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.