Hey Bald Man!

It seems that the only time you hear the unadulterated truth is when it comes from drunks . . . and children. Kids are brutally blunt, but it’s the five year olds who are especially skilled at the unintentional roasts. My little niece, Brianna is no exception. She once asked my mother why she was wearing makeup when makeup was supposed to make a person look pretty. Apparently, my mother’s makeup was not working for her. When her 2nd grade class was told to write nursing home patients a note, she wrote on hers “Hope you find a family soon,” as though the seniors were in some kind of animal shelter. Brianna once saw me changing my shirt by the pool and loudly asked, “Why are your boobs bigger than mom’s?” I had no quick, witty reply. I was too busy trying to get a dry shirt on my wet body due to the laughter that emanated from some lounging bystanders who overheard her question.

I babysat Bri a lot as she grew up. She provided me with many conundrums about growing old . . . especially in regards to losing my hair. I was follically-challenged as early as high school. There was enough of a bald spot on my head that I started wearing hats in my senior year. I could not have the mullet in the late ‘90s like Billy Ray Cyrus, but I came dangerously close to rocking a skullet.

I don’t know how a little kid learns that men are not cool with being bald, but some kids learn it quickly and early on. Their approach to the topic is simple in the beginning, and usually it is innocently interrogative. “Why is your head so shiny” was Bri’s first question to me about it. I don’t remember my answer to her, but I think even then she already knew that men were supposed to have hair. She used my lack of it against me many times over the years. At one of my birthday parties, she patted me on the head and yelled, “Race you to the moon!” She frequently referred to me as Baldemort; it was a few years later before I learned she was making word play on the antagonist “Voldemort” from the Harry Potter series.

Her observations about my barren head were definitely new. There were none of the classic barbs, such as chrome dome, cue ball, egg head, milk dud, uncle fester, curly, baldilocs, you’re one of the Baldwin brothers—or, as my mother would say, “you’re just having a bad head day.” No, the jeers from Brianna rose to a masterful, mixed-media presentation that nearly resembled art. On one of my birthdays, she presented me with a card titled, “Hey Bald Man,” and it contained the following poem:

Did she make that rhyme? I believe she did. In addition to my poem, I received ten heart stickers, three smiley faces, and a nice, bright-orange sun shining on me whilst I stood on a bed of lush green grass. She made my face rounder than a basketball, but she did not make me fat. My stickman body was a simple X, and that was attached to a neck longer than a baby giraffe’s. The word “bald” was underlined several times for emphasis. She used crayon, pen, and a marker and four different colors for her graphic art. More impressive than the rhyming, though, is that she appears to have created her own super hero. She donned me with a green mask so that I was reminiscent of a Ninja Turtle. Then she wrote me a super hero theme song, which sounded in my head like the opening theme to the original Bat Man television show, “Nananananana nananananananana BALD MAN!” I know not his powers, but a super hero was born.

All those nuances were obscured to me at first. It took some more analyzing of the card before I really came to appreciate it. My initial thoughts were that it was just another bald gag from a little kid. As such, I thought about giving her the common retorts one gives to little brats, such as Santa not being real or how she was adopted or how I wish I had a nephew instead. After reading the card from Bri, with her mother (my sister) sitting nearby smiling evilly, I even thought about reciting my own poem: “Roses are red, Violets are blue, You're a little bitch, And your mother is too.”

It’s not my fault God put all my hair on my back instead of my head. Besides, God gave me the perfect head and only gave her hair to cover her defective one. But adults are not allowed to argue with children. Had I actually not bitten my tongue, there would have been hell toupee. Fortunately, for all in the family, I simply said “thanks much, Bri!” My sister and niece might actually read this story one day, though, so saying all this in writing now is a strategic, meticulous method of still getting my jabs into them.

I would like to write that men should not be concerned about losing their hair. There’s nothing wrong with losing it, nothing to be ridiculed for. Yet, they are spending a billion dollars a year on male-pattern baldness. What Brianna did not know is that I shave my head. I never really thought of myself as truly bald. My hair still grows incredibly fast, dark, and thick on the sides and on the back of my head. And there is a large distinction between being bald and shaving your head bald. That’s been proven actually.

When Dr. Albert Mannes was a lecturer and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, he wrote about his findings from three different approaches he took to learn how men with no hair are perceived by others. Mannes got the inspiration for his experiment from becoming partly bald himself but then shaving the rest of his head.

In his first simple experiment, photographs of similarly dressed men—some with hair and some with shaved heads—were displayed to subjects. Instructions were given to rate the male photos on how powerful and influential they looked. Those with the shaved heads won in the rankings. In the second experiment, photos of four men were shown to test subjects, but the men in these photos were shown with hair and with their hair digitally removed. Although they were the same men in the photographs, the volunteers thought the men with shaved heads looked not only stronger but also taller. In his third experiment, Mannes got 552 male and female adults to look at written descriptions of men instead of photos. In this last experiment, the readers were shown the career, age, weight, and height of the men and whether they had a full head of hair, thinning hair, or a shaved head. The results were the same. Even without a photo to view, the men with a shaved head were thought to be more attractive.

It is important to know that the research participants were told the men in these experiments shaved their heads; they were not centrally referred to as bald. Perhaps a man who makes a decision to shave it all off is making a power move. On the other hand, perhaps his career, age, weight, and height would have made him attractive either way. Indeed, it is safe to assume that most men with a colorful, full head of hair are not going to shave it all off, because they think they are more attractive with it.

I am still shaved, not bald, but sadly I am no longer Bald Man. Brianna is all grown up now. She finished college and moved on with her life, as children tend to do. She’s married to a man with a full head of hair . . . so far. Bri and I have not spoken in years, and I have not seen her since she graduated high school. I still have the hard copy of her self-made birthday card that she gave me decades ago. It reminds me that sometimes in a man’s life, with or without hair, he can still be a super hero.