Wisdom by Hindsight
Grey hair is preferred by most men to no hair. And I leave those worthies who dye their hair to retain a youthful look out of this post.
And I think that a combination of grey hair and no hair beats everything in sight.
Tammy and I are biased.
This is my contribution to the Weekly Loose Bloggers’ Consortium (LBC) endeavour to post on one single topic every Friday. Today’s topic has been suggested by me. I hope that you enjoyed reading my contribution.
Taklu is a Hindi word that means bald.I am a taklu.
Almost all my friends and male relatives are too. Our group of friends who regularly visit the local joggers park is called JPTC. Joggers Park Taklu Club.
I started to grey when I was around eighteen and started losing hair on my head in my late forties. Now, I have a nice friar’s fringe and a few strands of hair on the top. I insist on getting a discount from my barber because there is so little for him to trim and he always quips that it is more difficult to find hair to trim.
I have known many others who tried to hide the greying process by dying their hair and the balding ones by using all kinds of advertised lotions to stop the hair from falling. I am yet to come across anyone who succeeded in the latter though.
There are others who grow hair on one side or in the back and bring it either across the pate or forward to hide the bald patch. I am usually amused to see this as it is always obvious and considerable effort is needed to keep the hair from flying off from the place intended for it.
There are yet others who use wigs which again amuses me.
I personally prefer to let nature do what it does. What you see is what you get. I am also told on excellent authority that bald men are perceived to be ahem, sexy! Just think of Telly Savallas, Sean Connery, Yul Brynner or Andre Agassi. If you care to read another post of mine on the same subject, you can visit this. If you do, please do read all the comments and responses too. To add some more hilarity, please do go to the links given on the post. (Since posting this, I have been advised that the link to Conrad’s post does not work. A pity.)
I do not personally know the gentleman in this story, but can relate to the writer’s amusement with his trying to cover his bald patch and also the generic weakness of vain males.
This post has been inspired by two developments. The first one was during a chat with a friend when I was told that women wear wigs after loss of hair following treatment for cancer and that the care giver must be aware of the discomfort that a wig can cause on sensitive skin. This led me to speculate on why people wear wigs at all. My friend and I concluded that it was due to vanity and a sense of insecurity. I however wondered why more men go bald than women and am yet to find a satisfactory answer.
I am quite bald. My top is almost totally bald and the few hairs that I have are on the fringes. It has never bothered me and I never tried anything to prevent hair loss or tried to cover the baldness with a wig. So, it always amuses me to see men wearing wigs which makes them look comic rather than attractive. At least to me, they do.
Here are two great baldies. Just see how handsome they are.
For the uninitiated, they are Telly Savallas and Yul Brynner. I wish that I could go completely bald like they look here. The condition is called Alopecia Totalis, the title of this post. If I could get there, I will save a lot of money and time spent at the barbers. May be, I will look better too! What do you think?
The point is that these two stars did not hide their baldness. We in India have a star Rajnikant, who in real life does not cover his baldness with wigs and this is what he looks like when he is not acting.
And when he is acting in a role, this is what he looks like.
Rajnikanth is a super star in South India, and his fan following does not mind seeing him in his natural avatar.
On the other hand, we have a North Indian super star Amitabh Bachhan who refuses to be seen off screen or on it without a wig.
Another old fading star Dev Anand looks really comic with his wig.
After all those observations of my likes and dislikes about wigs, I come to the second inspiration for this post. That is Conrad’s post – Hmmm … Have I Become My Own Imposter? You must read my comments there to appreciate my views on baldness. To add further masala, Looney‘s comment there is worth its weight in gold.
There is a grand looking lady who comes to our local park for walks who is almost totally bald. She does not cover her head or wear a wig. When I mentioned this to my friend on the chat, she promptly advised me to stop her in her tracks and ask her for an interview. Once the rains stop and I resume my walks, I intend doing precisely that and shall hopefully have a woman’s point of view on this very interesting subject.
Do any of my lady readers have some information on courageous bald women who do not wear wigs? I would appreciate some feed back and perhaps even a guest post.
I was in the waiting room of my family physician earlier this evening, waiting my turn to be called in. In trooped three young people, one male with hair like a crow’s nest. I am not exaggerating. This is exactly what it looked like.
The two girls resembled twiggy, but as not pretty, at least in my opinion.
All three had jeans on which were ready to fall off and showed quite a bit of underwear.
The girls sat down and promptly started off talking on their respective mobile phones.
The young lad stood up and started teasing his hair in front of a two way mirror finish glass partition between the consulting room and the waiting area. After a few moments, he sat down only to get up again to repeat the process. While I waited for my turn, for perhaps five minutes, the lad repeated the process a number of times.
When it was my turn to go in, I told him that the people behind the partition can see him preening and from his sheepish look, I could gather that he did not want to believe me. As I finished my consultation and came out, he was at it again. I hope that he checked it out for himself when he went inside eventually.
The girls were still on their phones.
My evening’s entertainment came to an end.