The Bald and the Beautiful

Let me say up front, there’s no anger here. You can’t hear tone of voice in an essay but these are merely observations about men and women about images and life changes. I think we would all agree that women are the more sensitive sex. Women take people’s feelings into account before commenting on someone’s attire or new hairdo. Men? We try, especially married men because we have been trained to be more, sensitive. For the most part though, we are Neanderthals. Most things are fair game, all the time. Most.

When I hear women complain about Hollywood and Madison Avenue promoting images of genetic freaks, women who are supremely thin and buxom at the same time, I feel for them I do. I understand what they are complaining about. You are thinking: those women aren’t real. they have personal trainers, professional chefs, nannies. Real women have: careers, kids, homework, baseball games, recitals, laundry and mac and cheese. Maybe it’s my increased sensitivity? While guys appreciate the beauty of say, a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit model, we all know, like many popular video games, that’s not real life. But why does this outcry against unreal imagery, unreal expectations stop there?

Guys are victims in this too. Hear me out on this. When is the last time you saw a bald guy, or even a guy with thinning hair or a chubby guy on “The Bachelor?” How many of Hollywood’s leading men look like the guys you see at the town beach or on the sideline of a soccer game? Even in the Cialis commercials, these guys with limp noodles look like 60 year old freaks. Here’s a guy who can’t cut the mustard in the sack but he’s in unbelievable shape and he has a badger growing on top of his head. Every pharmacist viewing those commercials is saying, “You know those guys don’t look like my Viagra customers; the guys I sell Viagra to look more like, Joe next door.”

I think real guys, guys who are getting older, thicker in the mid-section and thinning on top, need a good public relations guy. What we need is an older guy union, The OGU. If women have been complaining about fashion magazines promoting unreal expectations, there should be an outcry for real men. Shouldn’t we be saying that the image that Hollywood and GQ are portraying is unrealistic? And shouldn’t women be joining us in this?

Truthfully, there won’t be much help from the fairer sex. Actually the reverse is true. How many times have you been at a dinner, and the topic of baldness comes up? At dinner. Want to see a Penn State Linebacker shrink up like a turtle? Bring up his thinning hair while you’re eating your clams casino. I love watching this conversation, simply because women, who are usually so aware of these things, seem so callous and boorish. At one wedding, we were all comparing coverage. I don’t remember who broached the subject but I can guarantee it was someone with a full head of hair or a wife who was very proud of her adequately coiffed hubby. Eventually, the conversation denigrated to something like middle school boys doing push ups in front of the girls. And the wives were leading the charge. “Your husband still has pretty good coverage.” I’m looking at my friend Jimmy thinking, yeh, he still has pretty good coverage, does he have better coverage than me? Suddenly his wife reaches over and pulls his hair back from his forehead and says, “Not really see, he covers it up with this new haircut. Really you can see that he’s losing it, there’s no growth right there.” One minute my buddy was laughing and joking, the next minute he looks like someone kicked him in the balls. And it was his own wife! We’ve all seen guys with thinning hair argue and compare. I was at a bar recently and two "follically challenged" friends were circling each other with their chests out, like gorillas in the jungle, “Well, you have less than me!" "Get out of here, look at your shiny head. Honey, don’t I have more hair than him?”

During these conversations, suddenly women become expert geneticists. “How come he’s losing his hair? His father had a full head of hair.” “You see that doesn’t matter, the baldness gene comes from your mother’s side. What kind of hair does his maternal grandfather have?” “Oh, yeh, he’s bald as a cue ball.” The only people comfortable during this conversation are the women and the guys with all their hair. Usually I’ll keep my mouth shut or toss out some non-sequitur, "Did you hear Joan and Peter are swingers?"

I often wonder what would happen if a group of guys did this at dinner? Imagine if at one of your dinner parties, you are sipping your martini and some dude lobs out this verbal hackey sack? “Julie, your ankles look really good. You are keeping yourself in really good shape” And her husband pipes in, “Not really. See, she’s covering it up with the dark colors and the Uggs.” “Really? I didn’t realize. But her mother has such nice ankles.” “See you have that wrong, the kankle gene comes from your maternal grandfather. Did you ever see Grandpa Guatano’s ankles? Looks like he’s got the gout.” “Yeh but your wife looks great! She doesn’t even watch what she eats, does she go to the gym every day?” “No, it’s the new Spanks-panty hose she has on. She looks good now but she’s a human sausage. When she gets undressed at home her ankles will inflate like a life raft.

