Two months ago, while i was still participating heavily in this forum, i wrote an article about what it felt like to go bald, using the photoshopped work as visuals. I intended to submit it to publications, but i never did.
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WHAT IF BALDNESS WAS AN EPIDEMIC?
by Anonymous Contributor
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Baldness is a strange thing. Many people associate it with age and lifestyle, but while those may play a small role in causing someone to go bald, they are far from being the culprits.
As a bald/ing man, I'd like to paint you a picture that illustrates life through these bald/ing eyes.
To do so, i’m going to get a bit fancy and tell you a story - the story takes place in the future, 2035 (or whatever date you want really) to be exact. A new epidemic sweeps the world, reaching the United States and infecting subjects at an alarming rate. The symptoms of the virus seem benign enough, depression, anxiety, and the most obvious one, hairloss. The obviousness of the contagion, via the varying degrees of balding individuals, causes people to shun a large portion of the population for fear of becoming infected. Eventually, some A-list celebrities become infected, changing their appearance overnight.
This is an outlandish scenario right? Well, not really because even though baldness is not a virus and doesn’t act that quickly, it still has a similar effect. Strap yourself in because we’re taking a tour of all things hair loss related.
The Myths:
- Myth #1: “Baldness is treatable”. Wrong. The only “treatments” available were established decades ago and they are incredibly ineffective. Here are your current options as a balding person:
- Finasteride or Dutasteride - both drugs were created to reduce size of enlarged prostates. They accomplish that by blocking the conversion of Testosterone to DHT via the 5-alpha reductase pathway. In a best case scenario, they halt hair loss, but do not cause regrowth of the lost hair. Both drugs can and routinely cause sexual side effects and neither drug can be used by women.
- Minoxidil - ahh good old Rogaine, or as it is commonly known to the balding community, Minoxidil. Minoxidil was invented to lower blood pressure. It is a blood pressure medication that was found to stimulate hair regrowth in some patients. The crazy thing? No one f*****g knows how it does it exactly, yet they market it as a hair loss treatment despite the cardiovascular effects. Side effects also include dark circles under the eyes and collagen depletion - what that means is your face might look a bit more mature after some rounds of minoxidil. This “treatment” was introduced in 1988 and is the gold standard for hair loss - how pathetic.
- Hair Transplants! - hair transplants you say? Holy sh*t that sounds amazing, count me in. Uh huh, not so fast, here are your choices:
- FUT (aka Strip method) - follicular unit transplants (FUT) are performed by hacking a large strip of your scalp, slicing it into thousands of individual follicles, then taking the follicles and punching them into your scalp with a punch needle. Sounds medieval? That's because it is. So is the large scar that you will be left with after they close the big wound on the back of your head, after pushing the scalp tight to cover the gap.
- FUE - follicular unit extraction - this is the more civilized option. In this method surgeons will use a hole punch needle to methodically pluck out hair+root, aka "follicle grafts". By doing this several thousands of times they can amass enough grafts to cover some balding areas. It's painstaking, still barbaric in a way, but at least it doesn't leave you with a big joker scar on the back of your head like the FUT option. This option is not cheap however; in North America doctors charge $7-$10 per graft. Considering the average transplant requires 2000+ grafts, you can easily rack up a big bill for this surgery. Worst of all, many grafts can fall off and you can still have an unnatural, thin canopy of hair given that there is a limitation as to how many grafts the doctors can physically insert into a square inch.
- Hairpiece - alright, a big f*** you for even suggesting this. Is it an option, nay the only option in same cases? Sure. But you are asking someone (and it is worst for guys by the way) to walk down a seedy path of taboo prosthetics that require tremendous maintenance and can cause phenomenal levels of anxiety given the reputation that this approach has in society. They are also not cheap at ~$400 per hairpiece every few months. The thought of having to shave your head, apply glue and adhesives to your scalp so you can attach a prosthetic sounds not only cumbersome, but terribly fraught with possible mishaps.
