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I mean is it? At 25 it is hard for me to accept but meds have side effects and hair transplants leave scars and is expensive. I know tons of bald guys who are awesome guys with good attitudes and date good looking woman. I mean if you are good looking already should hair really matter? Just curious about what guys think about this.
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Yes it is
They are lots of bald, buzzed men in the world
We just have to get used to the fact that we are losing our hair and accept it for what it is .
Easier said than done though
We can fight it with pills, lotions , laser combs, surgery ( basically an expensive comb over ) but in the end we will never have the full head of hair we had as a teenager . Better to just buzz it and go and enjoy life rather than spend thousands of dollars and fight a never ending losing battle
I wish I could do what I preach
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I agree totally. I think just accepting it is the way to go. Its funny i find that some of my favorite men are in fact bald like Micheal Jordan and Bruce Willis. I wish i could be this accepting of my hair loss too as I suffer from BDD so i find it hard to accept flaws about myself. I guess just trying to make it into a positive.Comment
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I am in my early 30's and at least half of my friends are already bald or noticeably thinning and none of them seem to be obsessed about it. A lot of them even joke about it. Most of them are with great women, have good jobs, etc. I certainly don't think any of them are depressed about it. These hair loss forums tend to attract people who are overly obsessed with this problem but the people here are not representative of the overall population, in which 75% of all men will be affected by hair loss and yet most continue to live normal lives.Comment
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Is anybody ever completely satisfied and happy about anything in our lives, especially our bodies? If it isn't your hair, it is bound to be something else. I guess the best to hope for is to come to some kind of reconciliation with hair loss and try to improve the quality of your life in other ways. Easier said than done, I know, but within the real of possibility.
I am at the stage where I still have a decent amount of hair and taking medication and possibly a small HT are still excellent options. The fight isn't over for those like myself and I am not yet ready to admit defeat. Only when all seems lost will I feel compelled to accept my hair is gone. When that time comes I don't think it will be as difficult as one might expect.
As a caveat to the above, I don't think it would be as easy for me to accept my hair loss if I were younger (I'm 35) and wasn't in a loving long term relationship. I didn't even experience noticeable hair loss until a few years ago. I can't even imagine what it would be like to be young, single and suffering hair loss. My heart goes out to those who are.Comment
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This is an interesting topic. I don't know, I could never just accept losing my hair since I really hate the way a bald head looks. Hell, I even think Bruce Willis looks like shit and a lot of people use him as an example of a bald guy who supposedly looks good. I'm also in my early 30's and when I was at a different gym yesterday, I couldn't stand the fact that basically every guy my age there had a full head of hair and I was the only one who was going bald. It is just such a negative shot to my confidence, especially since people used to (and still somewhat do) identify me with a full head of long hair. I was always the 'metalhead' in certain circles, and especially when I was among friends who were not into rock n roll. That's why hair loss is such a massive blow to my identity, because for years I loved looking like all of my rock n roll heroes and now that look is being taken away from me. And that having that look meant more to me than anything.
That being said, I agree with Jimbo on several things. Mainly that I would never get a hair transplant either. Most of the transplant results that I've seen on here do not impress me in the slightest. Basically, they replace bald head with a thinning head of hair and I don't want to worry about covering up a permanent head scarring for the rest of my life. If these hair transplant could somehow regrow a full head of hair, then I'd jump at the chance. But these transplants don't even achieve any regrowth, all they do is mechanically move hair from one part of the head to another. Man, today's very limited options for hair loss piss me off so much!
With regards to people not letting hair loss bother them: one of my friends is a singer in a band and has been wearing a semi-permanent system/wig for almost 15 years now. I don't think he could ever deal with going bald. The problem is that plenty of people notice that it's a wig, and that is the last thing that I would want. My other friend finally got a wig too about 5 years ago after suffering from NW6 hair loss for at least 10 years. It seems like this wig has just done wonders for his confidence. People nickname him at work after a famous movie star with a full head of hair and he just loves it. I shudder to think about what his nickname would be with his old NW6 hair loss pattern. And I haven't heard anyone comment on his hair being fake yet, but he's not in a highly visible position like my friend who is a lead singer. One of my other friends hides under a hat all the time. He won't go into bars that don't allow hats and I've only seen him without a hat twice, and I've known him for almost 10 years. I have two friends who don't seem to give a shit about their hair loss either, one doesn't even care when people make fun of his hair loss. I could never deal with people making fun of my hair loss, I would have to deck them or do something. And that's the other problem too: that it is completely acceptable to make fun of baldness. I've seen baldness made fun of on everything from baseball games to Jeopardy. Just imagine if some one made fun of a person's race or gender on TV in the same way that they make fun of baldness? That person would booted of television so fast that their head would spin.
