Sunday, December 14, 2008

I really would like some off the top

I wonder if other bald/balding men have this problem.

I first became aware of it when I started going bald - thinning on top, standard male-pattern baldness - and I had trouble getting the barber to cut the thinning hair up there. He'd do what I asked on the sides and back, where the hair was as thick as ever, but I had to insist before he'd cut the top, as well. Finally I realized that he was convinced I wanted to comb the remaining hair creatively so as to hide the bald spot, presumably because that's what he'd do.

Nowadays, I have only a few wispy strands on the top, and I go to Great Cuts instead of an old-style barbershop. (Cheaper, and no TV sets blaring sports, yahoo!) All the barbers are barberettes or hairdressers - i.e., female. Some of them still won't cut the wispy strands, and I have to repeat the request after they're otherwise finished, when they hold up the mirror and ask if the haircut is okay. Yes, except for those long, wispy hairs on the top. Cut 'em.

If I did care about trying to hide the baldness, letting those wispy strands get extra long wouldn't be my choice of a way to do it.

3 comments:

TGirsch said...

I think you'll have better luck if you ask them to hit those with the clippers when you first sit down. It's not so much that they'd keep those hairs long, it's that a lot of bald/balding men do.

As a side note, my brother is balding (nice-sized hole in the ozone layer, he has), and his bald spot and receding hairline are growing such that they're meeting, but he still has a pretty healthy little tuft of hair in the front. It's maybe 1.5"-2". He still parts that little island of hair, right down the middle. It's ludicrous.

I'd like to think that if I ever go bald (at my age, since no balding has started yet, I don't think that's likely), I'd just be at one with my baldness and own it, rather than trying to hang on to the memories of the hair of yesteryear...

David said...

Your brother's unfortunate. You sometimes see bald men with tufts remaining in strange places, and it looks strange no matter what they do. Doesn't sound like your brother's helping things, though. I'm not delighted that I'm bald, but I'm glad I got the standard balding pattern instead of something odd. If I did have some sort of tuft, I'd probably shave it off.

Yes, it's pointless to try to hang on to vanishing hair. The only person the bald man fools that way is himself. Embrace the bald! Be one with the bald, Grasshopper!

TGirsch said...

My brother's balding pattern is actually pretty typical. Not unusual at all. He's just hanging on. I suspect his wife has a lot to do with it, too -- she still has mall bangs, after all...