I, too, have a balding man fetish (damn you, Jean-Luc Picard!), especially when they shave it all off, but I keep dating guys with long hair. My fiance’s hair is longer than mine, and I’m jealous of how soft and shiny his is.
You have a Ferenghi fetish. :eek:
As for the OP. Nope. Not a turn off. Nor a turn on.
Doesnt matter to me at all.
Like greying hair.
Like receding hair
Like a full head of hair!
Its the man and how he is with me, not the hair.
Since age 20, almost every guy I’ve dated and/or been engaged/married to have been balding and slightly chubby.
My husband is very insecure about his receding hairline (his sixhead, as he calls it) and I’ve been trying to convince him to just embrace it and cut his hair really, really short. He thought if he had more hair, it wouldn’t be as noticeable, but I told him the opposite is true. He’s been slowly coming around and every time he gets it cut, it’s a little bit shorter. He’s now thinking of buying clippers so I can “buzz” him–not completely bald, but just leaving some fuzz all around.
I think it’s sexy. But I also think long hair is sexy, too. 
I think this is about the 100th time I’ve gone :eek: while reading a Wesley Clark post.
Dopers, please tell me Wesley Clark isn’t for real.
And BTW, bald spots are fun to rub, kiss, admire, and tease. I love 'em. I just don’t love guys who have combovers, and I certainly do not love guys who had long hair when they were younger and they now refuse to accept that they’re going bald, so they have hair halfway down their back with a huge shiny bald spot on top. Yes, I love long hair. Yes, I love bald spots. But these two together aren’t so hot.
Of course, that’s just my opinion, you of course are free to choose what to do with your bald spot.
For the same reason you might work out, dress nicely, get your hair done in a specific style, etc. You do it to feel good about the way you look. If shaving his head makes a guy look and feel better, then why is that a problem?
Ftr, I never really notice thinning hair. I know guys are paranoid about it, but I can honestly say it’s never been a dealbreaker for me. And I’ve never heard women go on about it.
Although I am sure this is entirely true, I feel that my point shouldn’t be dismissed simply because I am young. To begin with, the OP is 25 and therefore much more likely to date someone within my age range, not someone who is older and whose tastes have changed (say in their thirties). I could just as easily say that the opinions of those who are older (in regards to the OP’s specific case) ought to be disregarded because they have grown to like certain things with age that his peers may not generally agree with.
Of course, I’m sure others have replied that are within our age range as well. So, once again: just my opinion.
To be honest, I’m not at all likely to date someone who is 19. 6 years isn’t a huge difference, but the difference between 25 and 19 is enormous, in my opinion. I’m much more likely to date someone who is 6 years older than 6 years younger at this point.
Your point certainly isn’t dismissed, though. I asked the question to get everyone’s true feelings on the subject. In my experience, guys tend to really care about hairlines/thickness and women don’t really worry about it. I thought maybe women were just quieter about it. Or only talked about it to other women. Or avoided the subject in my presence because of my ever-expanding forehead.
Yeah, we actually have meetings. Tuesdays, 6 PM, coffee shop on the corner. Hrm, this week’s agenda:
[ol]
[li]Like…omigawd! Did you see wasson’s hair! bwahahaha[/li][li]Chocolate rules[/li][li]World Domin— I’ve said too much.[/li][/ol]
I went from full head of hair to where I am now (about 95% bald on the top now) in about 5 years. I’m 27. I kept the top around 2-3 inches long, which worked well for a while, but I told my wife…the instant it looks like I’m trying to hide my head, TELL ME. I came home about two years ago, looked in the mirror, looked at her, and we said, “yup…” Buzzed it the next day. I now keep my hair 1/8 inch long, and I look MUCH better than before I buzzed it. Now, I’m just so used to not dealing with my hair…it’s kind of refreshing actually.
Being Bald isn’t so great. You may have less hair to comb, but you have more face wash!
I like very short hair on men, and also the slightly balding look, only if it’s short. I don’t like long hair, and especially long hair when the hair’s running away. It’s weird… I guess that balding is an intensifier for my feelings towards hair… intensifies lust towards very short (we’ll say buzzed) hair, and dislike for long hair.
I suspect that there are a fairly wide range of opinions among women regarding balding males. I also imagine that there are some trends, but in general I think each woman approaches the question from her own perspective.
