How to Deal With Going Bald

On a lot of men, baldness is sexy. If you’re trying to tell me that you’d kick Jason Statham out of bed for eating biscuits, you’re not someone that I will be adding to my Christmas party list. An overreaction? According to you, perhaps. But yes, Jason Statham is ridiculous. And he’s not alone. Patrick Stewart, Vin Diesel, Bruce Willis and Stanley Tucci are others among the bald community – there’s actually a site dedicated to us man with little hair follicles on our head called www.baldrus.com if anybody fancies a laugh – who absolutely rock the naked head look.

But not everyone is quite as cool with losing their hair. Type in ‘thinning hair men’ into Google and there are countless articles giving advice on how to thicken your hair, how to style thinning hair without it looking like a tragic combover that would make Donald Trump blush, and of course, the ever popular hair restoring formulas and products such as Rogaine, Alpecin, Nourkrin, alongside many other ‘instant hair thickeners’ or caffeine shampoos that promise to ‘reduce the signs of balding and thinning hair’.

Is losing your hair really such a big deal, though? Apparently, yes. A survey conducted last year revealed that a massive 64% of men said that hair loss was a massive blow to their self-esteem. ‘Hair loss signals aging,’ says Albert Mannes, P.H.D., a researcher from the University Of Pennsylvania. ‘Thick hair has always been associated with youth and masculinity.’ A lot of people would definitely agree with him, including singer Will Young, who spoke of going bald as ’emasculating’, saying he ‘didn’t feel sexy any more’, and actor James Nesbitt, who said that his hair transplant in 2010 won him a legion of male fans who said that it ‘inspired’ them.

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So, if you are going bald, there are ways around it. Hair transplants have been publicly embraced by stars such as Wayne Rooney, Robbie Williams and Jason Gardiner, who have all openly admitted to having had them. It may also surprise you to know that a growing number of men are having hair extensions, with salons seeing a massive 200% rise in men seeking subtle ways to add more volume to their hair to match the hairstyles of David Beckham and Harry Styles. Is this pretty shallow? That’s one way to look at it. Is it shameful? Absolutely not. If this is giving confidence to men in ways that going bald might knock, then why not? As someone who’s been going bald since the age of 19 and tried rocking the bald look a few years ago – believe me, it wasn’t a success – I can definitely see the attraction.

However, there is another way to deal with losing your hair, and it’s incredibly cheesy, but it’s true. For God’s sake, embrace it. Just love yourself how you are. Stop trying to hide it with awful comb-overs and dodgy baseball caps. An excellent friend of mine, comedian and poet Jackie Hagan, once said that if there’s a part of yourself that you don’t like, and you try to hide, it makes your body cringe, and therefore it makes that part stand out. But if you rock it with confidence and style and flair, people won’t notice it half as much. Instead, they’ll notice you. We’ve got eyes. We’ve got souls. We’ve got beautiful personalities that are just waiting for someone to get to know them.

Or failing that, we’ve got some fabulous hair that we’ve got the receipt for in the kitchen.