In a sad turn of events (for me), it is now clear that my hair is badly thinning. I am nearly 40, so I do not know for sure if I’ll be one of those people with very thin hair, or whether it will go patchy enough to force me to do something about it (right now, I just have conservative, parted hair).
I’m not going to use Rogaine or whatever else to try to hold onto or regrow it. It is what it is.
My questions are:
(i) How do you tell when “enough is enough” such that the hair looks bad enough to pull the trigger and change your haircut? I don’t want to be the guy with a terrible combover looking thing who is oblivious to it. On the other hand, I’m not a fan of the buzzcut look (or shaving my head every few days), so I don’t want to go too early.
(ii) What are my options? Obviously, shaving my head and doing the currently popular Lex Luthor look is one possibility, but I’m not sure I have the head for the bald look. I guess a buzzcut is the other possibility, short enough that it’s just fuzzy or something?
I have had a receding hairline since I was around 20. At that point I took the plunge and have had a “buzzcut” ever since. My wife cuts my hair once every 2 weeks with I believe it is the 1/4" guide. If I went full on shaved, my head would freak people out with all the scars. I have gotten so used to it I couldn’t imagine having longer hair.
I’ve been shaving my head, daily, for years. My hair disappeared a long time ago, except for a monk-like fringe, so at my wife’s urging just shaved it off and I’ve never looked back. It’s a bit of a pain to have to shave it every day–which I do because I like the smoothness–but it seems to work as a “look.” But then, you do have to have a properly shaped head! Some heads aren’t that great without hair.
the way i see it, as soon as you start to feel uncomfy with it, youll start to look goofy. Because if you have it in your mind, you will react more sensitive to looks that go [up] and inevitable conversations about the topic in general. Its harder than it sounds but just get done with the fact in your head and either start shaving or buzz it short and start wearing hats, caps, berets or something if you can get comfy with those. Maybe you could use the change for a new style in general. At the beginning things like that always feel weird.
But as cheesy as it sounds, as long as you got a good feeling about yourself and like your own skin, you rarely get the [looks]. Thats the experience i made.
I’m slowly developing the Jack Nicholson myself. I do a 1/2 inch buzz for now but I fully expect to have to drop that to 1/4 within the next five years. Now if only I had Nicholson’s bank account.
A good bit depends on how the remaining hair is distributed and how your head and face are shaped.
My hair is very thin on top, but still full starting about 2" above the ears. I don’t have a buzzcut, but I do get my hair trimmed short every six weeks (my haircut is in 2 days and it’s about and inch and half right now). I also wear a hat outside (Greek fisherman’s cap in the winter, straw fedora in the summer).
Edit: I just noticed the ad too. Heh, I came to terms with this many years ago.
I’ve been going bald since my 20’s and what hair I do have went gray in my 30’s (thanks genetics!). I started shaving it all off and grew the goatee. I shave every other day and couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
My friends who went bald via relentless thinning fairly young almost always did the same thing - they tended to change their hair style to straight back until it was simply gone. The least trouble, the least affected by the changing amount and pattern of hair. Those that pattern balded badly tended to make the clean break, grow a Van Dyke (commonly referred to as a “goatee” - the latter which properly doesn’t include a mustache) and shave their head. Receding tended to be keep it short but brush it forward (Burt Reynolds when he wasn’t wearing a hairpiece).
Shave it off. Years ago my wife noted that my fringe of hair that I was trying to salvage, and which made me look like a parody of a medieval monk, was a lost cause. Out came the razor. Never looked back.
When you have a perfect head, why cover it up with substandard hair?
