The Bald Identity: The joys of male pattern baldness 🤔
I wrote this post for any guy who is currently experiencing the panic of male pattern baldness. Trust me, it gets worse. But guess what?… then it gets better.
In my late teens, I decided to grow an afro. My hair growth coincided with my decision to go to university, so, in many ways, my afro was a symbol of my intellectual growth and flourishing independence. It represented autonomy. It represented defiance. It represented freedom. And It was beautiful, if I do say so myself.
That being said, it also represented something that I hadn’t quite thought of at the time. It also represented fear. In effect, my afro was part statement and part shield. People saw the hair before they saw me, and so it made it easier for me to hide in plain sight. I was counting on people to equate my afro with power, confidence and self-assuredness in the hopes that the distance between those things and my reality would be less apparent.
Mind you, I have never been described as diffident, by any means, but in open spaces such as university, it was always important to have the deportment of someone far more confident than they truly were, and an afro helped me to do that.
I first noticed my hair loss when I was about twenty-one. Up until then, I had just convinced myself that any thinning of hair was stress-related and therefore, reversible. Boy was I wrong. I can only describe the realisation of going bald as pure, unfiltered, unrelenting panic.
The panic of hair loss only led to more panic and accelerated hair loss. It was a miserable cycle of events. Sadly, I had no time to mope because I had to find a real job, and despite my afro being welcomed at university, the world of work was not so kind or understanding. The old panic of thinning hair was replaced with a new one - I had to chop it all off…and go bald.
It took me a whole month of deliberation before I resigned myself to the barber’s chair. I suppose my biggest fear was that I didn't know what my head shape was going to look like. What if, beneath my crown, my head had transformed and now resembled a crusty rhombus or misshapen tangerine? As a contingency plan, I was going to speak to my uncle about converting to Islam. At least then I’d be able to wear a kufi without anyone asking me probing questions. If I couldn’t hide behind my afro then I’d hide behind religion. Yes, seriously.
I thought the walk home from the barber’s would have been one of shame, but it wasn’t. In fact, it was liberating. For the first time in years, people were looking directly in my face, not at my hair and then my face. Additionally, when people did look at the shining globe that was now my head, they didn't recoil in terror as I had imagined they would. Instead, people simply smiled and went on their way.
It has been about eight years since I said goodbye to my afro and nowadays I’ve had to focus more on what’s in my skull instead of what’s on it. The journey forced me to truly focus on building my self-esteem by shedding my crown, the very thing I believed to be the source of my confidence. 👑
Be prepared. Losing your hair will bring all of your fears and insecurities bubbling to the surface with effervescent vigour. However, once the waters settle, you will realise that your hair isn’t the source of your confidence. It’s only an extension. Panic and stress don’t burn as many calories as they should, so a better use of your time would be to spend time building your confidence and paying careful attention to your emotional well-being. That way, when your hair takes its final bow, you will still be able to look in the mirror and see more of what you’ve gained as opposed to what you’ve lost.
Hair today, better tomorrow.
