I am 25 and I am going bald. In fact I have been going bald from about the age of 21. I walked past a hair salon the other week and a woman was handing out promotional leaflets for discounted hair styling. She asked if I would like one, I thought she was taking the piss but luckily I deduced from her blank expression that she was not and was simply stupid and so refrained from punching her.
Going bald is not the end of the world for everyone, head butting football hairo Zinidine Zidane seems content with his millions of pounds and model girlfriend and there is no need for action 'star' Jason Statham to feel insecure about his diminishing barnet as Kelly Brook left him for another baldy in Billy Zane. Perhaps if he just stopped making those bloody awful Transporter films they would still be together, then again Zane's main claim to fame is Titanic so he can probably feel a bit hard done by. Despite these shining examples of men baldly going forth and prospering, life is not quite so easy for your average man on the street.
People can be so helpful. Someone kindly pointed out to me the other day that I was going grey. Why do people do this? I wouldn't alert someone to the fact that they were getting fat. I just fixed my eyes on them with a looked of complete disdain. As any follicley challenged man will tell you when you have accepted that you are going bald you couldn't give a flying flip that you are going grey! I'd kill to be a silver fox, but alas I will never know this distinguished joy.
It's a horrible moment when you first realise you are going bald. As a white british man of 21 it is law that you put a ridiculous amount of gel in your hair. One day when applying lacquer and product to my demi moulet I noticed that quite a large amount of scalp was clearly visible. Naturally my first reaction was to go into denial. Maybe it was just the lighting, maybe it was the 50p store own gel? But even if this was the reason for the 'illusion' of baldness what was I going to do, lurk in the shadows to avoid misleading lighting, purchase branded and expensive hair gel? Not bloody likely. So you have to try and accept it, which isn't easy at first.
I wouldn't mind so much but my body, much like my brain seems to be completely clueless. An executive decision, coming straight from the top, seems to have been made to remove the hair from my head, but I am at least being compensated with rapid hair growth on every other part of my body. And I do mean every part.
I am the only person I know that needs to get a quote upfront before the salon can start work on a back, sack and crack. I even have hair growing on the underside of my forearms, the underside for gods sake. Perhaps even more of a worry is that I find myself shaving higher and higher up my face with every week that passes. The all over facial hair look may have got teen wolf laid, but I don't think it's going to improve my chances any.
I get recurring nightmares that my kryptonite, velcro clothing, will come back into fashion.
The continued bodily hair growth would suggest that I am yet to have fully completed puberty, this is backed up by the fact that I still get acne. How the hell can you be going bald whilst still getting spots? At the risk of sounding like a 7 year old, it's just not fair! The only consolation is that if I am not wholly pubic then their is still potential for growth. It would be good to get an extra inch...'taller'.
Then their is the teasing that you have to contend with, the verbal happy slap(head)ing. 'Hey baldy put some chalk on your cue', 'go outside mate, you look like you could do with some fresh hair' and so on and so forth. A girl at my work made a quip about my lack of locks, I swiftly retorted by explaining that it was a well known fact that bald men are more virile. My sense of smugness on the back of having just cunningly combined a comeback with some light flirtation was soon cut short when she explained that the only reason bald men were more virile is because they never got any.
Ultimately baldness is a disability, without the parking privileges. Would you make fun of someone who is blind, or poke fun at the mentally handicapped? Of course you wouldn't, well not to their face anyway.
So the next time 
you see a bald man, just take a moment to think about how brave they are. They could so easily have hidden behind a toupee or a strategic comb over. For my fellow bald men, stay strong and remember, yes you will never be able to style your hair again, but as the 80's demonstrated, in the long run this may ultimately be for the best.Now if you don't mind I'm going to investigate the legitimacy of a new 'fill in' hair spray I have just seen on the home shopping channel.
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