A Curious Kind of Prejudice: The Psychology of Baldness : Part 1

Hair!: Mankind's Historic Quest to End Baldness
by Gersh Kuntzman

Throughout the centuries, Man (not his real name) has tried everything to hide, treat and repair baldness, as well as a host of nostrums designed to coax hair growth from the scalp (or, at least, money from the wallets of unsuspecting baldies). Yet we stand on the brink of a truly historic epoch: Two drugs are now federally approved remedies for baldness and more are on the way while surgical techniques continue to improve, and even hairpieces are becoming acceptable again. Will baldness, the stigma it carries, and the profound psychological toll it takes on men soon be things of the past? Will bald men someday be electable? Are these even rhetorical questions?

Gersh Kuntzman takes you from the laboratories of Merck, maker of Propecia, to the operating rooms of the nation's best hair-transplant surgeons, to the rug men working on the cutting edge of artificial hair design. Hair! covers baldness like nothing before.

Chapter 1

"Although the constitution makes no mention of it, it would appear that fat people are now effectively excluded from running for high political office. Probably bald people as well."

- Neil Postman, 1985

On the wall of an examination room in the office of New York hair transplantation surgeon Dr. Michael Reed, strewn among his diplomas, medical society membership plaques and a certificate from a successfully completed liposuction workshop, is a framed passage from the Bible.

Seeing two verses from chapter two of the second Book of Kings on the wall of a cosmetic surgeon is somewhat startling-until it's put in proper context.

In the chapter, God tells the prophet Elijah that He (God) is taking him (Elijah) up to heaven. Hearing the news, the great prophet picks his friend Elisha as his successor (no doubt because the similarity in names would avoid confusion among the masses), and the two embark on a valedictory tour through Gilgal and Jericho. At the border with Jordan, Elijah parts the waters and the two continue on.

Neither man, the record states clearly, discusses his hair in any manner, although Elisha was, as we will find out later, bald.

After Elijah and Elisha arrive in Jordan, God sends a chariot of fire drawn by horses of fire to deliver his faithful prophet to heaven in a whirlwind, leaving the baldheaded Elisha to plot his next move. He quickly parts the waters and walks back to Jericho, a hardly subtle way of saying "I'm the man now."

"The spirit of Elijah," the Bible tells us, "doth rest on Elisha."

Yet he was, the record states clearly, still bald.

Anyone who could part the waters and be fully accepted by his people as Elijah's successor (despite the total lack of democracy in the selection process) should have other things on his mind than his balding pate. But Elisha was a man like any other man.

And this is hair loss we're talking about.

After tarrying a bit in Jericho and miraculously replenishing the town's barren soil (he really was the Man), Elisha decides to leave the city, employing that classic show-biz strategy of leaving the people wanting more.

But on his way out of town, he runs into several children who mock him. Rather than turn the other cheek (hey, this is the Old Testament, remember), Elisha becomes consumed by his anger at being teased by the children.

And that is the subject of the framed passage on Reed's wall. In it, Elisha quickly violates the third and sixth commandments-Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain, and Thou shalt not dispatch wild animals to tear apart a few wiseass kids:

And as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, "Go up, you bald head! Go up, you bald head!" And he turned back, and looked on them and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And two she-bears came out of the wood and mauled forty-two of them.

The biblical passage on Reed's office wall has a dual purpose. Of course it satirizes male vanity, but at the same time it also reassures Reed's bald patients that their obsession with hair is no mere symptom of today's orgiastic celebration of youth, but an ancient and still unresolved anxiety. While Reed's patients might choose a different method of retribution, they clearly see a small piece of themselves-successful, mature, adult men-standing on the roadside like Elisha, mocked for something completely outside of their control. Studies show, after all, that 60 percent of all bald men are teased at some point in their lives.

And, more important, the passage shows them that they are not alone: Baldness has been causing self-image problems for a long, long time.

In fact, the Bible, whose persistent refrain seems to be "Hair is good, bald is bad," plays a huge role in validating the prejudices of the nonbald.

Take the much-cited Samson and Delilah story, the most high-profile example of biblical hair-ism. It is more than just a parable about betrayal and a strong statement about male virility. In fact, it's practically a commercial for Propecia.

In the story, an angel of the Lord comes down to Manoah and tells him that his barren wife will soon bear him a son who will "deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines."

Not a bad deal, but there's only one catch: "No razor shall come on his head," lest the boy lose his powers.

Everything goes according to plan; Samson slays a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass and prepares to slay more when he meets Delilah, a harlot working the backrooms of Gaza. He falls for her like the mighty walls of Jericho, but she's a Philistine double agent and tricks him into revealing the source of his power (wow, the Good Book really is a good book).

Copyright © 2001 by Gersh Kuntzman.

About the Author

Gersh Kuntzman has been a New York newspaperman for more than a decade, most recently as a reporter and columnist for The New York Post. Kuntzman's weekly column, MetroGnome, roots out the quirky underside of New York life.