32 and trying to cope

[mpalardy]

Don't know what else to do about this, so I guess I'll post on a forum.

Recently, I had to get a new driver's license and with it a new photograph. Now I had noted that my top hair was starting to thin when I was 25 (I'm 32 now), but over the years the rate of change was so slow that I scarcely noticed any difference. Then I saw these photos.

I guess nature will have to take its course, as I don't plan on using drugs or transplants or suchlike. They're a bit too pricey. But even still, this is traumatizing me. I'm a writer; when I was a young man I had a long, lustrous mane of hair down to the middle of my back. Even when I trimmed it to a normal man's length, it was still one of my best features. Now when I take my hat off, I have thin hairs flying in every which direction--either that or Brylcreemed down, in which case I think, my hair being medium brown, they form an unfavourable contrast with my ivory scalp.

Some say shave or get a crew cut, but I've always found these styles very ugly. It's just too associated with soldiers (no offense to those who have honourably served), hooligans, and mental patients. And less macho types like myself who've gone that route, like Michael Stipe or Andre Agassi, for instance, just seem somewhat effete to me. So I'm planning on hitting the gym and riding an exercise bike until I puke, so as to make my face more gaunt; I could bear losing 10-15 pounds anyway, and I'd say that the thinner a bald man is, the better he looks. Thereafter, if I can't have my dashing and debonair locks, I figure I can at least grow my beard to two or three inches, providing I can keep it neat, kempt, and well-barbered.

I know they say that baldness matters very little to women, but it matters to me. It's like I don't look like myself any longer, but rather someone else, some much more uninteresting figure, someone quite less vital and robust, not the type of person a woman or an employer would take a chance on.

Maybe I'm just being vain, but help me out, fellows. This is affecting me; I scarcely go anywhere now where I'll have to doff my beret. When the fact that you were losing your hair really hit you hard, what did you do to change your appearance? Did you think that you didn't look like yourself any longer? How did you cope with it?

Thanks for entertaining my venting here.