Bald Men’s Last Haircuts

Joe­blade this week is brought to you by Ian

Hair has always been an issue for me. In my fam­ily, there comes a time in every young man’s life when your male elders switch in your esti­ma­tion from being every­thing you want to become to being those bald guys you know you won’t be able to avoid turn­ing into.

Sit­ting around a table with my Dad, Grandad and younger brother is like view­ing simul­ta­ne­ously the pro­gres­sive stages of a dis­ease. Dad and his father, both now proudly bald, had issues with their fate as young men, with Grandad even going the ‘potions and lotions’ route, by all accounts. Aught but a few fam­ily por­traits sur­vive as tes­ta­ment to his failure.

These were dif­fer­ent times, of course. Bald role-models were lack­ing, in my father’s youth and he thinned-out young, with a full bald-spot in his early twen­ties. Refus­ing to pick up the search for a cure where his father had fal­tered, Dad had nowhere to turn. At the time, foot­ballers and film stars grew giant comb-overs, or employed wigs to hide their shame — the Vin Diesels and Fred­die Ljun­bergs were light-years away, and his fashion-conscious peers favoured unruly locks.

This was a dif­fi­cult time for the bald, when the blessed sanc­tu­ary of for­mal head­gear had been aban­doned and folk-heroes seemed immune to the shiny touch of Male Pat­tern Bald­ness. So, in his wed­ding pho­tos, my Dad sports a hair­cut his­tory has con­signed to the salon floor — a sort of longish, pointy fringe dan­gling from the remains of his hair­line at the front, with collar-length back and sides. A rather unin­spired solu­tion to an age-old prob­lem.

At 14, when I came to a full under­stand­ing of the fate that awaited me, things were dif­fer­ent. Baldies, though still los­ing out to their fully-furred peers, no longer felt shame at their loss. Main­stream role-models were begin­ning to appear, and fashion’s appro­pri­a­tion of styles sported among homo­sex­ual sub­cul­tures even gave the look an air of trendi­ness — if you were brave enough to opt out of hair com­pletely. I vowed to avoid the indig­ni­ties of my fore­bears, and go bald grace­fully, even pow­er­fully, when the time finally came.

But fash­ions change, and by the time my hair’s resolve began to wane, at 25, mine did too. At first, con­scious of the losses I was suf­fer­ing at the front line, in keep­ing with my teenage vow I ordered a com­plete tac­ti­cal with­drawal in the form of no-nonsense, five quid, num­ber 2 crops. The prob­lem with those, I soon dis­cov­ered, was that, iconic as many bald men were, I was no Vin Diesel. Not only that but, in newly-class con­scious Britain, shaved heads were once again becom­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a social group I’d always been keen to dis­tance myself from. The girls dried up.

Anguished, I took extreme mea­sures and a Mach 3 to my bonce, in the hope that more con­vic­tion was all I needed. At this stage, bespec­ta­cled and cruelly-shorn, I resem­bled an egg with glasses — fine attire for a dis­tin­guished media pro­fes­sional, but to a man of irreg­u­lar income, sur­viv­ing on his wits and charm, it’s the kiss of death. At this stage, even some friends stopped call­ing. I had hit bot­tom. With nowhere to go, shamed and gripped by a lone­li­ness I had hith­erto thought unimag­in­able, I walked the streets of Lon­don, a woolly hat my only com­pan­ion, resigned to my fate.

It was then that I saw them. At my low­est point, I wan­dered into a bar in Shored­itch, and there they were — bald­ing men, dig­ni­fied and proud, pass­ing for norms among the hairy, and even talk­ing to girls. At first, I won­dered why they weren’t spot­ted — why the crowds were not turn­ing on them and denounc­ing the strangers in their midst. I sat, a bald­ing out­cast, in the cor­ner and watched the crowd. Soon I began to iden­tify types. The ‘crown of thorns’ was the first: a jagged affair, with spikes teased and gelled some inches from the sur­face of the skull, tot­ter­ing on roots that had clearly thinned beyond the help of con­ven­tional hair design.

Then there came into my field of vision a crea­ture whose widow’s peak was clearly vis­i­ble to my ana­lyt­i­cal gaze, who moved to speak to a woman in black who coquet­tishly reached up to touch the curly cor­nish pasty-crust of a mohi­can he had wisely grown to fool the unini­ti­ated. I caught his gaze as the woman turned to the bar, and the look of unfeel­ing hate he directed at me, the sole reminder of all his fail­ings in this haven, froze me to the mar­row. It was then I saw the style for me: a style I came to think of as the ’smoke and mirrors’ – patches of hair from other, nor­mally unused areas of the head art­fully teased and tugged to fill in the cracks fixed with seemingly-powerful unguents — and was reborn. I vowed to join its owner in his dig­nity and, quit­ting the bar before pasty-head could reveal me, I jour­neyed home; my vigour renewed, my ardour restored.

