Okay, I’ll come right out and confess it: balding men is a topic I’ve been dreading. Not because I have deep, painful issues relating to men devoid of hair but because I don’t. I don’t have a bald men fetish, nor do I think hairlessness on one’s scalp makes one undesirable. You’re never going to hear my claim that Bruce Willis really does it for me or that Patrick Stewart (who, I just learned, started losing his hair at the age of 19) doesn’t. I’m essentially indifferent.
What’s interesting to me is how obsessed men are with whatever stage of baldness they’re at. Their level of neurosis certainly rivals female weight concerns, if not outweighing them — so to speak — entirely. I know men who literally won’t be seen without their head firmly encased in a hat of some kind — one who’s rumored to even wear such a head covering in bed — or go to the world’s leading hair specialists so they can get transplants that won’t look like transplants. I remember guys I know getting deliveries of Rogaine to their dorm rooms and know writers who devote pages, if not entire creative projects, to their concern over their hairlessness. Of course I understand that it has a lot more to do with coming to terms with one’s own mortality (which is really getting to be a theme with me on this blog) than with outrageous vanity. At least, that’s what I tell myself. But my primarily feeling on the matter is that men need to calm down and realize that women don’t really care about the hair thing at all. The only ones who do, I’ve noticed, find bald men unspeakably sexy.
Ask me my opinion about bald women, however, and we may well get somewhere interesting. See, at one point I had two bald grandmothers (they both died bald, too). Yes, grandmothers. Their husbands were perfectly hairy atop their scalps — then again, the ladies outlived the guys by a good many years. Anyway, this bald granny fact has instilled in me a rather pronounced fear of following in their hair steps years earlier than planned because of my dedication to hair coloring, straightening, drying, and the like. I even went to a hair specialist once to explain my fears, during which I explained that I’m an outrageous shedder and clearly headed for the bald house. I was told that losing up to 100 hairs a day is normal so I should start counting the number I lose and if it’s far above 100, then I should come back to him. I think I got to about hair number three before abandoning that project altogether.
But hey, if I do go bald, at least I’ll be in good company. Sinead O’Connor did it. Natalie Portman shaved it all off for that Wachowski movie. Hey, even Demi Moore went that way so she could look especially bad ass while doing a one-handed push-up in that Navy movie.
And if it happens, who knows, maybe I could then meet a guy with a bald women fetish (Elaine’s dad: you may not want to click on that particular link, though rest assured that it was actually the cleanest bald women fetish link I could find).
I freak out at all the hair I seem to lose too. If we lose 100 hundred strands a day, does this mean 100 more are growing in new? Nobody has explained this phenomenon to my satisfaction. Re men’s baldness. I paraphrase a quote in the movie Something’s Gotta Give: “Thank God men lose their hair, it’s the only break we get.”
I would really love to know how many bald women fetish sites you went too…
Yes, Anna, please tell how many bald women fetish sites you visited because my mind thinks if that was the “cleanest,” my imagination wonders about the other extreme. ;0
UGH! I’m hopeless at remembering that a “smiley” symbol turns into a real “smile” here. 😉
Tagging onto Eileen’s comment, and I can’t wait to hear about the spam you get as a result. 😉
Well, well, inquisitive ladies, I will have you know that when you google “bald women fetish,” the first link that comes up is this, and once I saw “Fetish Shaving Videos,” I thought of Elaine’s Very Proud Dad and simply couldn’t do it. I’ll further have you know that I didn’t actually know there was such a thing as a bald woman fetish until I googled it (I swear). But answering sex questions as one of your jobs teaches you after a while that if there’s something creepy or potentially distasteful, there are people who’ve got a fetish for it.
As for the 100 hairs growing back, excellent question. I never thought to ask about that. A whole new obsession!
They do grow back. Pull your hair back and look closely at your hairline, you probably have zillions of baby hairlets poking up.
Counting 100s of individual lost hairs? Do people have a lot more time on their hands than I do?
Anyway, I’m with you, Anna — balding men, shmalding men. But for the Debutantes, I’ll rack my brain for something to say…
I am pretty normal but have always had a major thing for bald women. I was afraid to admit it for years but now I figure, who cares? Don’t worry, if you go bald, there are a lot of people who are really into bald women, especially someone as beautiful and obviously smart as you are.