Bald to the bone

March Madness is upon us so it’s time to talk about men’s hair. Why? Because March Madness creates a special opportunity for television networks to devote endless hours of airtime to shouting and gesturing college basketball coaches, many of whom have an interesting relationship with their hair. To be fair it’s not just basketball coaches who seem to struggle with their hair as they age. You can see this play out in real life every single day whenever there’s a critical mass of middle-aged and older men. GOP presidential primary debates. Open auditions for Viagra commercials. Simon and Garfunkel reunion tours. All-you-can-eat truck stop buffets. Basketball coaches, though, have a special place in the world of men and hair.

What I really particularly want to talk about, though, is male pattern baldness. For the young and unaware, a significant population of adult males, due to genetic factors beyond their control, start losing hair on their heads as they mature. It’s completely natural and it’s called male pattern baldness because there’s a standard pattern the process follows: The hairline gradually recedes up the forehead region while at the same time a spot roughly the size of a quarter forms on the crown of the head and gradually expands to the circumference of small melon. These two patterns will eventually merge to leave the entire top of the head as naked as a baby’s bare ass. Not all men are so fortunate as to be born with the life-simplifying male pattern baldness gene. Yes. I said fortunate. I’m edgy and not afraid to be controversial. And it’s a straight up fact that some men face life knowing they will age awkwardly as they attempt and fail to make good decisions about their full head of hair.

As noted above, March Madness is a particularly good time to talk about this because no cohort of grown men (with the exception of politicians) is so vaingloriously terrible about its hair choices. You have the coaches with full heads of hair who spend a lot of time fussing around with that full head of hear. There’s the slicked back look best represented by Louisville coach Rick Pitino and Kentucky coach John Calipari.  And there’s the lacquered helmet style exemplified by the late North Carolina coach Dean Smith and favored by football coaches, politicians, and TV preachers across the south.

Then there are those coaches with the gift of full-blown male pattern baldness and who then crap all over that gift. Yes, I’m talking about the comb-over. And yes, that means I’m mostly talking about former Purdue coach Gene Keady, owner of the sweetest comb-over in the history of comb-overs. Or former owner of the sweetest comb-over in comb-over history. He got a new wife and she shut that shit down. This is an example of why we all need someone in our lives who love us enough to tell us unpleasant truths.

We can only speculate why grown-ass men turn to the comb-over. Maybe they’re blinded by vanity. Maybe they are vampires and can’t see their own reflections. Maybe their moms didn’t love them. Maybe they grossly underestimate the ability of other humans to detect a comb-over. Maybe they’re afraid that some hairy jackass will call them a cue ball or chrome dome and take their lunch money. Who knows? But if there’s a comb-over artist in your life, you need to hug them and tell them it’s time to let it go.

Maybe I should mention that I happen to be bald. Yes, it’s true. By my early 30s it became obvious that I would need to figure out something to do with my hair or risk looking like Gene Keady. Or maybe comic book nerd guy with pony tail on The Simpsons. So I bought a pair of electric clippers and buzzed away. I haven’t bought shampoo or paid for a haircut since that day. For a while I went full bald, shaving my head down to the scalp with a razor for the extra clean shiny look. But after a while I realized I was spending too much time on my hair. Also, more and more men started shaving their heads and it always seemed vaguely creepy when I found myself in the same room with another guy with a shaved and shiny head. Or sometimes in a room with multiple guys with shaved and shiny heads. Too much shaved head is totally a thing that can happen. It just makes everyone look like they’re trying too hard. So now I just buzz it off with electric clippers every other week or so.

I am not blind to the fact that there is a segment of society that does not understand the benefits of baldness. There’s an entire industry devoted to finding “remedies” for baldness – shampoos, creams, drugs, plugs, extensions, man wigs. Maybe the hucksters and hustlers can convince some of you that baldness is something that needs fixing. But I’ve been developing a couple of theories that just might convince you that male pattern baldness is not only natural, it’s preferable.

I’m not technically a scientist, but evidence suggests to me that male pattern baldness is a sign of virility in that males with this genetic makeup do not waste extra testosterone manufacturing useless hair. Instead that testosterone goes into extra mojo. My alternative theory (again, not a scientist but I’m aware of no evidence that both theories cannot be correct) is that male pattern baldness is an indicator of advanced evolution. Consider that relative to other mammals, we humans are covered in far less hair. There are some freak species of hairless moles or cats or something weird like that. But among your A-List mammals – apes, monkeys, bears, lions, wolves, etc. – humans are the least hairy. So from a scientific perspective, it makes sense that the less hairy you are, the more highly evolved you are. Bald guys, therefore, are more masculine and more highly evolved than guys with full heads of hair. The more hair, the wimpier the man. I’m not judging, I’m just explaining the science.

Even if the scientific community ultimately fails to recognize my research, I think there is reason for optimism. My informal March Madness research indicates there are no Gene Keadys in this year’s NCAA tournament (well, except for Gene Keady himself, who is an assistant coach for St. John's but he showed up in his embrace-the-baldness 'do). And in general, there seems to be less hair product and creative styling going on with coaches. Perhaps most revealing is that judging from frequency of commercials, Viagra and Cialis appear to have replaced Rogaine and Hair Club for Men in the Exploiting Male Insecurity for Profit business complex. So maybe we don’t need to talk about male pattern baldness. Maybe society is coming around to accepting that bald men are more masculine and more highly evolved than other men.

That does not mean, though, that it’s time to talk about your erectile dysfunction issues. But if you insist, I would have to advise you that my preliminary research indicates that your limp dickedness is likely related to having a full head of hair. Nothing personal, of course, just going where the science takes me.