I am down with guys shaving their heads because they don’t like whatever their hairlines are doing. I have a friend from high school who started balding before 40 and he shaved his head and has a beard and he looks GREAT!
I’m not personally down with the big beards, though. The bushy beards, the unruly beards, the long beards. Especially on athletes cuz damn I know you’re sweating in that mess every day! Eew!
I was never a fan of beards in general but I see a lot of guys my age, such as my brother, with a tidy trimmed beard and it really suits them, so now as a “grown up” I’m cool with a tidy beard.
But really, whatever makes you feel good wrt your personal style. I’m going to stay in my lane and just keep fighting with my boyfriend to keep his hair trimmed and beard tidy. Everyone else can do as they please!
I wear glasses, so when I sport the bearded look, that’s where it gets cut; right at the bows of my specs. Started losing my hair on top of my head in my early 20s. I’d love to sport the Ben Franklin look, but my hair on top of my head is just incredibly thin, not actually all gone, and the one time I tried to shave just the dome down, it just didn’t look right.
Unfortunately, my skin disagrees with having a beard; once it gets to be too thick, the skin beneath just gets reddened and itchy; so I mostly just wear a hat and keep my face mostly clean-shaven (a lie; I actually usually look like I just woke up from a 7-day drunken celebration).
I’m 41 and have been balding for… hell. 15 years at least. Its been a slow process and unfortunately I’ve been cursed with a general thinning all over my head. I’ve also worn a beard for the past ~20 years, sometimes sporting the long Jerry Garcia look, sometimes the shorter Will Riker look. Right now its much closer to the Garcia look which I prefer. I’d grow a full ZZ Top if I thought I could pull it off. I’m also overweight which doesn’t help any in the appearances department.
Personally I think the buzzed/shaved approach looks infinitely better than the Maj. Winchester/Kevin Malone look or worse, a combover.
Clearly I would prefer to have a full head of hair rather than this fugly this shit I actually posess. But, since that’s what I have I suspect the time is coming – and it will likely be very soon – that I’ll have to buzz it with a #0 or #1 clipper and call it good. I’ve yet to summon the guts to buzz my own head so the last time I got a haircut the barber buzzed the sides with a #2 and trimmed the top to finger depth, maybe ½ an inch. Its still looks too long to me. My wife doesnt want me to shave it but frankly I may have no choice soon.
I do try to keep my beard looking good, I shampoo it daily and keep any unruly hairs in line with scissors and over the years my mustache has grown from barely more than a peach mold impersonation to a full William Howard Taft, which requires waxing to stay obedient.
I’ve also learned to like hats. Never being a big hat person I’ve nonetheless come to accept their necessity. I have a nice Akubra Cattleman that I ordered directly from Australia, a Chicago Cubs baseball cap that I received from a fellow Doper and is the one and only comfortable baseball cap that I’ve owned, and a flat cap from Duluth Trading that needs repalced with something better fitting.
Heh, his dodge is the same as the one he uses for having much more gray hair than I do despite his being two years younger. And it’s the same one my dad uses - He has kids, and I didn’t bother.
Back to the thread though - does anyone know of someone who has embraced the hair-style of the OP who HASN’T lost/started losing their hair? In other words, is it nearly all (say 90+%) compensation for hair loss and/or thinning, or are there people going this route who are regularly shaving down an otherwise full head of hair to embrace the look?
That was me. My hairline may have moved back a bit in the last decade or so, but I was cutting all my hair off long before that ever happened. My reasoning was simple: I didn’t want to ever have to worry about what my hair looked like, it seemed to me a waste of time and effort, so I just cut it all off. Problem solved!
I’m a tad surprised at the recent posters who have sorta equated buzzed w/ shaved. IMO, there is a world of difference, both in the appearance, as well as the effort required.
Clean-shaven (hair and beard) make one look like a cancer patient or a radiation victim. The 5 o’clock shadow brings back the manliness / health.
I’m not bald (yet) but every woman I’ve dated have preferred me having a stubble, as opposed to being clean-shaven, as far as looks go. (Come sexy time, the clean shave has its definite advantages.)
I don’t much notice the state of beards and bald heads, in fact they all run together and I will have a devil of a time discerning one bearded bald
guy from another especially if they’re in office attire. Same with ladies who sport a shellacked highlighted bobbed cut hair style.
My only ask is tame the hairs sprouting from nose ears and unibrow
There’s an older dude with a small hops farm near us. I love to stop and see his plants, but it’s difficult/uncomfortable to chat with him. There’s hair everywhere; he has Brezhnev eyebrows, mullets protruding from each nostril, and wads of hair from each ear.
He is clean (doesn’t smell bad) and the nicest guy I know, but jeees.
I’ll bet there was some management of it for a while, but eventually he just gave up and learned to live with it. He’s not the one who has to look at it all the time.
It’s my own hang up but stray hairs in the sink on my dish sponge, on the table, floor, anywhere really, kinda gross me out. I can feel if a hair is tickling it’s way down my arm/back. I will stop and catch it. Some peoples office chairs have a hair rug collecting on the knap. Just ew.
Connery never shaved his head. If you want a good-looking example for the OP, check out his fellow Scots actor Graham McTavish (Outlander, the Hobbit etc.)
Er… then what are bald white men supposed to do, seeing as changing their race is not an option?
I don’t think they’re doing it to somehow pretend they’re not going bald. Why exactly any particular man is shaving his head is unknown to me (unless I ask him and he answers) but I’m pretty sure it’s not to pretend they aren’t bald because that would completely defeat the purpose.
It doesn’t defeat the purpose, and millions of men do it for just that reason (while millions of others do it for other reasons).
Nothing accentuates and magnifies male pattern hair loss more than having zero hair here and some hair there. Having hair like that is not a choice, but shaving it all off is a choice that many men without hair loss, too, take. So it is a type camouflage (“I’m not actually bald, I choose to shave my head”), even if it isn’t perfect like no camouflage is, and some use it for decorative, or completely practical purposes.
I’m kind of the reverse. I have never been a fan of shaved heads. Even a comb-over looks better then taking it all off.
Beards usually look good to me, though.
But really, whatever makes you feel good wrt your personal style. I’m going to stay in my lane, and just be grateful my husband still sports a full head of hair.
