Yeah, right!, I can just hear Mr. Italo with his thick mane of hair. But let me rephrase that: Bald may not be beautiful, but efforts to mask bald are almost universally ugly and ridiculous, thereby making bald, at least by default, somewhat more beautiful than the alternative.
I came to this realization today as I sat in my airline seat watching all the other passengers walk past me down the aisle. There were many men with full heads of hair in various degrees of coiferous elegance ranging from, “I have hair so I don’t give a shit how it looks”, to a fastidiousness that comes from large sums spent on expensive barbers.
But a good percentage of my fellow male passengers were balding but not yet as inflegranto as me. Almost universally, these pathetic souls were in various stages of profound denial, using a vast armamentarium of techniques to hide their balding pate and thinning hair supply.
One guy had had a transplant that had not taken well, and you could see a perfectly straight row of follicles low on his forehead in a very unnatural array. The rest of his hair was terribly thinning up front and he had taken to combing the back forwards to try to hide it. It looked horrific and I wondered who he thought he was fooling. What did he see in the mirror each morning? Was he like the 80 pound anorexic who looks in the mirror and sees a fat person?
Most others were also engaged in less offensive versions of the comb-over, looking almost equally pathetic.
I started balding in my early 20′s, as is my son. For about ten years I continued to comb my hair in it’s usual way, until one windy morning I realized that I too was inadvertently resorting to a comb-over. Fortunately, this realization coincided with Bruce Willis’ coming out as “Bald and proud of it”, with his trademark response of going super short at the barbershop. This has remained my strategy since that time too, and I’m not sure it looks beautiful, but it sure feels good. It also takes away any identification with one’s hair and allows you to focus on building up other parts of your personna with which to identify, such as intelligence, education, charm, and a sparkling personality.
For some time I did not understand comb-overs only to find out, that some of the guys sporting them have skulls too badly shaped to be perfectly bald – they would not look close to Patrick Stewart or Telly Savalas.
I can understand that an ugly comb-over might still sometimes look better than an unshapely head. Good thing my own skull is okay for balding.
I had a friend that did the comb over, for years I begged him to simply accept his genes and get rid of it. I mean really who was he fooling, only himself. When he finally did he looked 10 years younger. The only other style that fits into that same category as a comb over has to be the bald on top and pony tail in the back. The fixation about baldness has to be a generational thing because men today don’t seem as hung up about it as our generation has been.
Your friend with hair.
You may be right about the generational thing. And you’re right, the bald top plus ponytail is an abomination, second only to the ultimate travesty……the rug. That one’s identity should be so intimately entwined with one’s hair is very sad.
It’s true… no hair but sparkling personnality!!!I cannot imagine you any other way…It grieves me to say this… but you do look good..
Complements always welcome! Thanks.