#male pattern baldness

To those of you who know me in the real world, it’ll be no surprise that I’m losing my hair.

I’ll admit I’ve been in denial about it, holding on to it for no other reason than I considered my hair to be such a large part of my identity and confidence for so many years. I’ve grown it long, cut it short, spiked, coloured, mohawked and even curled it.

Ten years ago I had my own Britney breakdown on New year’s eve and started shaving my head while blind drunk. Obviously I needed some help finishing it off.

What followed was months of regrowth; it took about 6 months for me to have any kind of recognizable hairstyle. This happened back when the barbering/hairdressing industry was a very different place, before the resurgence in popularity of the barbering profession over the past 6 years.

I first noticed my hair thinning around 5 years ago. At first it was a few photos from unflattering angles, followed by the odd comment and even having my crown poked with the words “What’s that?”.

My hair has thinned to transparency throughout my crown area, and the front hairline has receded as well, making the remaining hair half the thickness as it is on my sides and nape.

Although I’ve looked into processes such as hair transplants, micro-needling and trying to make changes to my diet and lifestyle, I’ve found that the options available to me are either ineffective or prohibitively expensive to have done.

Although I can style my hair well, it takes a level of effort that I feel no longer pays off with how thin it has become. Almost like trying to style smoke in some parts.

The only way forward I see for myself at the moment is to simply shave my head. The main difference this time is that I have 10 years of experience in hair AND I have a beard!

After a long chat with Matt, one of my colleagues at Keep The Faith Social Club, we decided to take it down as short as possible using the Wahl Cordless Detailers and then tapered in the neckline with a foil shaper.

We also ended up blending the beard out rather than creating a point. (This decision was made using one of those Wheel of Fortune style apps).

This post and decision may seem very sudden or even drastic, but this post has taken me months to write. The past 4 years have been a long journey for my hair to say the least. Now it’s finally done, I feel like there has been a weight lifted, obviously physically but I also now feel like I don’t have to worry about what my hair looks like.

I was expecting it to feel so alien to me and yet it just feels alarmingly normal, which is something I didn’t even account for. I guess that’s the difference between taking the time to prepare yourself for a big change, rather than being a drunken mess, yeeting your hair straight into a bin on New Year’s Eve!

I’ll admit that I’m still not sure about it. I even forget about what I’ve done sometimes until I see myself in a mirror. But I still believe it was the best thing I could have done!

The combover might until recently seem a haircut that was consigned to posterity. But now, with the new leader of the free world sporting one of the most rococo examples of this unfairly-derided coiffure ever photographed it’s time for the combover to make a comeback.

The majestic sweep of hair from the prosperous lowlands of the ear area up and across the denuded scalp of the more mature gentleman represents everything that is great about humanity.

It shows inventiveness, it shows a concern for personal appearance, and most of all it expresses a sort of pompadour socialism. The willingness of the more prosperous regions of the scalp to share their wealth with their less fortunate neighbours.

In a unique book that explores the long-overlooked history of this tonsorial triumph I will pluck illuminating examples from the annals of barbering, and explain where it all went wrong for the combover.

Here, by way of an example, is a short clipping from Chapter 12:

Where it all went wrong for the combover, of course is The Beatles. The four loveable mop-tops from Liverpool ruined Western Civilisation with their promotion of the cult of youth, and they ruined middle aged men’s haircut options forever with their luxuriant  fringes.

In the Western world, a shade over 40 per cent of men will experience male pattern baldness by age 35, rising to 70% by the time they reach 80. With four members – five if you include leonine über-producer George Martin – you would expect one slaphead at the bare minimum.

And yet – bald Beatles came there none. Suspicious? Yes.

But I’m not here to promulgate half-baked conspiracy theories about the world’s most beloved beat combo. Not yet, anyway, I’ve got another 33 books to write.

Let us instead review some of the outstanding combovers of the Beatles era. Like Donald Trump’s hair, they divide into three main strands.

The Fulsome:
The Fulsome is a bold man’s option. It is a rich, ebullient hank parted low in the ear-zone and swept dashingly over the dome. It’s a risky strategy – all that hair-mass can be a danger-to low-flying aircraft if it works its way loose – and is therefore confined to indoor workers such as radio DJs. The late Sir Terry Wogan sported one of the great Fulsomes of the post-Beatles era, along with radio colleague ‘Diddy’ David Hamilton.

The Three-Strand Sweep:
A classic of the form, this lightweight and adaptable combover is perfect for the sportsman – Sir Bobby Charlton springs to mind here– or any rugged action man who spend a lot of his time outdoors in high winds. Prince Charles, for example.

The Backdoor Bandit:
The Backdoor Bandit was almost certainly invented by beloved actor Zero Mostel in the early years of the Beatles era, and became a standard combover for balding personalities in the world of entertainment.

Backdoor Bandit practitioners grow the hair long at the back, in the manner of the Billy Ray Cyrus ‘mullet’ style, and then separate a portion of the neck-warmer to brush forward. Slade’s Superyob-in-chief Dave Hill demonstrated this look to great effect but perhaps the most impressive example of the form belongs to wrestler Mick McManus, who managed to maintain full scalp coverage despite some of the gruelling combat action seen by audiences since Spartacus was a lad.

The Combover: A Secret History will sell like hot hairspray not only in bookshops but from special point-of-sale installations in barbers and chemists shops throughout the land.

Competitively priced and carelessly researched it will be an ideal gift for that uncle or brother-in-law who is unfortunately not a Beatle and is therefore thinning somewhat at the crown.

Techno grifter, Elon Musk (photos not altered or photoshopped)

Honestly, Iron-Man is my least favorite Marvel character but even so, it irritates tf outta me whenever I hear cryptobros compare Elon Musk to Tony Stark. Tony Stark is a fictional character who tries to do good and has a conscience. Elon Musk threatens workers who want to unionize, runs segregated warehouses, and moves his factories to red states after they have outlawed abortion. You do the math. Musk is already using his twitter status to sic his sycophants (the real ones who aren’t bots) on people and bully his detractors. And Tony Stark was a billionaire, genius inventor! Elon Mush hasn’t “invented” shit, but I’m sure if he actually ends up buying twitter, his fanboys will all say he invented that too. Mush was born into wealth and then used his money to purchase the businesses that invented things. Mush can’t even handle making a fucking tunnel, ffs! And his “self-driving smart cars” stay hitting things that a novice teenaged driver could avoid hitting—like houses, parked cars and even stationary fucking airplanes!

LOL, I’m pretty sure a “billionaire genius inventor” would have figured that shit out by now.

Seriousreminder: There is no such thing as a fully self driving autonomous car, no matter how many timesElonlies and says otherwise.

Oh yeah! Remember when the “genius” tried to show everyone that he made an “indestructible” vehicle??

LMAO. The “tech genius” had to try it again and ended up with two busted windows.

Even Mush’s SpaceX is living off of modified NASA technology (that NASA had already seeded, developed or would have developed anyway) and government contracts (aka subsidies). He’s a techno grifter, at best. Call it what it is: people are worshiping him for his wealth. He’s a privileged, wealthy, white, cis male. And that’s literally all it takes to be seen as “the best” in the western world—especially America. Periodt. Elon is a troll. Another spoiled rich boy edge lord, who gets off on “sticking it” to those less powerful than him. But he’s not an inventor, and he is definitely not a genius. Please stop insulting actual geniuses, inventors and Tony Stark like that. If anything, Mush is much more like Karl Lykos, but without the genius inventor part.

Wealth ≠ genius.