Toupees -- How Common Today IRL vs. Fiction

Factual Questions
1

One of the more common tropes I see in fiction is the description of a guy wearing a hairpiece (better yet, a “bad hairpiece,” not that I know of any particularly good ones) to convey that the wearer is (inevitably) tacky, low-rent, phony, untrustworthy (I think the only surer way to be a bad, unsympathetic male character, certainly least in non-literary fiction, is to make a racial joke or talk condescendingly to a woman, either of which might actually set you up, say in an airplane thriller, to meet the same fate as the curious teen who goes down to the basement to check out a funny sound in a horror movie). I can’t think of a single case in a high, medium, or low brow book I’ve read in recent memory in which the author went out of the way to mention that a sympathetic character, one who’s going to prevail or gain our empathy, had a hairpiece.

I wish the authors would stop leaning on this crutch for a number of reasons that might be more suited to Cafe Society – it’s lazy, it draws a false moral equivalency between moral turpitude or utter cheesiness and mild male vanity (being bald or half bald isn’t disfiguring, but it’s not the ideal of attractiveness or youth, and authors don’t punish female characters quite so harshly for any and all artificallyaided aspirations to those traits).

But more to the point – how many middle aged guys these days are actually actual toupee wearers (or “bad” toupee wearers, I suppose, if we leave out the hypothetical “good” toupee wearers whom we might never notice)? The only IRL examples I can think of are some dated celebs (who maybe face added pressure to maintain the same look they had when they attained fame) – Burt Reynolds, Ted Danson. Maybe recently (last few years) I’ve seen some really old or foreign-born guy every now and then, but I can’t recall specifics.

I don’t know if the stereotype that lots of cheesy guys wear rugs was ever true, but since hair transplants became available (at least 20 years ago, and I do see some bad plugs every now and then), and since the late '80s when pro athletes and general changes away from lengthy male hair made it perfectly fine for many balding guys to go with a buzz cut or shaved head that didn’t require anything to comb over or simulate having something to comb over), it can’t be very common, can it? Yet I estimate I’ve seen it in . . . at least half a dozen novels in the past year. Maybe more.

So: do you see/know of guys wearing toupees, or bad toupees? Have you/do you yourself have a good or bad toupee? I’m just not seeing it but maybe I’m not perceptive enough.

2

Being bald myself has led me to occasionally think of getting a hair piece. However one of my former bosses had one and it looked like someone strapped a racoon to his head. This forever changed my thinking and I just sport the bald look now. Looks pretty good on me or so I have been told.

I do remember back in the late '80s a company that sold hair pieces advertising a new method of attaching it so it wouldn’t come off even while swimming or sky diving. The method was to surgically implant “posts” in a man’s skull. The hair piece then snapped into the posts. I can’t imagine being that vain to go through something like that.

However, your observation is correct. The movies do portray those who wear hair replacement wigs as the bad guys or the losers in life. I got over it though.

3

As it happens, I saw a guy sporting a bad rug yesterday. I’m guessing that I see one every couple of years. Not really a common occurrence, but not remarkable, either.

FWIW, I live in a small town. I’m sure there are more opportunities in a big city.

4

I see men from time to time obviously wearing a hairpiece. I suppose the definition of bad hairpiece is when it’s obvious.

5

It likely is, but my experience is that one’s eye is usually distracted by the folks with aggressive piercings, hats made of plastic bags, or heavyset men in skintight pants.

I’m racking my brain trying to think of a sympathetic character with a hairpiece. Closest I can come is Captain Kirk. :wink: Now I feel like I should write one.

6

Sam Malone

7

Didn’t Sean Connery wear a hairpiece when he played the Russian submarine captain in Red October?

8

Quite a lot of actors’ and actresses’ “hair” in films isn’t their own. There’s an entire industry of people who work with wigs and hairpieces for films. Generally speaking, it’s easier and more consistent to work with wigs instead of trusting your actor to not do something stupid and unfixable to their own hair.

That said, hairpieces and makeup usually take on the order of hours to half-days to create and make look natural. I’ve always figured that was the reason that toupees never look as good - the dudes wearing them aren’t willing to get up at 3 am to spend the next 4 hours with baldcaps, liquid latex, and theatrical makeup to make the thing look realistic.

I will say that I notice about two or three a year down where I live. I figure there have to be at least a few that I don’t notice as they go by, but that number is probably pretty small since wigs and makeup are part of what I do as a hobby.

I see many more women in wigs than I do men in hairpieces. It almost seems that for women, it’s ok for a wig to look less than natural, as long as it looks like an interesting color/style or made of good quality hair.

9

My previous manager had the worst hairpiece I ever saw. He is a great guy.

10

Stan on Golden Girls had a handsome hairpiece, and he married a stewardess, so he must have been doing all right.

11

I know a guy who had a good hairpiece – none of us knew, and we were pretty shocked when he stopped. He explained that he decided it was too expensive – a good one cost several hundred dollars and for some reason they have pretty short lifespans. He had to buy 2-4 every year, and he decided he had better things to do with a thousand dollars a year.

12

He always seemed like kind of a douche to me…

13

Equally important to my OP – was the audience ever intended to know that he was faking it? It always struck me that Danson was trying to “pass.”

14

I’ve known two people in recent years who wore a toupee. One was a friendly Vietnam vet who definitely did not fit the fictional stereotype. The other however was a high level manager who was exactly the bad toupee wearing, slick sleazebag type that you find in fiction.

15

Sean Connery started wearing a hairpiece in the early 60s. When filming exterior scenes for Thunderball, crowds would gather at the beach (or wherever) to get a glimpse of him. Each day, as soon as shooting wrapped, he would take off the rug and salute the crowd with it.

16

The way I heard it, he was already several years into the show’s run when his bald spot appeared. The network insisted he wear a piece. Danson didn’t want to, but had no choice. So he lobbied the producers to write a scene in which he took it off.

If that’s true, he wasn’t trying to pass. And if he were trying to pass, he’d never have agreed to do the scene zombywoof linked to.

17

Very true. What’s more, Hollywood (and New York) hair-and-makeup people are amazingly talented professionals with lots of experience. And (usually) lots of money to spend. You can’t compare a hairpiece in a movie, play, or TV show to something an ordinary Joe might wear every day.

18

At the risk of turning this thread into a list of sympathetic toupee-wearing characters, another one would be Bob Pinciotti from That '70s Show. At least at the time he revealed himself to be wearing a rug, he hadn’t been portrayed unsympathetically. He was overly faddish, yes, but not phony or untrustworthy.

19

Carl Reiner wore a hairpiece in the 60s, and used it as a comedy prop (he’d take it off it it was funny). There was that Dick Van Dyke Show where Laura revealed Alan Brady wore a hairpiece and Reiner put several of them on. They actually looked pretty good once they were on.

The real answer to the question is that some people don’t have the means to buy a good hairpiece, but others wear them and no one notices. No one’s mentioned William Shatner or Donald Trump yet, but there are plenty of others who wear them but the public doesn’t know.

There was a “Dear Prudence” column a few months ago written by a woman who discovered her lover wore one, but only noticed after they had finished making love, when she spotted a little bit of glue. Obviously, she was pretty damn close to him without noticing.

20

I watch a ton of news, and yes, there are a lot of toupee wearers out there. Half the talking heads called in as experts on political matters are covered with mediocre rugs. You look at these guys and think “He would look distinguished if he would just own his going bald.”