The buzz on baldness
The follically challenged are taking it all off for premeditated styleBy Pat Seremet
Special to The Morning Call
September 5, 2005
Jeffrey Reynolds of Wethersfield, Conn., didn't like losing his hair at 30 — especially when he caught an aerial view of his head in a movie he was in that was shot in Hartford. Then when he was hosting a Halloween party at the Elks Club, Reynolds, now 35, decided to shave his head and go as Dr. Evil. He's never gone back.
Ryan Gorneau of Newington is 24 and said he used to check the pillow every night for hair, which started thinning when he was 20. He recently took the same route — he shaved his head. And like Reynolds and many others who go that route, he grew a goatee.
Matt Smith of Hartford, 27, started losing his hair at 22, but he's still got enough to work with so he hasn't reached for the shaver yet. Still, he said, he's irritated to be losing his hair so young, especially when his father still has a full head of hair. He has friends in their early 20s who've gone for expensive hair consultations.
''It's younger and younger that men are noticing it, and caring about it,'' said Aaron Krach, senior editor at Cargo, a magazine directed at the men's market. ''They heard their dads worrying about it.''
The unspeakable ''it'' is balding.
Women worry about gaining. Men, even today's twenty-thirtysomethings, worry about losing. MSNBC recently had a special on hair loss hosted by none other than the rapidly thinning Matt Lauer. It's so much a worry that people who have it even have a politically correct euphemism — follicly challenged. One can buy caps and shirts that proclaim it, and there's even a hair salon, Shear Perfection in Hollywood, that gives discounts for "the follicly challenged.''
There are all sorts of theories about why men lose their hair. High on the list are genetics and the hormone testosterone.
Krach was surprised to see, in an interview in Cargo's September issue, that tennis star Andy Roddick was concerned that wearing his baseball cap all day would cause balding.
''He's only 23, has a great huge head of hair and he's worried,'' Krach said.
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