Every bald man has a different story, they are certainly not a one-size-fits-all anecdote. For some it happens quickly, some more slowly. For some it's a case of accepting it straight away and shaving it all off, for others it becomes a drawn out process, in many cases with attempts to hide the hair loss, seek treatments such as Minoxidil, Finasteride or a very costly hair transplant. This story is not about who is right or wrong in the world of Male Pattern Baldness, nor which approach to hair loss is better or worse. All I attempt to do in this post is to outline my own personal experience with hair loss and shaving my head, and my personal opinions about the process and some of the previously mentioned approaches to avoiding it.
Thinning hair is something that affects 25% of all men; whether that's receding hairline or male pattern baldness. This can happen to some men as early as their teens but for others it might creep up on you in your 20s and 30s (possibly even later). For me it was my mid to late 20s when it began but really didn't thin out drastically until I was about 31.
What stops men shaving their heads for the first time?
More often that not this usually comes down to worrying about how it will look and/or worrying about how others may react to it. Style and grooming have become a large part of modern day life, with our lives increasingly being lived online through Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and whatever other social media exposure methods we're using. All the way back to the days of ancient mythology, the concept of men with flowing locks of hair has been a symbol of strength and power. Back in the era of free love, the hippie folk grew their hair long and it became a symbol of naturalness. Following that, the emergence of the 60s and 70s rock stars with long messy hair, which was basically considered the sexiest look of the time. I'm not going to tell you that men with long hair aren't attractive anymore, because that's just being unrealistic and it simply isn't true. But what I am saying is that bald men are not considered unattractive.
I can summarise my opinion on this in one sentence: it's far better to be bald than balding. The fact that you're confident enough to shave your head to the skin and wear it proud shows that you're a man who doesn't care, you own your look and you're confident in yourself (in many cases this has actually been proven)
Don't worry about what other people think - it's your hair, it's your life, it's your choice. At the end of the day if you shave it off and you literally cannot stand it, you can throw on a hat, deal with it for a month or so then seek other options like hair transplants (although I wouldn't personally recommend it). But I think you'll find that most people react pretty well to it, I certainly found that in my experience. And anyone new that you meet won't know the difference anyway and they'll say you look weird with hair when you show them old pictures!
It'll be a relief - this is a big one and it's true. Once it's done it's done and you can start to move past it and get used to it. The worrying and wondering and searching for articles or videos on how to do it is not going to do your mental health or confidence any good and I guarantee any blog or video on this subject will tell you that. If it's occupying that much of your concern then it's not healthy and you need to take action, you'll feel better once you do.
As a man who had been going bald for a few years, it finally reached a point where it started to look far too thin and quite messy on top. So I eventually just decided to shave it all off at home for the first time. However this wasn't an instant decision and it wasn't immediate either. Like many, there was a timeline and factors that lead up to this defining moment. So this is my story...
My Journey
Whilst looking in the bathroom mirror one day I noticed the top of my head looked a little more reflective than I thought it was, so I dipped my head slightly to examine the top. To my surprise, thinning on my crown had crept up on me without me noticing. This didn't really concern me too much as I assumed it was just normal for a man at my age and that it happened to a lot of men (many men in my family are bald or balding including my father and uncle).
It was never something I was particularly self-conscious about and I just lived with it for about 2 years as it got progressively thinner. There were 2 occasions when I really started to notice just how thin it had become on top. The first was when I was on holiday in Cuba and I spent a day walking around Havana in the tropical afternoon sun. Up until this point in my life, the idea of getting burnt on the top of my head had never even occurred to me, because we have hair up there to stop that happening. I'm also not someone who gets really easily burnt due to my mediterranean background.
But when we got home in the evening I could feel my head burning and I asked my friend to take a look for me, low and behold I had quite the red burn on the top of my head. I quickly went out and bought a fedora hat from a local souvenir store, which was not an attempt to look too "Buena Vista Social Club", but I was in Cuba after all. This hat sorted the issue of the burning on top, but the hair thinning itself was still not something I was too worried about at the time.
The second time I noticed it, and this time I really did notice it, was about a year later when I was showering at home. I was running my hands over my head to squeeze out the shampoo and I could really feel the shape of my skull through my (lack of) hair. This was a bit of a red flag to me, so I got out of the shower and with my phone camera I decided to take a look. It was at this moment I saw just how bald I really had gotten.
Over a short period of a few months I started to think about the idea of just shaving it and accepting the bald fate. I wasn't particularly nervous or worried about it, I just quite enjoyed having a head of hair as most people do. In my younger years I had very thick hair and I used to keep it fairly long and messy, so taking the plunge wasn't exactly a scary thought, just a very big change.
Another contributing factor was that this second event took place just slightly before the COVID-19 Pandemic took over the world, and all the hairdressers had been closed. Because of this I'd been tackling a rather mushroom-looking hairstyle by myself for a while (as in thick and sticking out at the sides and flat on top). During this period a lot of men decided to either shave their heads or ask their significant others to do a little trimming for them. For me this really became a no-brainer, and as I had no significant other and my hair was already extremely thinned, it was going to have to be the inevitable shaved route.
I finally look the plunge and grabbed my beard trimmer, took the guard off and just buzzed a line down the middle of my head (this was reminiscent of Marshall Eriksen on his wedding day in How I Met Your Mother). This is actually something I recommend if you're shaving your head for the first time, if you've decided to do it then just do it, don't trim the edges first because you may well back out.
I would recommend you be who you are and not hide the fact that you might have a receding hairline or you're going bald. It's very easy to do with any electric shaver (you can use a standard beard trimmer to start with but good, well priced options are things like Wahl Hair Clippers) and it should only take 10 mins.
I would recommend taking your shirt off too as the hair tends to go everywhere. I would also suggest putting down a towel or something to catch the hair if you don't want to be vacuuming it up afterwards. I personally put some cling film in the basin too as I didn't want all my hair clogging up the drain - this worked really well and I just balled it up afterwards.
The Verdict
Once it was done it must have taken maybe a week to get used to it, but then after that it was just me and I can only be who I am. Be prepared for a little shock, you are going to look different - but that doesn't mean bad.
That was my story, each person is different and this is just my personal journey and my opinions. The aim of telling you this story is to hopefully encourage you to do the same, and to help remove some of those worries or concerns that you may have. At the end of the day, if you shave your head for the first time and you absolutely cannot stand it, the worst thing that will happen is you have a buzzed head for a couple of months and then it will start to grow back to a regular length. Failing the head shave, you can always consider some of the other options, but I guarantee that in the long term, the easiest, cheapest and most painless thing to do is to accept it and shave your head. The Bald World is a site dedicated solely to helping bald men build confidence and also to help men struggling with hair loss to accept being bald. The more shaved head bald men there are in the world, the more normalised it will become. The more the cosmetics industry and social media tells us to use alternate routes, the less normal it will become. So be on the side of the men who are confident and who accept it.
Comentarios