The first time somebody told me I was balding, it was a joke. That person will never know that the punchline finally hit about two years later.
It was the summer of 2018. I was 23 years old and bartending at a beautiful lakeside restaurant. It was summertime, and things were good. The lake was busy with boaters and vacationers, my friends were in town, and I was making a good amount of money (for a bartender, anyway).
The head chef of the restaurant was a thin, quiet, stand-offish man with a long beard, skinny tattooed limbs, and a bandana upon the top of his head that he never removed. Rumors rolled around the lake that beneath the bandana there was a tiny alien controlling his body through a set of computers and controls. I got along well with this chef, perhaps because of our mutual realistic (though some called it pessimistic) views on things, particularly when it came to the economics and politics of the restaurant and the lake, but that’s a different tale.
The Chef was walking past by bar in the morning as we prepared to open the restaurant and stopped for a bit of complaining as he often did, and which I often returned with my own complaints about life, the world, and the lake. I made a comment about his never-removed sacred bandana, this time asking if the reason he never took it off was that he was bald on the top of his head (despite a long gray pony-tail flowing from the back of his bandana down to his shoulder blades). He responded with “No, but you will be soon.”
“I’m not balding,” I retorted.
“That hairline is running away my friend.”
When I got home that day I took several pictures all around my head to examine if my hair was thinning or if my hairline was receding. I had always had a big forehead, so it was hard to tell, but according to my girlfriend, my mom, and my roommate, my hair was fine.
*Cut to two years later*
I’m sitting in my aunt’s living room in Switzerland, on the tail end of a five-month-long adventure through Western Europe that involved (among other things) working on a farm in Portugal, attending Oktoberfest in Munich, and nannying a few kids in Geneva. On my phone's gallery a memory from two years ago comes up, and I see the photos I took of my head when The Chef told me I was balding. I chuckled to myself and how gullible I was to let him fool me and throw me into a panic with his jest. I hadn't cut my hair since then, and after over two years it had grown down to the middle of my back. It was wavy, it had the light highlights from working in the sun contrasted with the darkness of its true color. It fit perfectly into a bun. It was beautiful.
For old time’s sake, I snapped a photo of the top of my head. I was appalled to find that the entire top of my head, the crown of my long flowing locks, was nearly completely hairless. It was like a dead spot of yellow grass on a perfectly cut, thick, lush field of green.
How could this be?
The long hair had somehow grown around this bald spot, but nobody had told me I was balding, because I’m taller than most people so they had never seen my pale scalp scandalously revealing itself through my hair. What the hell was I to do?
It sounds feminine to say, but the long hair had truly become a part of my identity. It was a part of the way people perceived me and of how I wanted to be perceived at the time.
When nature suddenly decides that the way you look must change — drastically — at the ripe young age of 24, it can be damaging to the ego. especially if you are single (as I was then). The sudden fact that my appearance would take a nose-dive made me immediately feel gross and unattractive to women.
But, rather than sit and wallow in self-pity (though I did allow myself a bit of time to do so) I swallowed my pride, and I considered my options. I could attempt a bunch of hair treatments that cost lots of money and time and, in the end, hardly ever work.
Or, I could cut my losses. I could cut my hair short, which would make the balding less apparent. I could use a healthy shampoo and conditioner to try to slow down the process, knowing that it would never actually stop the balding. And, once my hair had receded past a certain point, I could shave my head.
That is the route I chose.
I was motivated by the fact that some of my favorite celebrities are bald; Dave Chappelle, Dwayne The Rock Johnson, and Joe Rogan, just to name a few.
If they could do it, why couldn’t I? But, another trait all of those men share is that they are very muscular. And confident. And, they have good posture. I realize that perhaps one of the reasons I look up to those people is because of those aspects of them — aspects I wish I had myself. I realized that the reason they looked fine with their bald head was not that it was a “good look”, but because they would look good in just about any situation. They had self-respect and confidence, and they took good care of themselves. They were professionals in their jobs and they did those jobs extremely well. They were accomplished, healthy, and good men, who also happened to be bald.
So, I promised myself that by the time that fateful day came — when the buzzer came out and the (remaining) hair came off — my body would be in good enough shape that maybe girls wouldn’t notice the balding head, and I would be healthier and happier for it.
Beyond the physical stuff, I figured I should work on the more important internal aspects too — that is what set those bald-headed role models apart from the pack anyway. I would practice self-care; I would fix my posture (as someone who suffers from scoliosis, this is very important to me), I would be more mindful of my surroundings and present in the moment, I would try to be helpful and confident in my ability to contribute in any situation, I would honestly check in with myself and my therapist in order to maintain my mind and my personality at a healthy place. All of this, I thought, would make me a better person. a person who didn’t have to worry about how others perceived him or whether or not girls found him attractive.
Since then, I have been exercising every day and eating better. I’ve lost some weight. My therapist (who I have been seeing for over three years now) and I have continued to work on me, to make me a better person and to keep continually managing some of the worse aspects of my personality. I’ve been meditating. I’ve been reading. I’ve been doing anything I can to nourish the mind, body, and soul, because I realize that it’s the nourishment of the self that matters more than appearance, even though this whole internal journey started because of my own insecurities about my appearance.
…But, to be fair, it’s a nice bonus that you will look more appealing to those around you if you do take care of yourself.
While my hairline continues to recede, I believe by the time it gets to the point of having to shave it all off I won’t mind so much. So long as I have eyes to see, ears to listen, a mouth to speak, a mind to think, and a body to maneuver (and so long as I take care of those things) then nothing else really matters.
Especially not something as trivial as hair.