“walk down a seedy path of taboo prosthetics that
require tremendous maintenance and can cause
phenomenal levels of anxiety”
- SMP - short for Scalp Micro Pigmentation, which is a fancy way of saying you get a tattoo on your head. You can go through this process which will help cover up hair loss, but know that you have a damn tattoo on your head. When you sweat, your shiny dome tattoo won’t appear like real hair, just a shiny *** tattoo; when someone tries (and fails) to run their hands through your stubble, you’ll feel the cringe-worthy reaction as their fingers suddenly stop in shock, as the pasty skin texture fails to resemble stubble in any way. This, friends, is not a solution in any way
2. Myth #2: “Baldness can be cool”. You may be one of those people who read this and think "Why the desperation? There's plenty of famous bald people, many even are major Hollywood stars and they look badass!". Oh yeh? Name a bald/ing leading man from a movie within the last 10 years. I'm not talking about bald actors in movies, because there are plenty of those. I'm talking specifically about bald actors in leading roles. What you will find is bald actors are typecast as either the loser/weirdo or the villain or bad ***. Take for example Bruce Willis, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and Jason Statham. These actors are only typecast as the action testosterony neanderthal who can only resolve things by force. There is no doubt that bald people can still be considered attractive or interesting, however, it is important to note that they are attractive not because they are bald, but in spite of it. This, is what most people often misunderstand.
“No, f*** you and your alternative treatments.”
No, f*** you and your alternative treatments. They are bullshit concoctions that only serve to demean bald people. Don't get me wrong, if you can scientifically prove it can regrow hair (and even if you don't) bald people are willing to give it a shot. But that should only represent how desperate the bald/ing community is.
Celebrities Get Infected
You may still not be convinced that hairloss is a serious issue that greatly impacts the looks and lives of its victims. Below is a collection of famous A-list celebrities with hair added/removed. Shocking isn't it? It is particularly shocking because you see the transformation from hair to baldness instantly.
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When we see hair loss applied to our beloved celebrities, this condition starts to resemble some type of horrible virus more than anything else. Now that we’ve seen what celebrities look like bald, let’s look at what iconically bald celebrities look like with a proper full head of hair:
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You Too Can Be Part Of This Epidemic!
“By the age of thirty-five two-thirds of American men will experience some degree of appreciable hair loss, and by the age of fifty approximately 85% of men have significantly thinning hair.”
source: American Hair Loss Association
Let that sink in for a bit. A staggering number of men and women are affected by hair loss by age 35. This is not a small portion of the population; it’s a huge amount. That means you may very well be part of the epidemic soon enough (if you aren’t already). When (not if) that does happen to the majority of those reading this, panic will start setting in. The panic is compounded by the fact that while there are no viable solutions to this problem, the accompanying decline in looks as well as the ridicule is a certainty.
Just shave it brah
Ah the old "just shave it routine". I myself have spent the better part of a decade with a shaved head - why? Because I thought that if I was going bald at least I would control my own destiny. While that did help face the fear of having a bald head, it did nothing to address the fact that I was still bald and society perceived me as a lesser being because of it. There are plenty of guys out there who will say they would totally shave their heads and be fine with it. They are wrong.
The point is not whether men with shaved heads can look good. The point is that men with a balding pattern don't have the choice, or the uniformity of hair density to be able to look good with a shaved head. If you want a fair comparison, then instead of shaving your head, just stick your full head of hair into a paper shredder and then try to style your hair after the shredder casually rips off uneven chunks of hair - that is a more realistic scenario than you shaving your Justin Bieberesque hairdo to try and look like David Beckham.
“Stick your full head of hair into a paper shredder and
then try to style your hair after the shredder casually
rips off uneven chunks of hair...”
That's not baldness, that's a f*****g hairstyle. You want to see what baldness feels like? Shave it in a horseshoe pattern and go on a date. Then you will see what bald/ing people feel like every day.
Want definitive proof that everyone and everything looks better with hair? Check out these animals with hair photoshopped on them. Even goddamn animals look better with hair. At the rate that research is being conducted (on animals of course), this scenario is far more likely to take place than a cure for humans coming out. I guess bald people will have to keep waiting on their turn to be cured.
