I’m bald. Well, not all the way bald, just that annoying kind of bald where the top of my head is as slick as a cue ball but the sides and back sprout out like a healthy front porch fern. That’s the worst kind of bald. It’s like the infield of a baseball diamond. Thankfully the Head-Shape Gods spared me the added misfortune of an unsightly pitcher’s mound.
The tide of my hairline started to go out back in high school. Looking back at the old annuals, my sophomore, junior and senior pictures are like time-lapse photography of my follicles turning into fossils. By the time I was 21, the long hair I was trying to sport started making me look more and more like Riff Raff from “Rocky Horror Picture Show,” so on the advice of whoever was cutting my hair at the time, I started trimming what was left high and tight against my skull.
I eventually shaved it all off and took on the Kojak look. People remarked how the razor actually shaved years off of my overall appearance so I basked in the glow of my shiny noggin for several years. No more haircuts or shampoo, but the razor blade consumption proved to sidetrack any conceivable cost savings.
Nowadays, as you can see in the picture that accompanies this drivel each week, I have gone to the “beard and whatever’s left up top” look. Since I’m middle-aged, this time the hair came back in a lot greyer than I remember. Some people now say this distinguished change of scenery actually makes me look a little more like I know what I’m talking about (although we all know that’s just perception), but the girls seem to like it though, so I’m keeping it.
As much as chicks say bald men are sexy, we all know they like hair on a guy as thick and lustrous as their own, otherwise hair metal bands would be revered as sissies and never get laid. I mean if girls didn’t really care about hair on a guy, then they probably wouldn’t take their own quaff so seriously.
I know women who think nothing of driving literally hundreds of miles and spending hundreds of dollars to have their do done by that one person who “gets their hair.” These girls have spent many years painstakingly trying to find that one hair stylist who can cut their hair exactly the way they like it with unmatched consistency. So moving more than a couple of hundred miles away from this person once discovered is completely out of the question. Until death do they part.
Guys could really care less about their own hair, generally speaking. They’ll let it grow out with wild abandon, comb it some screwed up way just to look silly and let anyone with a pair of scissors or clippers have at it when they want a trim. It’s only when it comes to the facial hair that a guy gets serious.
Beard and/or moustache envy is a very real thing among the male species. Guys who can’t grow a good crop on the jaws typically feel emasculated. Those who can grow and groom in ways subconsciously meant to intimidate other alphas in the room. The bird’s nest, the ZZ Top, the handlebar (with and without twisting wax), the pencil thin, Fu Manchu, goatee, mutton chops and Quaker styles are considered and eventually chosen with the care normally reserved for say, adopting a child or maybe buying a new motorcycle.
That’s because the look of a dude’s face commands some sort of respect among we primates. Studies have shown that bearded men appear to be serious, but are otherwise jolly and wise (like Santa Claus or Jesus). Same goes for bald and/or balding guys. And while that research may benefit a dude such as myself, I still wish I had David Lee Roth hair circa 1983—AHH-WAH-UH!
Chuck Crowder is a local writer and general man about town. His opinions are just that. Take what you read with a grain of salt, but let it pepper your thoughts.