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Column: Gimme a head with hair
Today, if he has the misfortune of possessing a misshapen cranium, he still risks being mistaken for a large, sentient light bulb, but the meth biker/neo-Nazi stigma of a smooth skull has mostly faded.
Shaven heads have multiplied aggressively in recent years. As with most of life’s puzzles, such growth can be attributed to two things: vanity and the influence of professional wrestling.
Until the mid-1990s, the only well-known white men who shaved their heads regularly were Yul Brynner and Hunter S. Thompson, neither of whom – though each had his adherents – wielded the cultural clout needed to inspire thousands to forgo the barber for the razor. Enter “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.
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While all this was going on, the pharmaceutical industry was doing its best to keep the feel-good vibes flowing by offering and heavily advertising cures for male pattern baldness. The prominent products were finasteride (sold as Propecia) and minoxidil (Rogaine).
The trouble with Propecia and Rogaine is that, while they can grow a bit of hair or maintain the status quo, neither can produce the leonine mane that balding men pine for. And they must be used for the remainder of one’s natural life or their effects wear off. And they can cause side effects, in Propecia’s case impotence. Rogaine has an even better developed sense of irony, as it can cause hair loss.
At some point, bald men said, “Enough! I shall waste no more time tending to these indolent follicles, whether with pill, or ointment, or comb. You, boy, fetch my razor and strop.”
Or that might have been just me. Other balding men might have gotten drunk and shaved their heads on a dare. I haven’t done a survey or anything.
Nonetheless, a shaven head constitutes one less thing to worry about, and allows the bald man to move on to more important matters. The pharmaceutical industry has sensed this sea change and followed suit, replacing much of its advertising for baldness cures with plugs for pills that make men’s nethers bigger or less squishy.
And so the march of science continues.
And marching with it are thousands of bald heads, defiantly nude, reflecting the light of a new day in which androgenic alopecia is no longer the master but is instead a half-remembered ghost of a darker past.
Say it loud! I’m bald, and I’m proud!
Dave Penn is a copy editor for the Observer-Reporter. Contact him at dpenn@observer-reporter.com.
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