Night after night I scoured the inter­net for source images as my hair, such as it was, grew back. I stud­ied Bald Men’s Last Hair­cuts through his­tory, and dis­cov­ered a world unknown to me in my hairy youth. Napoleon Bona­parte, for instance, was an early pio­neer of the BMLH. I dis­cov­ered con­tem­po­rary celebrity bald­ness in droves — who knew this man was bald­ing, for instance? Or that this man had a reced­ing hair­line? These men, suc­cess­ful artists revered by many, were clearly employ­ing the tehniques pio­neered by the strange cult I’d encoun­tered on my lonely traipse around town. I dug deeper. My research lead me to believe that, in fact, it was this man who — though fail­ing to achieve a con­vinc­ing BMLH before final and inescapable bald­ness set in — re-discovered Napoleon’s impor­tant research and laid the foun­da­tions that allowed the field of con­tem­po­rary BMLH devel­op­ment to flourish.

After some months, I judged my hair to be of a rea­son­able length for the BMLH tech­ni­cian I’d located in the West End to work with, and made an appoint­ment with Jacqui, a true artist at the top of her game. Tech­niques as keenly-honed as her own would not come cheap, I knew, but the results — the chance to cast off my hat and rejoin the wider com­mu­nity with my head held high — were worth any sacrifice.

Sat in Jacqui’s chair, under the harsh light of the salon’s halo­gen lamps, my hopes fal­tered for a moment — surely she would take one look at my high fore­head, widow’s peak and some­what sparse hair­line and send me back to those wretched fiver-a-time Sweeny Todds from whom I’d sought suc­cour? But no — Jacqui’s eye proved wor­thy of her rep­u­ta­tion and, hav­ing cur­so­rily assessed the qual­ity of the raw mate­ri­als, she out­lined her plan.

Our deceit would be grand: the sparse hair at the front of my scalp would be trimmed short, and sculpted into a solid-seeming defen­sive wall of short hair, parted left to right, cov­er­ing one half of my widow’s peak. At this point, the dreaded word ‘comb-over’ flashed into my mind, but Jacqui seem­ing to sense my unease, quickly combed the hair at the left of my head for­ward clos­ing the gap the side-parting would cause. Then came her master-stroke. Jacqui planned to leave my hair long and lay­ered at the back, so that it too could be teased for­ward, in tou­sled clumps to sup­port the sparse areas of the front, and add an impres­sion of con­spic­u­ous ‘hairi­ness’ to the back of my head. It would be a mas­ter­piece of BMLH design that none but the most learned BMLH scholar could spot. The final touch would be a lib­eral help­ing of mould­ing clay to pick out the indi­vid­ual details. Jacqui set to work.

The results were more than I could have ever hoped for. After years of advanc­ing mis­ery as my hair­line slowly receded, I had a hair­style again — and it was fash­ion­able. Col­leagues and friends who’d once deserted me returned in droves to pay their respects — some even asked where I’d gone to achieve such results. The kind of famous com­par­isons I received from strangers switched from ‘Ian His­lop’ and ‘the drum­mer from Ash’ to ‘Char­lie from Lost’ and, though my research sug­gests the actor who plays this char­ac­ter is, in fact, a BMLH wearer him­self, I felt the joy of a favourable com­par­i­son for the first time in years. I was free.

It tran­spires that wear­ing a BMLH is not with­out its draw­backs. I have to stay out of the wind, and ensure that I never allow any­one to see my head from above, for fear of reveal­ing the work upon which my dig­nity rests. As such, I have dis­con­tin­ued rela­tion­ships with all friends who stand more than three inches taller than my mod­est 5 foot seven, and must soon seek work in less blus­tery climes. I admit I’ve lost pay through ’sick days’ taken when, from my bath­room win­dow, I see wind in the trees that would, were I to ven­ture out­side, cause the noto­ri­ous ‘trap­door’ effect com­mon to many BMLHs. The net effect has, how­ever, been pos­i­tive. I now have a won­der­ful girl­friend (shorter than me, of course) and have, on Jacqui’s advice, allowed my beard to grow long, to add to the over­all impres­sion of hairi­ness. As my hair con­tin­ues to fall, I will fol­low Jacqui’s instruc­tion to up the quan­tity of mould­ing clay accordingly.

There are times when, on first wak­ing, I see the truth. In these moments, as I fran­ti­cally work the mould­ing clay to the roots of my hair as my men­tor instructs, I sus­pect I may one day end up apply­ing more clay than there is hair on my head, to main­tain my deceit. But I don’t dwell on these thoughts long. For now, at least, I’m happy. Albeit not from every angle.