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Ew…Ha Ha! Public Perception Of Hairloss
Now that we've shown that there are no current viable treatments for the bald/ing community and that having hair is clearly the better option, let's tackle the issue of public perception. In our current Politically Correct society, one cannot make derogatory comments towards short people, fat people, black, Asian, brown, gay, transsexual, etc, but still the bald guy is acceptably ridiculed. Why should this be? Why is baldness society’s last bastion of political incorrectness?
Understand this - hair loss sufferers have absolutely no control over their condition; certainly not even close to as much as obese people, who have a scientifically proven, and healthy way to fix their condition. So why is it ok to make fun of the poor bald guy/gal who truly has no control nor does he have any options available to fix the problem?
There seem to be two big reasons:
- Treating hairloss is misclassified by society as vanity
- Vanity is not a trait often permitted in males (while more tolerable in females)
But we need to look at it in a pragmatic way. Is wanting to stop or reverse hair loss really vanity? If someone was to break your nose and you went out to get it fixed would that be vain? Not really - trying to regain something you lost is the most natural of impulses.
How is baldness any different than someone suffering horrible burns on their face? Would you make fun of that person's burns? If the answer is no, then ask yourself why on earth is making even the slightest passing derogatory comment on someone's baldness acceptable?
If you are one of the lucky few who doesn't get to experience baldness, let me illustrate to you what it feels like. Imagine, if you will, that every morning when you wake up, a sinewy and sweaty man with tattoos on his face winds up his tattooing needle and adds a piece of a tattoo to your face against your will. At first you think "oh
it's a small enough tattoo, no one will notice..."
“Until eventually you have Mike Tyson's tattooed face
itself tattooed onto your stupid face...”
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Until eventually you have Mike Tyson's tattooed face itself tattooed onto your stupid face and you are forced to go out into public and pretend like it doesn't bother you. Your friends will make comments, your coworkers get a bit standoffish and your romantic prospects wither.
That is what a hair loss sufferer goes through everyday.
Look, I'm not suggesting we need to actively pity bald/ing people. I am however suggesting that hair loss sufferers deserve the same compassion as anyone else with a deformity or disability, because baldness is not natural and it is a deformity that is on someone's face. You may be surprised to hear that surveys of cancer patients revealed that the most challenging part of having cancer and undergoing treatment is in fact the hair loss caused by chemotherapy. These are individuals under tremendous stress and pain and yet the most horrific part of their journey was when they (temporarily) lost their hair. Nevermind that in those cases the hair often grows back - not so for the poor balding bastards out there.
"I wish my baldness was caused by chemo so that once I
stopped chemo my hair had a good chance of growing back"
No, for those poor souls there is no relief in sight. So yeh, when Shannon Doherty makes a big deal about shaving her head and people talk about how brave she is, many men and women who are going through non-chemo induced baldness think "I wish my baldness was caused by chemo so that once I stopped chemo my hair had a good chance of growing back". That's the thought that inhabits our minds. Of course it is shocking and scary to see a celebrity go bald overnight, but realize that hair loss is happening all around you, cancer or not. The sad truth is that victims of hair loss would give anything to regain what they lost.
In fact, a tremendous amount of men do give up quite a lot in attempting to stop or reverse their hair loss. Browse the possible side effects section of medications like Finasteride or Dutasteride and you’ll get the point. And then you’ll ask yourself “Really?! That’s the best the medical community can do?” With the advances made in gene editing and the human genome, it is hard to believe the issue of baldness hasn’t been resolved once and for all.
If you’ve made it to the end of this rant, congratulations. Do me a favor, next time you see anyone with any degree of hairloss, be kind to them, because there’s a good chance their self-esteem has taken such a hit that they are a fraction of who they used to be. It is likely that the memories of a full head of hair still haunt them and plunge them into a chasm of depression deeper than you can imagine. If you yourself are suffering with hair loss, then stay strong. Only through awareness can people begin to take this disease seriously.
If you are 35+ and have a full head of hair, count your lucky stars you have not been infected with this terrible ailment. You are truly truly blessed.
