I’m bald. Yes, totally hairless on the dome. But don’t send me a bouquet of consolation roses. I love being bald and, after I explain why, I hope many male readers will reach for their razors.
First of all, I’ve been – if not bald – at least follically challenged from a young age. As a child, my mother made the local barber give me a crew cut every time. I now believe she was simply chasing value for money – the more hair you cut, the more kilograms of hair per rupee you get, and the less often you need to visit the barber. At the time, though, she gave me a nobler reason: “If you keep cutting your hair close to the roots, it will grow long and lustrous when you’re older.”
She said it with such conviction that I kept up the crew cut habit long after she’d lost any say in the matter. In my thirties, when I first faced the prospect of hair loss, I actually doubled down, visiting my barber almost before his clippers had cooled from my last visit.
It took a couple of years of steady hair shedding for the realisation to hit me: I was not going to crew-cut my way to lustrous locks. So, if you’re a young man getting the same advice from your mom and you want long hair – ignore her. Grow it now, while you can.
In my case, I’d got so used to the crew-cut look that, after watching the hair leave me for a few years, I decided to accelerate the process and finish it off in one go. I went fully bald.
And boy, was it a good decision! Life is so much easier for a bald man than one bearing the weight of a full head of hair on his tender shoulder.
A man with no hair can never have a “bad hair day”. I’ve often encountered male colleagues looking as if they came straight from their bed to the office, pausing only to pull on a pair of trousers. It may well be what happened because I too have sometimes woken up at 0833 on the exact day of the “9am super-important management presentation” but it never showed on me. (Having retired I can wake up at 0833 every day but, as Murphy’s Law dictates, I can now rarely sleep beyond 6am.)
A bald plate is also much easier to travel with. In my hirsute days, I remember turning on the shower of my fancy hotel room, pumping body soap into my palm and luxuriously lathering my legs, back, stomach and face, often simultaneously murdering a Kishore Kumar song, loudly.
Then, when it was time to attack the head, I’d realise I’d forgotten which of the bottles contained shampoo. I’d open my eyes to check and suffer immeasurably when the soap entered my eyes. Just thinking about that ghastly experience sometimes causes my eyes to water.
But now, with a bald plate I simply DON’T CARE. Eyes closed, I reach forward, squirt soap or shampoo, lather, enjoy singing, with eyes intact throughout. It’s a liberating feeling. Monks, I’m told, experience something similar when they go into deep meditation.
And, when it comes to getting a bang for your buck, few things can beat a bald head. No more dollars squandered at the salon. I shave my own head. And, after careful experimentation, I’ve found that the same Gillette Fusion blade that I was discarding after a month’s use has sufficient edge in it to accommodate the three or four head shaves I need each month. So, apart from the prudent one-time investment in a second razor, my head shave actually costs me nothing, blade-wise. (It does need more shaving foam, unfortunately.)
Being bald helps my tennis a bit, too. I won’t say it renders me more aerodynamic as I zip across the court because I don’t want my tennis buddies to laugh for the wrong reason on reading this. They know I don’t zip in the first place. But they will tell you that they’re often distracted by the sun suddenly in their eyes as it gets reflected off my bald plate causing them to fluff their shot.
And, as a humour writer, here’s the icing on my cake. Being bald gives me the fodder for at least one article a year.
In short, I have a head that costs nothing to maintain, travels without fuss, blinds opponents into gifting me points and generates one humour column a year. So: you know where your razor is. What are you waiting for?
Paddy Rangappa (https://www.linkedin.com/in/paddyrangappa/), an ex-CEO, now teaches humour for leaders; happiness at work; and marketing through consumer insights
