - the classic doll’s hair effect - tiny clumps of fibres spaced a few millimetres apart in a precise, regular pattern. I felt a bit repulsed but at the same time deeply moved by the amount of pain he must have been in to be in to go through something so invasive and ultimately unsuccessful - broadcasting to the world how insecure and wounded he was. Men can be as cruel as women, and the competitiveness you still get in professional environments can be lethal.

The thing is, it really does matter. Having a full head of hair when you are older is quite the trophy - and when it happens, the owner knows how much of an asset it is. Aside from the tedious constructs around masculinity and virility. The judgmentalism of people around you and the mockery disguised as humour, part of you has gone, and there is nothing you can do about it. It ages you, it makes you ‘less’ in the eyes of too many. There is nothing worse than being told to ‘embrace’ your baldness - I’d much rather embrace my full head of hair.

A couple of years ago I was at the reception desk of a company I used to work with, it was very busy - someone was asking the receptionist if their guest had arrived - ‘yes, he’s over on the couch’ and went to great lengths to describe him without conciously saying the one thing that actualy pinpointed him - he was the only back man in the room - but she did say ‘he’s next to the bald guy’.

There are more important things in the world, but I’m not being paranoid when I say that when I am out with friends (my age) with all their hair, I get treated differently by people we meet.

I never really bothered thinking about saving my hair - I would never have been able to afford it, I am not the kind of person who feels like they deserve anything better, and I just let it go. I would still have the back and sides trimmed for a few years, but eventually I bought a pair of clippers and for the last 30 years have done it myself. There is nothing else I can do - I have written that part of myself off. I do still notice when men my age have ‘good’ hair - and there is always a sharp little pain that goes with it. About 15 years ago, I was at a friend’s house, he worked with several well-known singers and performers and had been on-set during the making of ‘Moulin Rouge’ - he had a lot of costume and props and gave me a wig worn by Kylie MInogue once - it was exactly the same colour, length and thickness of my ‘old’ hair. Putting it on briefly and looking in the mirror, it was as if all the years had vanished, and my old hair was back. I looked great, but about 3 seconds later, I had to face up to the reality. That part of myself was gone forever and wasn’t coming back. No point in even pretending.

Now - after 30 years of shaving my head - still can’t raise a smile.

Back to the guy in the BBC piece. He looks great with a bald head - but I get it, I really do.