Some thoughts on being bald
Probably not the last time I talk about this
“Next time, you should just try and grow it out. Just don’t cut it off at all,” my seven year old niece requested of me this past summer, remarking on my bald head. I’ve been bald the entire time she’s been able to comprehend me as a family member and was curious of what I would look like with hair. I tried to scour my phone for a selfie from a time when I was haired, but the only pics I could find just hinted at my thinning descent into baldness. I wish I could promise her that I’d have hair by the holidays, but that’d only be letting her down.
Being bald is something that separates me from most of the family on my mom’s side. It can act as a conversation starter, or fuel for a vindictive comeback, like when my aunt, Facetiming a group of us, asked me “what happened to your hair?” and I rudely replied “what happened to your face?” The rest of the room - some housing their own familial vendettas - laughed while I tried to play it off like I was referring to her poor handling of the phone.
Being bald defines me and is something that I am defined by. I live with its negative and positive attributes. It’s nice to have a defining characteristic, even if I sometimes resent that it gives fuel for others to characterize me. For instance, if I were to cut someone off in traffic (extremely rare), I can hear the offended party growl at me, thinking or (or yelling) something like “fuckin’ cueball” at me. I know it, because I did so in my hairier (pre-bald, PB) times. I’d crack jokes about the occasional person with thinning hair, even as my own hair began to thin. Karma hides in the shadows, stalking like a wild cat. For me, the cat struck in small, slicing strikes. Hair would stick to the inside of my helmet or rinse off in the shower. And then one day, I was no longer balding but bald.
I grew up with blonde hair. Blonder than any of my family members. It was thick, styled with a Californian coif. When I look at pictures, I’m impressed by the volume of it, though at the time it felt strange on my head. The blondness seemed to clash with the flushes of red on my face due to my susceptibility to sunburns and visible embarrassment. But, as I neared my twenties, I began to like its All-American Beach Boy-ness. It stood out at the indie and hardcore shows I attended, where others took on a more combative approach with their hair and bodies in the form of dyings, piercings, and tattoos.
At that time, baldness was a thing that happened to others, like my college roommate Max, who began balding in high school and embraced it. His reliable Halloween costume, Vin Diesel’s Riddick from the film “Pitch Black,” is one I’ve adopted for myself (all you need is a black tank top, black pants and some sunglasses or goggles).
My hair stayed fully planted on my head as I made my way through the stand-up comedy world of Portland, Oregon. I can even remember having a joke that disparaged bald men and the way that testosterone impacts them. It’s unfunny, and frankly, a betrayal to the person I became, so I won’t even try to remember it.
It was only in 2018 when I realized, from another’s perspective, that I was indeed balding. I was hanging with a former girlfriend and her younger son, who had forgotten my name. As we sat in the same room, he asked his mom in the non-whisper whisper that kids are famous for “what’s the bald guy’s name, again?” From the mouth’s of babes. It was hilarious and humbling, and the first moment that I tracked how others began to see me.
When I look at photos of myself from that period, the thinning seems all the more evident, like a blurry camera finally coming into focus. For several years, I’d let my sides grow out while the top of my head would sprout light sticks of hair. There was a lack of uniformity, no cohesive statement on my head - an indecisiveness that reflected on the rest of my life. Having inherited a set of clippers, I finally began buzzing my own head sometime in COVID, though only using the tallest blade attachment.
Only after moving to New York and feeling the poodly-poofiness of my hair that rose on the sides of my head in response to the humidity, I pulled out the clippers, and without a guard, buzzed from the right side of my head, around the back to the left, before cleaning off the top of my head. Then I felt around my head, searching for extra tufts, and removed those as well. Now I do this every week or so. Every two or three weeks I apply a healthy dollop of shaving cream over my head, take out a Mach 4 razor (ever since I began growing my beard I usually have several lying around) and trace it from the top top my skull down, in the same right to left pattern like I’m mowing a lawn, until every follicle has been whittled down to stubble, like an old growth forest turned to timber. I then wash it off in the shower, considering I’m usually doing this routine in my boxers. I enjoy the ritual. So much so, I own bald-specific products, a smooth saving gel and a daily cleanser by a company befittingly called “Be Bald.” It’s a relatively low stakes affair it feels like a form of self-care maintenance. It’s an affirmation. A commitment to baldness.