I find baldness so tough for me to accept. I never dreamed of looking like a bald man, and I just can't simply 'accept it'. Oftentimes when I see a man with a full head of hair walk by, I say to myself "I would give anything to have that full head of hair again". The problem is that we're just given such limited options to fight hair loss, despite the fact that I believe the most people would be willing to fight baldness to the death if given effective options to combat it. But I guess I would rather shave my head than worry about covering up head scarring for the rest of my life. I don't know anymore, this hair loss has totally been destroying my life for the past year and a half. I need to get either drunk or high now when I go out in order to have the good time that I used to have back when I had a full head of hair. I dunno, life sucks for some while other literally is great for others for no rhyme or reason at all.Comment
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Mack, it's cool that you're in a long term relationship, and if I was, I think hair loss would be easier to deal with for me. I'm about your age (33) and I've been dealing with noticeable hair loss for about a year and a half now. It was probably noticeable before that, but I didn't notice it at the time and it therefore didn't inhibit me. But I'm single and I sure as shit don't want to attract fat, ugly women just because I'm losing my hair. If I was in a great relationship like you seem to be in, then I think that hair loss would affect me a lot less drastically than it is now. Just out of curiosity, what does your girlfriend think about your hair loss? Does she want you to try to stop it or does she not care either way? After I started noticeably losing my hair, I had a relatively short relationship with this one girl and she didn't seem to notice or care.Comment
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Its a shame that you think this way. You wont attract a fat and ugly woman just because you are losing your hair except of course if your a fat and ugly man. Wouldnt you rather a girl meet you when losing your hair so she knows what to expect and she loves you no matter what than if you started losing your hair during the relationship and found out how shallow she is and leaves you.Comment
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I'm actually married and have been for almost six years, together for eleven. She feels as you might expect a lot of spouses or significant others of hair loss suffers feel. She didn't care about my hair and thought it was silly that I obsessed so much over my hair and maybe a little offended that I would think her affection for me was contingent on the number of hair follicles currently gracing my ever thinning scalp.
For a long time I found her attitude about my hair loss exceptionally bothersome. She wasn't trying to be mean at all, quite the contrary. From her perspective, her attitude was meant to be affirming and loving, not cold and patronizing. She loves me and because it isn't an issue for her she can't fathom why it would be for me.
However, from my perspective her repeated off handed dismissals of an issue that was very important and emotional devastating for me was extremely hurtful. We arrived at a stale mate about my hair loss, she continued to think I was silly and obsessive and I continued to resent her lack of sympathy and understanding. This kept up for a while until I found a way to make the issue of my hair loss relevant to her by comparing the feelings I was having about my hair to feelings she was having about her own body.
My wife is currently pregnant with our first child(conceived while on Propecia by the way). As any woman who has been pregnant can attest, the body goes through some major changes. Women gain weight and develop stretch marks, and often have a very difficult time adjusting to the changes happening to their bodies.
On one particular day she was upset about her weight gain and the stretch marks forming on her swollen belly. I have to admit I initially thought she was being silly and over emotional. I immediately ran through the prerequisite reassurances by telling her that all woman go through these changes and that I didn't find her any less attractive, and that I still loved her very much stretch marks or no stretch marks.
At that moment it occurred to me that the way I was approaching my wife about her body issues was nearly identical to the way she had approached me about my hair loss, and that I was very wrong. Neither of us meant to hurt the other but inadvertently did because we couldn't relate our similar feelings about our bodies.
I suggested to her very gingerly that maybe the way she was feeling about her body was the same way I was feeling about my hair. Looking at it that way made it a lot easier for her to understand where I was coming from. I could literally see a look of understanding develop on her face as we talked.
As you mentioned before, one of the toughest parts of losing hair is reconciling your perception of yourself as a person with hair with the reality that you losing it or have lost it. The good thing is that most people feel that way about some part of their body so at least the potential to relate to our plight is there.Comment
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Very interesting post once again Mack. Your wife sounds like a great person, in that she reacted the way that she did when you told her about your worries with regards to hair loss. I'm not sure that most women would react the same way. I remember I once went out with this girl who liked me because I looked like one of her favorite metal musicians. I don't want women to now not go out with me because I look like some undesirable balding character.
I can see how you may have found your wife's reaction to your hair loss quite bothersome. But also, it's great that she is not shallow and doesn't overreact about hair loss like I believe many would do. That being said though, I can see how you were bothered by that reaction. After all, as I always say, people who don't experience hair loss for themselves can never fully comprehend the disastrous effects that hair loss can have for a person. I hung out with my hair stylist (nice young lady and a friend of mine) and confided in her about my hair loss. Although she reacted very compassionately and said that most women don't care about hair loss, I felt that she was partly saying this to patronize me, and also said it so as not to hurt my feelings. But she really couldn't understand the disastrous effects of hair loss because she'd never been through it herself. Hell, I couldn't even comprehend the disastrous effects of hair loss before it unfortunately happened to me.
That's an interesting analogy with regards to how you equated to your wife her perceived negative body image while being pregnant to your own hair loss. I think the main difference though is that her own weight gain etc. from being pregnant is only temporary while hair loss is unfortunately permanent. And that's what's so maddening to me about hair loss, that it's effects are permanent and there's really no effective way to regrow hair. I dunno man, I'm just so down because of this hair loss. But thanks for the post dude, that was very informative.Comment
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