show some skin.

(clickbait for vulnerable masculinity.)

every lego minifigure starts out bald. just sayin’.

in this month of movember where men all over the world are trying to grow facial hair in support of men’s physical and mental health, i just want to hit the brakes and reflect on the other side of it:

when the hair don’t grow like it used to.

back in may 2023, i shared some of these thoughts on instagram (RIP) and want to revisit them, considering the growth that the past 20 months have brought. when i initially approached the topic, i was scared as hell to address it online. as in: had a panic attack after i posted, removed the post, felt like i wasn’t being authentic, and reposted all in the span of five minutes. but, the amount of comments and private messages from men or their partners expressing what a core fear this is for them was overwhelming. as was the gratitude for someone being brave enough to speak up about it.

as a teen, my hair was my identity. every week, it was a different color and in a funky style. from pomades to waxes and glues, hair product was always at my disposal. my mom and sister were both hair dressers, which helped. when i was 13, my mom bleached my hair for the first time (omg it burned!!!). when i was 15, i colored it electric blue and spiked it something fierce. some drunk guy at a pizza joint thought it was the funniest thing he had ever seen and told me it looked like i had stabbed a smurf with my hair. in 10th grade chemistry, i showed up half an hour late to class because i spent the morning coloring my hair fire engine red like mike shinoda from linkin park because it looked hella cool in the music video for “in the end”. and lest we forget the blue-black and emo styles. freaking pete wentz hair with short sides and emo bangs- with my own chunky white highlights that i added in the mix (p.s. from the age of 14 onwards, i colored my own hair and even my friends’).

the 2000s steve hair starter pack.

“what color are you going to do next week!?”
coworkers asked in anticipation. it was a challenge to see what crazy look i could pull off next. and i did not disappoint.
my formative childhood years endured a lot of chaos- things out of my control.
but, my hair was something that i could control.
i found my identity in it. (this warrants the repetition).

i had a high hairline pretty much from birth.
a “widow’s peak” they called it.
i used to think that the term referred to a mountaintop, but five minutes ago, wikipedia taught me that back in 1530, actual widows wore a hood of mourning styled to come to a point in the front. heh- thanks internet- you have satisfied me once again!
fortunately, i found hairstyles that would mask the issue.
in my gut i knew that every time i washed the ice spiker glue gel out of my hair, that it required less and less shampoo…

i’ll never forget seeing it in a photo for the first time:
the spot.
my world stopped. it was an unflattering photo, to say the least.
the bald spot on the crown of my head was 10x bigger than i anticipated.
it felt like a lie. surely someone had photoshopped that nightmare onto me because it sure as hell wasn’t what i saw in the mirror every morning.

for awhile, i thought: “screw it” and embraced the hair i had left and color it blue spruce anyways (which is a fascinating color if you want to spice things up). but, all i was doing was painting the exposed 60% of my bald scalp. i found a photo of that color from 2020 with a photo of my daughter- i look so dumb haha!
i wore a hat everywhere. even on facetime calls. pretended it was “who i was”- the cool guy always in a cap or beanie. that’s what artists do, right? wear a beanie because they are true hipsters? (or a toque, as it’s known in my home and native land).
a hat was the last semblance of solace. and no photos were to be taken of me without one.
i was lying to myself.

i could take pills if i wanted. or “lotions and potions” as i’ve heard them described.
i’ve seen on reels that there’s this dude in korea who can give you a faux hair transplant, glue actual hair to your head and style it for a few thousand bucks. let’s go!!
as they say, you can stay bitter or you can get better. and i was so done with being bitter.

after the instagram (RIP) illustration/post bounced around the interwebs, i had a guy from the UK reach out that was starting up a program for men called “the bald men’s academy” (very formal title. but, no uniform required)- focusing on accepting hair loss and becoming physically fit as a means of empowerment. i reluctantly joined the group test pilot because now i was coupling the good times of going bald with my body dysmorphia… but i was also riding the high of personal development.
the intake form asked what my primary goal was with the program. i wrote:
i don’t want to end up being the bald, fat dad (à la homer simpson) as i get older.
apparently, that’s what everyone in the program wrote.
the academy required me log all of my food, water, and exercise, submit photos and meet occasionally with the coach over zoom for emotional hair loss therapy.
the 2024 outcome: i’m still working on the getting physically fit part of the health journey and grew immensely in embracing my bald head dome.
a goal that i set for myself was that by the end of 2023, i would trim my hair down with a buzzer as low as it would go and in 2024, i would shave it bald.
last year, the emotions hit hard when i grabbed the trimmer to trim my hair lower than ever before.
i cried. nay, sobbed and shook- cutting my head with a trembling buzzer.
i wiped my tears and noticed that it actually didn’t look so bad after all with the short stubble.

two pieces of advice that my coach gave me:
1) picture the man you want to be 2 years from now- and show up with that same level of confidence today.
2) the world that you’re creating in your head isn’t real.
as you walk through public spaces with anxiety about what people will see, despite what you might think- no one really notices or gives a shit. we’re all too preoccupied with the same insecurities of how others perceive us.
bottom line: the only people that should care how you look are you and your partner. the end.

“hair loss is god’s way of telling me i’m human”
-bruce willis

those truth bombs tore me to shreds. i try to keep these truths at the forefront of my mind, and i’d be lying if i said it wasn’t a struggle. but, it gets easier.
oh my god, the first time i went cap off for my first facetime call (is that right, a facetime ‘call’? is that the same redundancy as saying ‘ATM machine?’) was so liberating!
last week, it was time to commit to my 2024 goal: fully bald.
i purchased an electric Freebird head shaver from because i needed to take matters into my own hands. (and bless my supportive wife’s heart for offering to buzz my head for the past year because it takes her 1/4 of the time it takes me).
i was bracing for tears as the shaver met my head to take the remaining hairs down to the scalp. and my reaction when i was done was:

meh.

oddly, i think my inner fears were searching for that dopamine hit of gutted pain to ride high on.
and i didn’t have anything to feed them anymore. i’m sure there’s research as to why this is, but i actually felt disappointed that i wasn’t upset.
i wrote down on a note in my phone: my fears are boring.
i guess the bald look suits me. so, move along.

if you’re a man, i bet you’ve cowered under the thought of the crippling fear of losing your hair at some point. and if you have a male partner, he’s probably scared of this on some level- whether he says it or not.
you see, the homer simpson’s don’t need to represent the stigma of hair loss. but, neither do the vin diesel's or the dwayne-the-rock-johnson’s.
nor do they get to decide what your masculinity looks like.
you get to.
maybe the most powerful thing that i- or any of us- can do is to embrace our frailty. because your insecurities don’t make you any less of a person, nor does showing more skin on top of my head make me any less of a man.
and maybe, in time, we will learn how to better embrace and celebrate those flaws that actually unite us.

until then, picture the confident person you want to be 2 years from now and show up as them today. because, hell, we could really use that person.