I’m a guy in his late 20s who is balding and has been balding for a while (I can’t remember exactly how long, but at least since I was 23 and probably a bit before). I’ve been uncomfortable about balding the past but have more or less accepted it now.
Examining my own experience and feelings, I have a few observations to make. I think that for a while I didn’t realize I was really going noticably bald. I think it can be easy to fool yourself because you generally only see yourself in the mirror and as long as you are looking at yourself straight ahead and the light source is diffuse and coming from somewhere other than right above your head, it doesn’t look so much like you are balding, especially if you have something like a comb-over. The other observation I have is that although attractiveness figured into my insecurity about balding, most of the problem stemmed from the disjunction between how I thought of myself and how I actually looked. I don’t know if this is common with other guys, but I hadn’t quite left behind the sense of myself when I was a teenager and in my early 20s. I knew I was older than that, but still I wasn’t prepared to have such an obvious sign on my head.
After a while I started to actually pay attention to what other people thought of baldness, men and women, but especially women since that was who I was interested in attracting. A lot of what I saw jibes with what others have said. As a rule it seems that men, especially balding men, are more concerned with this than women. Some women, I would venture to say a significant number of women, don’t just think “he’s balding, but cute,” they think “wow, he’s balding, that’s so cute!” Different women like different lengths of hair on balding men, but in general no one (whose opinion I have heard) really finds comb-overs attractive, nor do they like haircuts that don’t fit the person or give the impression of trying to hide the baldness (which I suppose could be just about any haircut, so I guess this is really more a matter of attitude). Finally, it seems to me that baldness is more of an issue when you are younger. The older a person is the more likely they are not to care about baldness or even find it attractive, generally speaking, in my observation. I think there are people of all ages who are attracted to baldness, but the number of people who are seems to go up as people get older.
I know a very attractive (in my eyes at least) 20 year old who thought I was “hot” and in fact specifically mentioned my hair, after a haircut, as a factor in my hotness. That was a very direct and personal demonstration of the fact that women can be attracted to bald and balding guys, but I’ve also heard less direct stuff. It seems that I’ve known a number of women who have mentioned being attracted to bald guys as teenagers (sometimes they specifically mentioned the baldness, sometimes it’s just some guy they thought was hot who I knew to be bald or balding at the time). I’ve also heard a few teenagers express attraction to a balding man, sometimes a celebrity.
In any case, I believe I’ve yet to meet a woman who I can conclusively say is turned off by the simple fact of baldness rather than an inept attempt to hide it or obvious insecurity about it. I’m not so sure that there aren’t some, perhaps many, very young women and teenagers who find the fact of baldness a turn-off, but I think in many cases their tastes will change.
All of this is very much IMHO, but based on real observations.
P.S. My own reaction to baldness in others is generally pretty mild. Seeing someone who is balding does change my perception of them, but not all that much. I usually think of them as older than if they had a full head of hair, but I tend to follow other clues as well in determining age. In as much as I rate guys attractiveness, I tend not to take off points for baldness, especially a slight baldness.
Since I just now started reading this thread instead of just adding my opinion, I demand a cite.
I like balding men.
I like salt-and-pepper.
I like men with thick hair.
I hate combovers and toupees, I like confidence.
I think it’s a bit like penis size - men care about it a lot more than women do.
Balding/bald is perfectly attractive to me. I DISLIKE comb-overs, or a Kim Mitchel style of growing the circle of hair really long - it looks like a deranged monk. But a nice, tidy, close crop of thining hair is actually pretty attractive, as far as I’m concerned.
I’m not losing my hair yet, but I’ve had a slowly expanding forehead since college, and the very front has started to thin out in the last year or so. It’ll be time to reconsider my haircut in another two or three years, I think. With that in mind, I’ve been palpating my skull, trying to determine what my hairless dome will look like.
I, by contrast, have a full-on Klingon ridge. I’m gonna look like freakin’ George Francisco, minus the spots.
…if you like chrome-domes, buzzcuts, etc., what is it you like about them?
a. Tough, authoritative, military look?
b. Exotic, Asian, Yuul Brynner vibe?
c. Associations to James Bond supervillians?
d. Head from the rear resembles a penis with ears?
I’m a guy, but a), and I’ve never noticed d), but I’ll pay attention in the future.
I think I’ve heard more women expressing a preference for a large penis than a full head of hair. I don’t know why this is and I don’t suppose my experience necessarily is the experience of others, but that’s what I’ve noticed.
In any case, I imagine that you are still right about men caring more.