I Started Going Bald at Age 19, and It Was Incredibly Traumatic. But Now I'm Glad It Happened.

And no, it's not because I learned an important Life Lesson™.

Oct 24, 2024

For the audio version of this article, read by the author, go here.

I started losing my hair at age nineteen.

I was a freshman in college, and it was incredibly traumatic. It didn’t help that I was also finally starting to come to terms with being gay — at a time when most of the only other gay people I knew were dead or dying of AIDS.

But looking back now, many years later, I’m kind of glad I lost my hair early — but probably not for the reason you think.

I won’t give the actual reason until the end of this article.

I’m sure it’s still difficult to go bald, especially as a young man, but I suspect it was worse back then.

You can tell precisely who society hates from its jokes, but most of us don’t realize the volume of certain jokes until we’re the butt of them.

And there were so many bald jokes — jokes about comb-overs, and toupees, and just how sad and horrifying it was to be bald. It was always a go-to sight gag.

That guy is wearing a toupee! Oh, my God, HOW PATHETIC!

*Bald men did not fare well in the media images of my youth.*

Okay, I get the message, I thought at the time. There is no possible way anyone could ever find a bald man attractive.

Also, my hair was an unusual color, a very striking auburn. One of my first boyfriends compared it to the color of autumn leaves. More than once, people had stopped me on the street to say, “Oh, my God, your hair is fantastic! I’ve never seen that color before.”

And suddenly, before I’d even had a chance to be a sexual being, it was all falling out.

I’m embarrassed to admit how furiously I tried to avoid my fate as a bald man.

I went to multiple doctors to discuss hair transplants and an equal number of specialists to be fitted for different kinds of hair pieces. But the transplants were far too expensive, and I wasn’t convinced that even the best toupees looked natural. Plus, everyone would know I was wearing a toupee, and we all knew how pathetic that was.

I tried the hair-loss drugs minoxidil and finasteride, but neither did anything for me.

I also attempted several home remedies I’d read about, including one twice-weekly treatment that I did for six months, made from essential oils and cayenne pepper. It was exactly as painful as it sounds.

For months, I went for weekly treatments in the offices of this “doctor” who I will at least credit with great theatrics: he had all these vividly colored potions he would rub into my scalp and this vibrating machine he would run over my head.

Finally, he suggested a “special” cure that was five times the current price, and at that point, even I wised up that not only was this guy not growing my hair back, I was being fleeced.

*Me, one of the last times I had “morning hair,” around age 21.*

But I was still desperate.

Around this time, I saw an ad for a “secret” herb from an ancient Chinese mystic that supposedly cured baldness. I promptly sent a cashier’s check for $200 — to an address in China, no less. This was back when $200 was almost my monthly rent, and I definitely did not have that much extra cash to throw around.

Incredibly, a few months later, my check was returned uncashed. I guess even that ancient Chinese mystic thought, No, this is just too pathetic. I gotta send this guy’s money back.

At this point, in my mid-20s, I finally realized I had no choice but to accept reality. So I shaved my head like all the other balding gay guys and tried to somehow live with my fate. Then I was lucky enough to meet Michael, who always made it clear that he liked me exactly the way I was.

But then a funny thing happened: in the greater society, baldness slowly became less of a joke. In certain very rare cases, it even became — dare I say it? — sexy.

I give most of the credit for this to the gay male community. My community can sometimes frustrate me to no end — with its superficial obsession with youth and looks, and its sometimes adolescent fixation on sex. But in the 90s and 00s, gay men started normalizing and eroticizing baldness in a truly remarkable way.

And — as always happens — the greater culture eventually picked up on this too, highlighting and celebrating celebrities like Stanley Tucci, Jason Stratham, Mike Colter, Vin Diesel, Ed Harris, Corey Stoll, and the host of that Hot Ones show on YouTube.

(I don’t know if other people find Hot Ones’ Sean Evans attractive, but I find him utterly adorable. It helps that he’s so smart and earnest.)

For a while in the 00s, it seemed like to be a movie action hero, you had to be bald.

*Wait, hold on, you’re telling me bald men* can *be sexy?*

And then, of course, there was Patrick Stewart, the star of Star Trek: The Next Generation, who, incidentally, also started going bald at 19. Lucky for him, it didn’t matter because he’s one of the most charismatic human beings who has ever lived.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that no person has done more to normalize baldness than Patrick Stewart. Suddenly, the coolest, most decent character in the entire universe was bald. And no one cared!

Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry was challenged by a reporter on the casting of bald Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, and I’ve always loved Roddenberry’s response.

"Surely by the 24th century, they would have found a cure for male pattern baldness," the reporter said.

"No,” said Roddenberry, “by the 24th century, no one will care."

Critics often accuse Hollywood of “social engineering” — of trying to manipulate people with their content, portraying the world they want to be, not the one that actually exists.

And I hate it as much as anyone when a TV show or movie seems more like a lecture than a story. Thing is, I don’t think this is what Hollywood has done with baldness at all. I think it was the previous paradigm — where bald people were always the butt of cruel jokes, or the villain, never the hero — that was giving people an inaccurate view of the world.

I think a very easy case can be made that Patrick Stewart, Stanley Tucci, Corey Stoll, and all the rest are objectively handsome men, bald or not. And Hollywood is simply acknowledging the obvious. If they’ve done any “social engineering,” it’s that they’ve showcased these men in ways that contribute to people’s expanding of their previous understanding of “hotness.”

And here’s a greater truth that these celebrities embody: confidence is sexy. So is self-acceptance.

No, seriously, this isn’t spin. Is there anything sexier?

Which brings me back to what I said at the beginning of this article — that I’m now kinda sorta glad I lost my hair at such a young age.

But it’s not because it finally taught me confidence and self-acceptance — or not only that.

I never say my real age online because I’m a working screenwriter, and there is a ton of ageism in Hollywood, and there is absolutely nothing to be gained by saying exactly how old I am.

But let’s just say it’s been almost forty years since that picture of me at age 21, above. And these days, I don’t think I look my age.

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