h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I was at a gig last week and looked at the row in front of me and was struck by the array of bald and balding heads.

And it isn't just the heads of 'Men Of A Certain Age' either. Young men also seem to have balder heads.

My father had a toupee in his 30's because was acutely conscious of his hair loss. He wouldn't have been at all out of place today.

My head has been growing out through my hair for many years now.

PP.

Possibly fewer men feel the need for toupees nowadays. Folks like Sir Patrick Stewart and Vin Diesel have made bald pates quite fashionable.

One of three brothers had his scalp out-growing his hair lines by the age of maybe 35. The rest of us are doing well at ages 57 to 63 - though mine is getting pretty starved out (thin of weight) by poor health circumstances.

Baldness can be a fashion statement of its own, though. Many African American men shave their hair off. It's easier than deciding what to do with tight curls.

There is certainly a great deal of shavedness going on to hide the loss of hair too.

PP.

I'm balder than I used to be.

I'm less bald than I was when I was a baby.

PP.

My hairline has receded, but the hair that's left grows wildly.

I seem to have more hair, and more hair folicles, on my head, than I did back in my twentys, now I'm in my 40s.... about the only bit of my body not going downhill fast ATM - I assume haywire hormones are responsible, although I now have one entirely hairless armpit which seems to have lost the ability to regrow any hair now

hair today, gone tomorrow.

so true... and there, right there, where the hair dost grow, we often spend so much time scraping and shaving and removing it instead or conversly in otter areas, worry that its there hair no more

As a Texan, I worry more about my hairline seceding.

Nothing secedes like regress.

I'm balder than I've ever been and now I'm even balder, and now I'm balder still. I'm now less bald than I was in 2002-03, not because of any hair restoration process, but because I stupidly agreed to have a very closely cropped haircut which made me look like I'd just escaped from prison.

I'm balder than I was when I originally posed the question.

However, I have just removed the evidence from the bath plug hole and dropped it in the toilet.

PP.

I've never been afflicted - I can only attribute this condition to carelessness.

I'm actually somewhat surprised that I am not balding - most of the men in the families of my parents had varying degrees of being follicley challenged . . .

Mine has always been of thin (limp) strands, and more so since heart failure really depleted much of my body. And in the past decade, my temples and forehead are a little more prominent.

"made me look like I'd just escaped from prison." [Dr E Vibenstein]

Which just means that you have *not* just escaped from prison. Anyone who actually had just escaped would go to great lengths not to look like it.

I do wonder whether the comb-over is going extinct, and that is making people think that men are balder than before?

<BB<

What makes you think the comb-over is going extinct?

The most tremendous, (believe me!), comb-over in history is sitting in the most powerful office in the world right now!