Traitors of the Bald
Before I left for vacation early this year, I took the JFK Airtrain, the city’s attempt to bilk you out of $8 for the least efficient transportation service run by the MTA. One line of the Airtrain was down, so the car was clogged with a mess of travelers from different terminals. One man got on and immediately stood out to me. He was bald, except he had little plugs of transplanted hair grafted along his skull. Some parts looked like they’d been bleeding. I guessed that he’d just got off a Turkish Airlines flight (comically dubbed Turkish hairlines) as Istanbul is known as the the hair transplant capital of the world.
When I see this, I get bit angry. The feeling of walking around with a horrific set of plugs plopped into your skull, defying your body’s natural evolution with a set of “starter hair,” scratches my own itch of insecurity. I don’t feel as uncomfortable being bald, but am I missing something? Should I be?
Is my pride a way of masking how stupid I’d feel if, one day, I returned home and tried to pretend with my friends, family, and co-workers like I didn’t just have a hair transplant? I’m not quite so sure. The author of this GQ piece used a pseudonym when reporting on his experience receiving a hair transplant in Istanbul. Surely he’d use his real name if he was secure enough, right?
But I’m not innocent in my contribution to the male hair industrial complex. I own several shares of HIMS stock, a telehealth company focused on a variety of products that cater directly to men’s (and women’s via the HERS line) insecurities with treatments for hair loss, erectile dysfunction, and weight loss. It’s no surprise that the company is incredibly successful.
And I’ll admit there is something tantalizing about the option to go back to the Never, Neverland of your own hair and feel young again. I never feel particularly old with a bald head, but it certainly doesn’t make me feel any younger. I can also concede that I don’t find anything inherently “wrong” about my bald head in general. I have no scars, skin grafts, birthmarks, nothing to be truly concerned about in its unshielded form. Not all heads are created equal, or appealing to look at.
I’m not prideful enough to admit that, if presented with the opportunity to have never gone bald, that I wouldn’t hesitate to take it. Without hair, you’re always going to remind someone of someone else they know who’s also bald. A father, an employer, a grandfather; all inherit a type of elderliness. But, I contest, what is more youthful than a baby - universally beloved, beautiful, bald creatures! We enter the world bald, and, with the threats of cancer, stress, and a serial killer who shaves the head of their victims, we might also leave it that way as well.
In being bald, I’ve learned to lean on other points of male vanity. I lift weights, I’ve run three half-marathons, and I walk long distances regularly. I’ve grown a beard, which has sprouted several gray hairs, giving me an indication of what my aging head would’ve looked like if there were still hairs up there. Balding has not turned me into an incel. In spite of the Elaine’s of the world, there are plenty of beautiful women who don’t mind spending romantic time with a baldy.
I mostly feel good about it, because if I really felt bad about it, I’d probably do something. I try to be good humored about it, to fight off my defensive desire to stifle any joke about a baldy not made by a baldy themselves. Sure, rub my head for good luck like the saintly Buddha I am!
I keep a list of good and bad balds in my head at all times. For every Stephen Miller and Lux Luthor there’s a Larry David and a Stanley Tucci. For every Joe Rogan, there’s a Ru Paul. The list goes on and on. My mind is a constant battle between the good and evil balds. As long as I stay on the good side, I’m okay.
In a way, being bald has given me a clearer sense of who I am, and I don’t think I’d go back and change that.
TLDR, most of my thoughts on being bald can be easily summed up by patron saint of balds, Larry David here:
p.s. I also enjoyed Paul Scheer’s recent post about being bald:
