A few days ago I was staring intensely into the bathroom mirror while having a shave.
I’m not the biggest fan of mirrors, they’re a hindrance and they’re rarely at the beginning of an interesting story – but sometimes they’re a necessity.
Anyhow, there I am, having a shave, and I realised that on the left half of my head there were a significant portion of grey hairs and by significant portion I mean at least 20.
I wasn’t over the moon, being 19 and already greying, but it didn’t keep me awake at night – one thing that softened the blow was the repetitive thought of ‘thank fuck I’m not bald’.
But is being bald really that bad?
According to the BBC, the world spends $3.5bn (£2.7bn) on baldness cures every year – which is more money than the entire national budget of Macedonia.
Even Julius Cesar fought hard for his hair. Throughout his life he had battled with baldness but as he turned almost entirely bald Cleopatra lovingly made him a homemade concoction to grow his hair back made from ground-up mice, horse teeth and bear grease. It didn’t work.
However is it worth it? A recent study suggests it most certainly is not.
Frank Muscarella, a psychologist at Barry University has spent a long time investigating baldness and the psychology behind it and he believes we should embrace it (and he’s not bald…).
After working on numerous studies, Frank concludes that although women do not find balder men more attractive than others they believe they are more intelligent, influential, knowledgeable, well-educated, high social status, honest and helpful.
His theory is that baldness has evolved to become synonymous with a higher status in society.
He said:
If you think about it, early human males would have been running around completely naked and completely hairy, so you can imagine a big shaggy head of hair, a big bushy moustache – all kinds of body hair – they would have been very kind of threatening looking.
By balding you would be perceived as unique and different – yet interestingly, more dominant.
Another recent study found that men who have a receding hairline or bald spots before the age of 30 were up to 45% less likely to develop prostate cancer later on in life.
25-30 per cent of all males will be balding by their 30th birthday so my advice is ditch the Rooney or the caffeine infused shampoo and roll with it.
