The story of my Sisyphean pursuit to preserve my hairline. Follicle by follicle.
I remember it clearly:
"You're starting to thin."
I was sixteen. Twenty years ago now. But for years, those words never felt more than a day old.
Ask any bald man, and they’ll likely remember their moment. We’re raised to see hair as status. Losing it? Weakness. Exposure. Something to fear.
And I did fear it. Quietly. Constantly. I waited for the comments. The glances. The validation of my worst suspicions. My hat collection ballooned. Caps. Beanies. Anything to throw a shadow over the retreat. And yet:
"Why are you always wearing a hat? Are you going bald?"
You can't win.
Then came the toolkit:
- The 'thickening' shampoos
- The $50 volume-enhancing gels
- The $100-a-month finasteride, prescribed in a five-minute GP appointment
Why?
Because I was afraid. Because I believed what I had been sold.
The fear of baldness is not organic. It’s conditioned. And that conditioning is profitable.
The hair loss industry is worth over $9 billion globally. And much of that rests on convincing men that they're broken. That they are patients. That a vanishing hairline is a medical emergency.
But it’s not. For most of us, there’s nothing physiologically wrong.
I’ve worked in advertising. I know how this works. Bald men are cast in shadow, heads bowed. The full-haired foil, tanned and grinning, appears in perfect light. One is to be pitied. The other, envied.
It’s nonsense.
Put Stanley Tucci next to any one of their glow-up actors and the illusion falls apart. The bald man isn’t lacking. The casting is manipulative.
And the studies? Often bankrolled by the same pharmaceutical companies selling the fix.
We are not broken. If anything, we often have more testosterone than our fully-follicled counterparts.
But the messaging works, because it starts young. We grow up admiring our sporting heroes. So when they endorse transplants on billboards, we listen. RIP Shane Warne. And when LeBron tweets that his biggest fear is going bald, the message lands.
We absorb it. We internalise it. And then we medicate it.
I spent ten years in that headspace. Waiting for comments. Wondering if I should wear a hat on a first date. Choosing Hinge photos based on how forgiving the lighting was. Losing libido from the meds. Joking with friends that I needed to fall in love before it was "too late"—before I was bald.
The stretch sucked. It shouldn’t take a decade to let go.
I’ll never forget the day I shaved it.
I sat down for my usual cut. Tired. Not of the hair itself, but of everything around it. The camouflage. The maintenance. The pretending.
"Take it all off," I said.
Stephen, my barber of many years, paused. "Are you sure?" But he already knew.
It was time.
I was nervous. Of course I was. I left the salon and went straight to the pub. The feedback was good. The next day, I went to work. Same thing.
Nothing collapsed. Life went on.
In fact, it got easier. Simpler. More mine.
No more camouflage. No more tricks. Just skin and clarity.
I was free.
If you’re holding on, ask yourself: what exactly are you holding on to? The fear? The story? The lie?
You will wake up tomorrow. And the day after. And you’ll still be you.
Stronger. Cleaner. Bald. And free.
if struggling with the transition, also read Five Reasons to Embrace YourReceding Hairline.