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I started going bald when I was three years old. Not physiologically, but that's when the ordeal of going bald hit me. At a family gathering, all of my uncles started trading bald insults and commonalities with each other as they frequently did. Finally, one of them looked down at three-year-old me and said, with a sinister sneer, "You're going to be bald too!"
Over the years, this scene haunted me and was always in my subconscious. As an teenager in the 80s, I had a jet black pompadour of Thompson Twins hubris that required five minutes of taming each morning with Aqua Net Extra Super. During college I dyed my hair every color of the spectrum, and when I graduated the thinning was finally becoming very noticable. My 20s were lost years of hat cover and self-loathing over my hair. I actually covered up every mirror in my apartment for about two years. Balding men know the panic of which I speak. They've done the swooping and patting to try to get maximum coverage, and then tried to go through the day without moving their head so it doesn't get mussed. They know how it feels to meet someone new, and then be judged as they watch that person's glance to up and down to the hairline.
So, if people wonder what the big deal is, I will finally come clean the way it seems no other man will. Baldness is a male stain that makes a man feel ugly like nothing else can. U-G-L-Y ugly. Forget that crap about not feeling confident or looking to old for one's age. That's bullshit. The truth is that baldness is an ugly trait like a big nose or crooked teeth. No one ever says this for fear that they'll seem weak or vain. So what? How can appearing vain to others be worse than hating yourself? My grandfather didn't wear that awful toupee for confidence, and I never bought my Dad's explanation, bless his heart, that his level 5 combover was simply "how he parted his hair." He probably felt as ugly as the rest of us. Baldness also seems to throw balance off of the entire body like a pair of chequered bell bottoms. Not much goes well with it.
The strangest moment of my lifelong baldness complex was the time I saw a picture of how much hair convicted serial killer Richard Speck had just before he died. It seemed so incredibly unfair.
That everyone always tells us to ignore it, or that it doesn't matter only compounds the complex. Baldness is a disease of choice when compaired to blindness, deafness, leukemia, and many other maladies. I feel incredibly shallow around amputees and burn victims. Balding men waste enormous amounts of energy trying to will ourselves into believing that being bald is as irrelevant as an innie or outie naval, and still the outcome is always negative. And it seems every time we start to feel OK with it, images and stereotypes of bald men in the media are there to bring us back down. Elmer Fudd, Bozo the Clown, and Paul Shaeffer are never grouped with the sexy or the cool.
A recent sweat in my health club sauna seems to have validated my theory along with other notions balding men have about how the Girls' Club perceives us. A woman sitting in the sauna was reading a copy of The Star, and she blurted out, "Oh no! My husband to be is going bald!" When I asked her about this, she looked up and said, "the man I want to marry is going bald," By the way, this man is Prince William of England. When I asked her if all she cared about was his hair, she matter-of-factly nodded yes. When I asked her whether or not his wit, charm or royal pedigree meant anything, she said that he was no good to her bald.
Over the years I treated the worsening condition in a handful of ways while hoping that there'd be a cure.
Nutrasome Hair Thinning Supplement: This is a topical ooze made by Revlon in the early 90s. The bottle didn't say the stuff would grow hair, but would "increase the size and strength of each hair shaft." I used it for about 2 years.
Cost: $7 a month's supply
Norwegian Formula: This was modern day snake oil peddled on a late night infomercial featuring Robert Vaughn of "Man from U.N.C.L.E." fame. It's another topical solution applied to the head with an eyedropper. Didn't do anything but make me stink like ammonia.
Cost: $240 a six-month supply
Hair "Systems": Basically a toupee that's glued to the scalp. I never actually had one, but I went to three different places and tried a few on. Depending on the company, these can actually look pretty good, but they're expensive and and have to be replaced every year.
Cost: $4000 for two years.
Toppik "Hair Building Fibres": It has microscopic filaments that you shake like pepper on your head. They cling to hairs and fill in scalp spots and wash out in the shower. Very easy and effective.
Cost: $40 for a six-month supply
Rogain: The first medicine that was proven to grow hair. Another twice-daily topical solution which pretty much only works to grow baby-fine hairs on the crown, or "bald spot" of the scalp. After it dries, it flakes like dandruff. It couldn't keep with my receding, so I stopped using it after about two years.
Cost: $35 a month for life
Propecia: A practical, reasonable treatment in a once-daily pill. Like Rogain, it primarily works on the crown area, but the hairs are darker and stronger. I've been on Propecia since 2001 and patchiness continues to fill in .
Cost: $70 a month for life.
Transplantation is really the only permanent solution for restoring the hairline. Hairs thin and fall out permanently because of a hormone called dihydrotestosterone. It cuts off blood supply to hair follicles until they choke to death. Doctors haven’t discovered why yet, but the hairs in the back are just genetically programmed not to respond to this. Transplantation involves moving hair follicles from the back of the head to the top. I could always spot a bad transplant; it looked like wiry doll hair. But, after seeing an impressive late night infomercial for a national transplant franchise, I decided to go in for a consultation. It seemed like I’d tried every thing else. The only issue left was financing. Transplants cost $8-$10 per hair depending on the number of grafts. My salvation came about two months later when I won $4,500 on "The Weakest Link" quiz show. After I’d won, the first thing that went through my mind was, “now I can get a hair transplant.”
The procedure took about four hours. It started with some valium, and then a series of anesthesia shots in the front and back of my head. The rest is pretty simple. The doctors sliced across the back of my head and picked out some follicles, then poked holes in the front of my scalp. It was just like planting seeds, but at times I needed more anesthesia. The doctors’ hands and scrubs were bloody like the doctors on "M*A*S*H." Recovery was simple too; they just wrapped up my head and gave me instructions for what comes next. I got the stitches in back removed two weeks later, and waited the four months it would take for the follicles to grow in. I had another procedure a year later. Both have cost me as much as a very nice new car.
No one knows l have plugs unless I tell them (okay, now everyone knows). It looks natural. It almost seems like I picked up where I Ieft off after college. In between the progress there are these neat little moments when I can twist a Superman curl or use VO5 Hot Oil Treatment. Getting transplants didn’t solve many of the other problems I have with myself, but the best thing about reclaiming my hairline is the amount of energy and focus I have to do other things now. The balance has shifted in my favor.
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