The 5 Stages of Balding

"Could have sworn I had less face recently."

The hair on most male heads has an expiration date coded into the fatty scalp crinkles. As not everyone has the opportunity to come to terms with ageing, mourning hair loss is pretty pathetic. Even the harsh light glancing off my four times forehead, can’t blind me to that. 

Nobody is saying the plight of the unwed baldie is worthy of charitable status - least of all those hair-having gits blackballing my applications. All somebody is saying is: before Grandfather Time collects another scalp, he sure does make a ghastly spectacle of it.

Hair

If I could be so bald, wasn’t always on the laundry list of niggling worries. A simpler time, when every other glaring imperfection was jumping out at us. 

The folly of a young man self-inflicting a shaved head. The naivete of a bad hair day; when every hair day was a good hair day.

The creep

The newly balding plot their hairline's retreat through internet-facing photos. 

According to grave whispers in Turkish baths, baldness stems from the mother’s side. The creeping sets off a sudden interest in your roots, tracing the rot back up the family tree. While relatives talk of trivial matters, like bereavement, the balding's eyes drift upwards. 

So begins the head’s journey from object of desire to object of ridicule, see: burnished cue ball, B-grade egg.

The illusion

With this stage, but a stiff breeze will pull back the curtains and spoil the illusion for all in attendance. If anyone's been in this business long enough to know that, it's the Amazing Baldini. 

By now, he has mastered the art of creating volume from thin ‘air. Perhaps, conjuring up a curly mass that takes in only the most gullible onlookers. Or calling forth a fringe from the uppermost tip of the skull, which shrouds the extent of his forehead in mystery. 

From here, the greatest trick of all is convincing someone to love you unconditionally, before malting into their unseeing eyes.

The jigs up 

Here, a balder can no longer thatch those strands that remain into a passable canopy. 

Could be a menacing set of brows driving all rival hair back off their patch. Maybe, the sunroof is open and each drop of fresh rain is a reminder that you’re flashing your crown to all and sundry.

When the jig’s up, the last some-haired display pic sits unchanged. Until it could be mistaken for the son baldness might inhibit. Then, an all-but-baldie updates with a succession of outdoor activity shoots, all of which seem to require a helmet.

Any mild disappointment about becoming the poster boy for spent virility isn't really acceptable. Of course, everybody is decaying in stop-motion before a floor-length mirror. But, whereas it's plain uncouth to poke fun at the rest of life's wear and tear, everyone relishes in the slow reveal of a gentleman scalp.

‘Wax on, wax off, slaphead.’ 

‘Ha -yes, you got me there, mum.’ 

Acceptance

When genetics rears its ugly head, there are three schools of thought: 

A) Insist that gaping tonsure is more ‘Frisco tech-monk, than contact-giddy friar. Keep backcombing that gauzy tuft, until it only escapes ponytail classification on a technicality. Quieten all that nagging sense and attempt to scrape down a comb-over in good conscience. Hang in there.

B) Treat yourself with a self-love trip to Turkey. Splash a few months' wages getting some unclaimed corpse’s butt-fuzz woven into your skull. Touch down, reborn. A man exuding confidence from a fibrous ingrown toupe, which breeds distrust even among children. 

C) For most, the day comes to accept the hairstyle that will bookend their existence. But, can you pull off bald? Considering supermodels born from millennia of high standards can just about get away with it, I’ll level with you, it's not looking great. Even a Monet has need of a frame. 

Besides, let’s face it, all men do not bald equally. There’s your toughnut baldies, all-too-happy to have the lining gleaned from their signature headbutt. There’s your bald black guys, who seem to have lost nothing. There’s your heart-attack-jacked baldies, whose hair was just an undesired byproduct of testosterone. 

As a tubby white pussy, I've spent the last decade arching my eyebrows into a permanent state of surprise, drawing my hairline that bit closer. Within the wrinkles of my vast and disproportionately aged forehead, lies a message for other baldie-to-be.

A message on the virtues of acceptance, it reads:

Remember, there's a good chance it's not as big a deal to everyone else, as it is within the sparse bonces of we woebegone baldie.

PS. if acceptance fails, just do a course of steds. Then, maintain that beard with the quiet dignity of a retired groundskeeper.