The balder, the better

My right arm is still firmly wrapped in a fiberglass cast awaiting emancipation. And it looks like emancipation will only be forthcoming after the holidays.

So I have had to use my left hand to compensate for a lot of my right-handed activities. But sadly, as many male adolescents are well aware of, the sensations are just not the same.

Unfortunately, this also means that I cannot produce my usual brand of nonsense for this week’s column. But do not shed tears of despair, my three female readers! I have stocked up on some pre-packaged nonsense as my fourth book, It Only Hurts When I Pee: RJ Ledesma’s Imaginary Guide to Bodily Gases and Hair Loss by Anvil Publishing, hits bookstores this week!

So allow me to share a little something from my book that is close to my heart, este, head. 

The Brave And The Bald

There is nothing that keeps a grown man up at night like the prospect of waking up to premature hair loss. And as any grown male can tell you, anything premature has horrendous consequences.

I used to take comfort in the fact that men inherited their hair from their maternal grandfathers. And my maternal lolo, God bless his soul, had a full head of curly black locks well into his 80s.

But then I was slightly perturbed to find out that baldness occurs in varying forms in about 66 percent of adult males at some point in their lives. However, the next fact I uncovered caused involuntary bladder discharge: More recent research has shown that a person with a balding father has a “significantly greater chance” of experiencing hair loss (I chose not to reprint the actual hair loss percentages for fear that other potential hairpiece-wearers might pass out before finishing this article).

After cursing whoever made this fact public knowledge over the Internet, I barged into my dad’s office to seek justice But as soon as I saw my reflection staring at me from the back of his head, I dropped to my knees and cried. “Why me, Lord?” I wailed. “Doesn’t the world already have enough reflective surfaces?”

Why does he continue to make us grow hair in places where we least want it but make it stop in places where we need it the most? Lord knows what his purpose was to have a disproportionate amount of hair growing around my right nipple. And wouldn’t it have been more merciful on His part to spirit our hair away overnight instead of prolonging the agony over the years? That’s like piecemeal circumcision.

Fearing the day that cruel, ignorant children will run up to me and ask if they can rub their armpits on my head, I conducted a bit more research to find out if I could prevent what might be my “significantly greater chance.” It turns out that the most common form of baldness is a progressive hair-thinning condition called androgenic alopecia a.k.a. “male pattern baldness” a.k.a. “why God why” that occurs in adult human males. This condition is often characterized by hair receding from the lateral sides of the forehead known as “receding hairline” or “receding brow” or “traitorous forehead.” And to top it all off: the top of your head may develop an additional bald patch as well. 

The trigger for this type of baldness is an overproduction of male sex hormones or androgens. These androgens flood the system and switch off hair production at the top of the head. In other words, the more mojo you got, the more kalbo you get.

So it’s okay to be bald. Especially if you are a bald gorilla.

You see, gorillas evolved anatomically large foreheads to convey their increased status and maturity. But as most of us know, having a big head is not enough. Only the gorillas who lost their forehead hair during puberty were the ones who got the most number of female behinds pimped into their faces. In fact, the No Girlfriends since birth (NGSB) gorillas longed to be balder so that they could get more primate booty.

Now do you see these bald gorillas being made fun of by the NGSB gorillas because of his hair loss “problem”? Do you see the bald gorilla going for hair plugs? Do you see the bald gorillas going for self-esteem counseling? No. But what you do see is the bald treating himself to a banana after mating with several hundred females in his tribe, while all the NGAB gorillas can do is sigh and watch gorilla porn on Animal Planet.     

That being the case, what happened when we were bumped a few rungs up in the evolutionary ladder, lost much of our body hair, stood upright and grew larger testicles? Shouldn’t it stand to reason that thick-browed bald men should be hoarding their inequitable share of evolved Venusians? Shouldn’t it also stand to reason that if gorillas are more gorilla-like when they lose the mop on top, then men should be manlier when their heads become target practice for pigeons?

The book Why Men Lie and Why Women Cry tells us that men with fully aerated heads are usually more aggressive and, um, amorous, than men with non-aerated heads. In fact, the bald head serves as a super-male testosterone homing signal that not only stimulates women but also serves to temporarily blind low-flying birds and mosquitoes. 

Behavioral scientists Muscarella and Cunningham assert that baldness evolved to indicate “enhanced signals of aging” and “social maturity.” In effect, baldness signals to other men that the bald man is “advanced in age” and therefore he is more “respectable” and not “a threat to the ladies.” However, the same baldness signal indicates to women that the bald man’s “nurturing behavior” has improved which markedly increases his potential as a “reproductive partner.” In other words, while other men are belittling the bald man’s need to place sun block all over his scalp, he is discreetly scheduling meetings with barely bikini-clad 70-percent waist-to-hip ratio women who want to practice the Kama Sutra on him. Three times.

But aside from resembling sex symbols (like the symbols you find posted on restrooms), bald men resemble dollar signs as well. Another set of relationship experts conducted an experiment using images of male heads that were computer-altered to display varying degrees of baldness. Female respondents were then asked to give their first impressions of each of these men in a business setting. The results showed that the balder the man, the more power and success he was perceived to have, and that they would put up less resistance when he enforced his authority. The men with active hair follicles, on the other hand, were thought to be the least powerful and less well paid. So, what is the moral lesson here? Gentlebaldmen, do not hide your shining glory underneath that historical relic you call a hairpiece. Remember, you can always look rich without the cash. 

In fact, bald men shouldn’t even fret when testosterone-deficient men make fun of that newly cleared patch of real estate on their scalps. Better yet, bald men should make sure that these men ridicule them in front of drool-inducing Venusians. The authors of the book Rude and Politically Incorrect Jokes discovered two things: that only men with a full head of hair crack jokes about baldness and that bald jokes generate a lot of estrogen-fueled sympathy from the ladies. And not only were the ladies sympathetic to the bald man’s discomfort over his baldness, but they actually saw his solar panel as a badge of machismo. In fact, Psychology Today claims that hair loss was a bigger concern for men rather than for their female partners. Women were relatively unconcerned over their partner’s rapidly eroding hairline. In fact, they were turned on by the man’s hairless dome, often kissing and stroking it, and then shining it right after. And I do not write this merely for wishful thinking purposes.

So now that we know that the bald man looks respectable, leaks libido, appears rich, generates sympathy and, to top it all off, uses his full forehead as a hypnotic device to lure all females above voting age, why do some men experience so much anxiety over their impending “social maturity”? And why would they even what to cover up their female homing devices with an artificial life form? It’s a marketing conspiracy, I tell ya. They are hoodwinking the bald man into thinking that baldness is emasculation (or “bye-bye to the babes”) instead of emancipation (or “hello to the honeys”). And who was masterminding this conspiracy? The Aquino Administration? No. It was the evolved NGSB gorillas .The ones who never got swelling butts shoved into their faces. They want to bring the bald man down.   

So what are you waiting for? Baldly go where no man has gone before and buy several hundred copies of the book! It will also help increase my endorphin levels so that I can heal quicker and start to work on the fifth collection (nonsense is a profit-driven muse).

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It Only Hurts When I Pee is now available in National Bookstore, Power Books and Best Sellers nationwide.