Of course that would never happen. Why is that? If women are usually the more sensitive sex? Why do men know enough to stay away from certain topics in public? And how in the world could women be so clueless? And really, why do men care so much? Somewhere along the line a full head of hair has come to be connected to virility, with being in shape. What's a guy to do? Remember the Seinfeld episode where Elaine is dating some guy with a great head of hair and she mentions how important it is to women that their guy have thick lustrous hair. She turns to George who is balding and says, “Sorry George but it’s true.” Crestfallen, George puts his head down and says, “I knew it.”

This is exactly why so many men go to great lengths to make sure they don’t lose their hair. Why not just grow old gracefully? Most of try not to but what choices do we have?

We can shave our heads. That’s a choice for some of us. Once in the 90’s we were watching the NBA playoffs and my buddy Murph says, “You see that’s not fair, Jordan shaves his head and he looks cool.” Shelley Stemmer, my friend Steve’s mom, and our elder stateswoman posits, “It’s all how you carry yourself Murph.” To which Murph said, “It’s easy for Michael Jordan to be confident, he’s Michael Jordan.” “Oh Billy, you just have to be confident in yourself.” “I tell you this Shelly, I’d be a lot more confident if I wasn’t a pasty white guy with the sun shining off my head.”

I’m not one of those guys who will do the Rogaine thing. Not that my body is a temple but a topical solution to make sure you regrow hair seems, less than organic. I guess if I knew it was completely safe…but my fear is that years from now we’ll see guys with penises growing out of the top of their head and we’ll whisper, “Sure he’s got a thick head of hair but...

We can be creative with our haircuts. For most guys, the drawback with thinning hair, besides snickering women and kids, is that in everyday life, lack of hair is a hassle. I spent a lot less time worrying about it when I had plenty. I always tell Marisa, she’s my “stylist,” “You’re the professional, I don’t want to look silly, I don’t want to look like one of those guys who is trying to cover something up. But please do whatever you can.” She’s always so nice and tells me how great my hair looks. Yes I do know she works on tips.

And of course there’s the all-American, baseball hat. As we get older, every time we go to the beach, we have to bring a baseball hat. Actually, every time we are going to be in the sun for an extended period of time, we need a hat. It’s a drag. Or worse, you can reach the point of putting sunscreen right on your head. That’s a sobering moment for a dude. I tend to use some type of spray, unsightly white gobs on your head are really unflattering.

We can be careful with the pics we post on the internet. I love the fact that we all post flattering pics on Facebook. Often I think, if that’s his or her good picture, oh jeez. When my wife posts pictures I am always like, “Hon do you realize that shot really accents my double chin and people will be blinded by the sun beating off my cranium? I appreciate that.” When we find old friends on FB, admit it, the first thing we look at is, did she get fat and does he still have his hair? Those are really the only two worries for guys, bald or fat. One we have control over, one we don’t. They call it male pattern baldness and I have been slightly lucky so far, for the most part it’s been occurring from back to front, so I don’t have to witness it every day. I can delude myself into thinking it still looks good. Once in a while I will catch an alignment of two mirrors, in an elevator or in a bathroom in a restaurant and I’m always like, "THAT'S what I look like from behind?" If there are no mirrors, I have my kids at home, "Dad you should try Rogaine." And I teach 8th grade, so once in a while my students will let me know, as if I didn’t know it already, “Mr. Spinner did you know you are going bald?” I always try to handle this with humor. “Oh, my god, really? When did this happen?” Or sometimes I say, “Did you know you’re failing this class?”

My theory is that this is a control issue. No matter how much a guy works out and no matter what you eat, most guys will experience hair loss. It’s humbling for a guy. It’s connected to aging obviously. Through the Hollywood image-makers, we have come to see it as the autumn of our lives. Like trees, we start to lose our hair as we move toward the latter seasons of our lives. Oh, and that’s another thing, your head gets colder. Maybe all of us "regular" people, men and women, should work together to debunk the images that Hollywood continues to propagate? How about we start a magazine with regular people in it? Then again who would read it?