‘It can leave your self-image fractured’: how hair loss hits men – and what they can do about it – The Guardian
My dad is bald, and always has been. He’s had a shiny, hairless head with some growth protruding around the edges for the 27 or so years that I’ve been around. Throughout my childhood, his father always had the same carefully crafted combover – grey locks pulled forward …….
My dad is bald, and always has been. He’s had a shiny, hairless head with some growth protruding around the edges for the 27 or so years that I’ve been around. Throughout my childhood, his father always had the same carefully crafted combover – grey locks pulled forward neatly hid the tanned, hairless crown which sat underneath.
Mum’s dad – my Grandpa Oskar – just had a giant forehead for as long as anyone can remember: rear bushy follicles formed what could generously be described as a highly pronounced widow’s peak. Mum’s two brothers are the only other older male blood relations in my immediate family. They’ve both fared better. Receding? Yes. But still, hair is hair.
Which will be my future? I couldn’t tell you quite how much time I’ve spent agonising over this question. Through my teens it was something of a morbid fascination. In early adulthood, I’ve become a little fixated. I used to purposefully bring up the prospect of balding in conversation solely so an acquaintance would look up, shake their head, and tell me I was worried over nothing. Over time the response became a little more muted: “You can really barely notice,” some would offer. “There’s nothing you can do anyway,” was another standard reply. Mum has always thought I should stop being so vain. Who knows whether the change in tone came from a noticeable alteration in my appearance or a growing irritation with my self-obsession? Soon, I learned to keep my tedious concerns to myself.
Today, though, the smallest things can still send me into a spiral. Windswept pictures exposing the M-shaped hairline my gene pool has bestowed upon me need deleting, immediately please. I’ve followed my barber, Nik, across London boroughs. The idea of letting anyone else near me with clippers, in case they mistakenly snip off a section which never grows back, fills me with dread. Whole days have been ruined when, without my trusty hair gum, my mop has insisted on showing strangers the secretly bare bits of my scalp.
The most preposterous part of all this is that I’m barely even balding. For now, most of my head is covered with hair as thick, dark and unwieldy as it has ever been. Look at me face-on, that’s all you’ll see. Catch a glimpse of my side profile (it’s worse from the right) and it’s a slightly different story. Pull back my mane’s curtain and two distinct gaps – on either side of my face’s top corners – appear. Quite …….
