Many men experience what is known as male pattern baldness. As men begin to lose their hair and their hairlines begin to recede, many men feel many negative emotions such as, anxiety, shame, and self-consciousness. But the fact of the matter is men shouldn’t feel ashamed when they lose their hair, hair loss is a perfectly normal part of aging. 

According to the American Hair Loss Association, two-thirds of men experience some form of hair loss by the time they are 35, and by the age of fifty, 85 percent of men will experience some form of hair loss.

“The First time someone ever noticed my receding hairline I was a freshman in high school and there was a senior guy that was walking past me and during passing period he grabs the front of my hairline and pulls it back and he yells out, ‘you’re going bald dude you’re gonna be a bald guy.’ And I immediately went to the bathroom stall nearest, I went in there, closed the stall door and cried. I was 14 years old and it started to become a little more noticeable by senior year and it was a struggle, I tried to cover it up with a little comb-over,” Mr. Adam Brady said.

Many men feel the need to conceal their hair loss through hair transplantation or wigs but these methods cause more grief than relief. 

Hair transplants surgery is extremely expensive and can range from $4,000 to $15,000, according to WedMd. Hair transplants additionally cause severe scarring, due to the procedure consisting of ripping hair follicles out of their original position and forcefully pushing them into areas where hair used to grow. 

Many men take to other methods such as spray-on hair or wigs but this tends to lead to just more anxiety over the wig slipping off or people finding out about your hair loss. Famous tennis player Andre Agassi famously experienced this anxiety during a tennis match.

“The night before the French Open Final I used the wrong conditioner and it started to come off (during the french open final). I’ve never prayed for the result but I prayed for that wig to stay on,” said Agassi.

The best way to relieve yourself of the anxiety of hair loss is to just shave your head and embrace the bald look. You should accept hair loss is a perfectly normal part of life and accept that it is a reality that most men will experience some form of hair loss.

Shaving your head can have many positive effects. A study by a researcher named Albert Mannes found that while men with shaved heads did rank lower than men with hair in the attractiveness category it also found that men with shaved heads ranked higher than men with a full head of hair in categories of dominance, masculinity, age, height, physical strength, and confidence.

“I flirted with buzzing my head and you could still see I was a balding guy so eventually I just started shaving it with like a razor and I started to believe that looked good. My wife had me take a post-it and put that post it on a bathroom mirror and she said I had to write something positive about being a bald guy and so I thought it was stupid and I was kind of emotional at the time and I wrote bald is beautiful,” said Brady.“She said ‘you’re gonna keep it on the mirror until you believe it.’ It stayed on the mirror for a while, but eventually I started shaving my head and it started to look alright and I accepted it. I’m a bald guy. Bald is beautiful. It got rid of a ton of anxiety I had about being a guy going bald and I kind of realized I’d rather be a bald guy than a guy going bald. If I could have some control of it and shave my head it was my decision rather than letting something happen to me I was controlling it,” said Brady.