The hair up there

Last Sunday at church, my eight-year-old daughter, Amaya, tugged at my arm to call attention to the bald spot of the man in the front pew. I had seen it way before she pointed it out and was hoping it wouldn’t catch her eye because she tends to make a big fuss out of things that adults move heaven and earth to downplay for fear of embarrassing someone. But that’s just her — extremely curious and brutally honest. She doesn’t get the merits of diplomacy and tact — not just yet. 

 “Mom,” she said, tugging at my arm. I pretended not to hear her because she was like a puppy wanting to play catch: there was excitement in her eyes and a hastened pace to her breathing. I didn’t want to toss her a bone in church.

“Mooom,” she wheedled, tugging more forcefully this time.

I stole a side glance at her. Big mistake! There she was looking at me, face close to my ribs; eyes twinkling with menace; mouth widened in eagerness; shoulders raised in excitement. She said in a not-quite whisper, “Mom, the guy in front of me has a bald spot. There, see? See?” And she pointed at the darned thing.

I totally ignored her. Again, big mistake, because her tugging only became more frenzied and her voice a tad louder. “Mom, there, look, right there, he has a kalbo.”

That was one moment I wished I could loan her out to a nice childless couple for a day or two — make that three — with food allowance. But then life would be so boring. So I simply shushed her. She acquiesced for a moment when she found something else to occupy herself. But she didn’t forget the bald spot, something she intermittently inspected again to amuse herself until Mass was over.

It’s not just her. I remember another daughter who, as a toddler, was very puzzled about a male guest at our home who was totally bald on top but sported a full beard. When she bumped into him in the living room, she stopped in her tracks, stared unabashedly, and then ever so slowly tilted her head to one side and then all the way down, followed by her torso as her head went lower and lower, in an effort to capture a view of the bald and bearded man’s face — upside-down! She thought that the man’s head was inverted!

Decades ago, I was having dinner with a girl friend and her family. Her brother, whose hair had been visibly thinning, was sporting a newly grown set of long sideburns.

“What’s with the sideburns?” she chided, clearly unappreciative of his “new” look.

“None of your business. It’s my ‘burns,” he answered, miffed.

“It’s my business because I’m going to have to be looking at them all the time.”

The brother said, “I’ll grow hair everywhere else on my body for as long and as much as I can.”

A close cousin, finance wiz Danny Mercado, sported a hairpiece for much of his adult life. We love him dearly and didn’t have the heart to tell him to lose it. It wasn’t exactly becoming, what with the shoulder-length, scraggly hair extensions, and the accompanying habit of snapping his head left and right to clear the hair off his face. Salvation came in the form of a close friend, who was set to get married and whose wedding we had to fly to Maui for. He told Danny that his wedding wish was for him to get rid of the hairpiece. Danny couldn’t find it in himself to refuse the groom so the afternoon after we arrived, they trooped to the barber and had the hairpiece and all other remaining hair removed. I must say, Danny has never looked better and has never looked back since.

 For guys, hair is a touchy matter. Remember “The Fonz,” actor Henry Winkler’s character in the ‘70s hit TV show Happy Days? He was the epitome of coolness in those days. He had that ginormous Italian-American ’do similar to John Travolta’s Tony Manero croissant-like up ‘do in Saturday Night Fever.  The Fonz always had a hair comb tucked in his back pocket and always used to say, “Don’t mess with the hair.”

There’s this seven-year-old boy, Nathan, in my children’s school who sports a Mohawk, and proudly so. I went up to him the other day and complimented him because he and his Mohawk looked like they were made for each other — such a cutie. His eyes lit up and he gave me a hundred-watt smile. This boy is discovering the concept of individualism at such a tender age. Good for him. 

What is it with men and their hair? Why so sensitive? Why so attached? Admittedly, women are concerned about their hair — some more than others — and that’s why hair grooming products and salons are billion-dollar industries the world over. But I don’t think we’re quite as sensitive about it or as attached to it as men are. That’s probably because we have so much more of it.  Female balding is almost never an issue — unless a woman goes through chemotherapy or other similar types of medical protocol. Female hair problems are more on the hair fall issue because of hormonal changes due to pregnancy and childbirth or to aging and menopause.

Also, women experiment with hairstyles as part of their personal aesthetic journey. Oh yes, there is that brief phase, mostly around puberty, when we do tread on the wild side and experiment with pink, blue, or purple hair color but that has more to do with exhibiting angst and being “emo.” There also is the infamous, post-breakup hair chop that all — I repeat: all — women resort to. I think the physical cutting off of the hair, a less gruesome form of dismemberment, is at once symbolic and cathartic; it actually provides closure to broken relationships — the drastic final step in the disengagement process.

On the other hand, two out of every three men develop some form of baldness in their lifetime. There’s nothing like receding hairline or the dreaded bald spot to announce advancing age in men. I figure this is the reason men have a death grip on those final few strands of hair on their head, hence the invention of the comb-over and it’s many permutations — any trick, really, to redistribute hair around the surface of the scalp to cover denuded spots.

 I think the reason men refuse to make peace with losing hair is because they believe it is a sign of virility and, therefore, desirability to the opposite sex. It has only been in the last two decades that “baldies” have taken on a totally different persona. From ageing and benign, bald men are now perceived as hot and sexy thanks to scientific research that has established it is an over-supply of the male hormone, testosterone that causes male-patterned baldness — the same testosterone that packs gallons of machismo into men. No wonder it’s mostly the members of the older generation who have stayed faithful to their pelukas. They missed out on this crucial reorientation. Only the younger males have embraced hairlessness and have dared to bare all because of the sexy under- and overtones attached to the reinvented bald image.

 I remember how this “bald” revolution was ushered in by the likes of Michael Jordan and fellow NBA players who all rose to celebrity status courtesy of athletic prowess, of course, and the “yumminess” factor attached to it. 

I didn’t get it at first because the only bald men I had ever been in close contact with at the time were my late grandpa, who we called Papa and whose head was as bald as a shiny crystal ball and my late grand uncle, the OB/GYN to all the women in the family (he delivered me and all my siblings and cousins) who we called Tio Poy.  

Papa and Tio Poy sexy? Nah. Who else were the bald icons of my childhood? Telly Savalas as Kojak? Yul Brynner? Once more with feeling: Nah! Maybe Yul Brynner, but this I realized belatedly, only after finally catching on to the baldie x-factor many years down the road.

There is another option out there for men who’d rather die than part with hair — organic or otherwise. There’s the hair transplant procedure, which is foolproof. The surgeon harvests follicles from your nape and then transplants them to your crown or area of choice. No dangers of physiological rejection because it’s from your own system. Again, it’s merely redistribution but this time, unlike a comb-over, it is a permanent solution that does not morph into some other alien state when the wind blows. (By the way, the foremost hair transplant surgeon in the country is a childhood friend of mine, Dr. Andrew Pineda. I can give you a referral if you wish.)

Going back to my eight-year-old daughter, I think that because of her, I may have stumbled onto the reason why men are indeed obsessed with hair and keeping a full head of it eternally. It’s because it’s the first thing people see.

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Thank you for your letters. You may reach me at cecilelilles@yahoo.com.