Have you tried Rogaine (minoxidil)? I’ve used Rogaine for Women (usually the generic) for years, and it definitely makes a difference for me.
In the U.S., minoxidil is available without a prescription.
It takes a while (maybe two months) for the new hair growth to be visible. It’s very cute when the fine little hairs start to show. You have to use the stuff daily and keep at it forever.
It’s a little pricey. I use it daily, and my cost is around $10-15 per month. The instructions suggest twice daily, which I did at the start.
Me - at least for the totally shaved part of the equation. Without hair I look like the love-child of Charlie Brown and Uncle Fester (yeah - I know they are both male. It looks that kind of mutant bad) and everyone hated it. It actually ended me in handcuffs in my own living-room (short version - the cops didn’t think my ID looked like me).
With my now-usual look of short on the sides and basically bald top and down most of the back, I at least look human even if I don’t look like I did 15 years ago.
I sometimes go for the bald-and-goatee look. Since I’m a slim middle aged guy with crows feet and wire rimmed glasses, people tell me I look like Walter White. When I lived in a college town, it was fun when the attractive young women at the sandwich and coffee shops told me I looked “badass”.
When I was a kid, I would always look around at church and stare at all the old guys who had to have spent half the morning combing their hair this way and that way to get everything covered. I don’t know why, but it always bothered me. I decided that once I started loosing my hair, I would cut it all off and never look back. I always kept my hair short anyway, in a high and tight flat top. I told my barber that if that hair cut started to not work with my thinning hair, that he had to be honest with me. He finally told me that it wasn’t working one day, I had him take the hair down to the skin, went home and shaved and never looked back…That was almost 20 years ago.
Things I have learned…
-There were initial comments, but nothing negative.
-I have never once been referred to as a “skin head”, (it was one of my concerns).
-Rather than shaving it off on day one, buy a home beard trimmer/clipper and keep it short for a while and get some sun on your head, (small doses, sunburn on the scalp is painful).
-Keep a hat or bandana with you on all days, even when you don’t think you will be outside much. (not only for those impromptu ‘lets go outside’ times, but if you are sweating, you won’t have hair to soak it up, so it goes directly into your eyes).
-If you are outside for a decent period of time, wear some sunscreen on the dome…and don’t forget your ears!
-in the beginning, invest in a hand mirror so you can check the back of your head for missed areas. After a while, you won’t need it, but in the beginning it will help a lot.
-While bald guys seem to be a little more common these days, get used to people wanting to touch your head.
Unless you’re a Japanese samurai from the Edo era! The traditional hairstyle was shaved forehead, with long hair pulled into a topknot that’s splayed out like a tea whisk brush.
Think: samurai mullet, basically. I figure once the manbun becomes too mainstream, it’s where edgy topknots will end up.
Whatever you do, don’t do a comb-over. That is the silliest thing imaginable. When I started going bald in my 20s, I didn’t do anything and never considered doing anything. More than 50 years later, I still have a fringe that I keep relatively short. My barber charges something like $18 to trim my hair and $5 more for the beard, although she spends almost all her time on the latter.
Shave it just before going on holiday (but see comments above about sunburn). You’ll be around people who didn’t know you recently had hair and by the time you get back the self consciousness should have worn off.
Shave it. I still have a full head of hair under the skin, but I shave it completely every day and have for over 15 years. It’s incredibly freeing. Refuse to be a slave to your hair!
About 20 years ago, I had very thick, shoulder-length hair. Then somebody took a photo of me from behind, and I saw that I had a great big bald spot in the back where I couldn’t normally see it. “That looks stupid,” I thought. I promptly went and had it all cut off and buzzed down to a military bootcamp-type buzz cut. Once I’d determined that I liked the shape of my skull, I shaved it down to nothing, and I’ve been doing it ever since, with no regrets.
Mine started receding at the temples. I shaved the rest off and left the top as a short mohawk. As an added bonus (depending on your physique), people looking for you at work can ask for “that guy with the mohawk” instead of “that fat guy”.
Yep. Nature dealt us a challenge - trying to ‘manage’ it into a hairstyle (or worse, ‘reverse’ it by medication or implants) is just a way of losing at that challenge, a little bit every day. Win the challenge. Seize control of the game by shaving it short, or bald.
While it’s not fair to compare the “after” Michael Bolton hair - because he clearly employs help in the form of a piece or plugs or something - definitely use the “before” as a good gauge of how far NOT to let it go before cutting it off. While he was famous for his long hair, toward the end it looked terrible: http://pds.joins.com/jmnet/koreajoongangdaily/_data/photo/2012/08/01174337.jpg
I’m saying this in total support of the OP getting the cut you need and not trying to make you feel bad about your current state, but in describing yourself as a dude with long thinning hair and bangs - I’m sorry no. Whether you do the total shave or a short clipper buzz, I’m confident without ever seeing you that you will look better after.
If I had known how awesome going full bald was going to be, I would have done it WAY sooner than I did.
Seriously, even if you could guarantee me a full luxurious head of hair, you couldn’t pay me enough to go back.
After I shaved my head, my son gave me some grief for not doing it in crazy stages. He wanted me to trim my beard into a chinstrap, then continue the strip around the outline of my head. I wish I’d done that, gotten a pic, then shaved it all off.
Once a week, my husband and I clip each other’s hair with a #1.5 clipper. It leaves the hair just as manageable as bald, without the extreme billiard-ball look (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
