Issues on Parade

This lengthy letter is to Karen, and all guys who've been through severe hair loss, like me. Take it or leave it.

Dear Karen - I stumbled on your site on a search on "hairstyles men's", believe it or not looking for photo examples on how to style the expensive wig I just got finished having made, and thence stumbled on your 2005 article "Bald Men Are Hot!"  Though the article is two years old now, the topic seems to be timeless. Having gone through my own agonies with extreme hair loss, and solutions, I would like to  comment back. I hope, that some guys like me will feel vindicated for being so bold as to try a workable hair replacement solution.

I once again felt the bile start to rise upon reaching the comment in the article "...And yes, women would prefer that a man embrace his hair loss issues rather than hide behind a horrible comb over, cheap rug or poorly placed plugs..."  What irks me about this society when it comes to men's hair is the straightjacketing, never-ending double standard that guys have to endure with respect to hair loss. Those of us that aren't Bruce Willis that is. I happen to think black guys look dynamite with shaved heads. I think for the most part white guys look sickly and deficient with them, including myself. For me, severe alopecia was a trauma that probably rivals something like having half my faced ripped off in a car accident.  When I was in high school, I grew my hair halfway down my back, and in the guy category was voted (with zero effort or promotion on my part, I  was a flat-out hippie) "most beautiful hair". You can imagine it. So at when it started falling out in piles around 33, it hit me hard. Being a still  somewhat stage-ambitious musician added another dimension to the "issue".

But back to the double standard. The shop I had my wig designed from specializes not in "cheap rugs" but high-tech prosthetics especially catering to women who have lost their hair for some reason, and want something really good to replace it with. Having already tried, and failed,
with a partial "piece" about ten years earlier, I wrote to a number of these women customers to verify just how these replacements met their expectations, and they all raved about them. Their feedback only emphasized to me the freedom that women get in this society with regard to  hair replacement solutions vs. the scrutiny, sneering, wisecracks, eye rolling, etc, that guys who still want hair and try to do something about it have to endure. The fact that you even have an ongoing poll from women about their feelings about bald guys is an indicator. If it was all that insignificant, it wouldn't even rate an inch of type on your site. I wonder why there isn't a "how hot are bald women?" space in your site. And I wonder what the guys' responses would be. When  women go through severe hair loss, mainstream America overwells with sympathy and doesn't bat an eye about a woman getting an  appropriate wig designed, which she then wears everywhere. And a woman who didn't charge ahead and do something about her unfortunate but highly out-of-place hair loss would be looked at with wonder. One of my aunts was so traumatized by an engagement breakup  in her youth that all her hair fell out practically overnight. She wore a full wig the rest of her life, which I never knew until after she died. One of the gal wig-shop customers I surveyed  had lost all her hair in a severe case of measles, and she was so thrilled that the high-tech wig they made for her even passed the "invisibility  test" of her gradeschool students. You see, she can be thrilled without reserve. Whereas a guy confronting this society with such thrills has to be thrilled with reservation, and be on his guard. Especially against a-holes who find amusement ripping guy's wigs off in public places, like  one poor dude I read about who got caught in a dare between two such a-holes, and had to endure the consequences.

In the 1700's (the most beautiful time period for men's fashions in my view, and I am not gay), it was a given that when a man's hair started to really go, especially professional men who could afford them, they got fitted for a wig (or a collection of them), and wore it everywhere but to bed. This was the norm, and men weren't crucified for it. As far back as the 14th century, you find comments from peasants grumbling about how the French nobility liked to show off by NOT wearing headgear to cover their bald heads, simply to be conceited. I recently read a great account of Custer (of Little Bighorn massacre fame) which compared the "grimly enforced conventions" of white society then with that of their "savage" counterparts, the Plains Indians: " "Had his (Custer's) complexion been coppery instead of pink.." (which he tried to mitigate with hair styling and a hairpiece at one point) "... he would have earned no such ridicule. Indians found nothing ludicrous about a man attending to his hair. Quite the opposite. They looked upon hair, male or female, with admiration and respect. A nineteenth-century trader, Henry Boller, speaks of  seeing three Gros Ventre dandies who "...wear false hair ornamented with spots of red and white clay..." He describes Chief Four Bears  as a  tall, noble man whose black hair nearly swept the ground