Oi, Baldy!
A race of superior beings.
“This year,” a Guardian columnist told us recently, “Will see the very last generation of men who, having arrived at the threshold of their 30s, are forced to accept the loss of their hair, with all their future sons and grandsons nipping instead to Turkey for a little implant and some kofta.” Let’s ignore the irritating and somewhat baffling precision of the prediction, and ignore some of the other questions it seems to answer. (I am comforted to know, for example, that the grandsons of this “last generation” will be flying to Turkey for hair transplants, rather than enlisting to fight in the Battle Of Greenland, or eating their own children, or burning books, or wandering the world looking for a glass of fresh water.) But the central point holds good: baldness is more or less now a choice, if that’s how you want to spend your money - approximately three to five grand, if you do take the Turkish route.
What does it mean to be bald? The strange thing about baldness is that its undesirability is open to debate - unlike, say, a missing front tooth, or a squint, or a couple of hundred extra pounds. (Yes, yes, I know there are websites that cater to particular tastes. I’m talking about out here, in the real world.) There are lots of desirable bald men. Stanley Tucci! Thierry Henry! Mark Strong! A Substack piece by
that has been restacked many times recently begins with an account of a conversation between a group of friends about whether Tony Soprano was hot. ‘“But he’s fat.” A male colleague inserted himself into the discussion. “And balding.” We looked up at him with annoyance and pity. This is when I realized: the modern male mind simply cannot comprehend the allure of Tony Soprano.’Note that it’s the man here who objects to the lack of hair; the women don’t care. And it’s not even as though anyone claims that the baldness is counterbalanced by his other hot properties; it just doesn’t seem to figure in the conversation. I suspect that on the contrary, the lack of hair is part of the masculinity that Shannon and her friends seem to be responding to.
That doesn’t help me much. I’m not that type of bald man. I am the type who will get annoyed if you fail to return my treasured The Accidental Tourist first edition that you borrowed, but who won’t express that annoyance directly. I am not the type who will murder your cousin for you. But even so, I have not found baldness to be the crippling handicap that young men (including me, when I set out on my epic bald journey) fear it will be.