Parting ways with both hair and style
01/10/2007
Parting ways with both hair and style
By
Herald Editor
Bald might be beautiful, but first comes the ugly realization of hair today, gone by mid-life crisis or sooner.
This new year has me feeling a bit older after noticing that my youth is fleeting from me one hair follicle at a time. While not one to primp and preen in the mirror, in between brushing bicuspids I caught a glimpse of slightly exposed scalp next to the cowlick that has inhabited my head since age two. Far from full-blown m.p.b (male pattern baldness), the tiny thin spot has been up until now out of sight and mind.
However, when you're only a few exits south of 40 on life's highway, a sign like this can send guys careening toward thoughts of last-ditch hair transplants or riding indefinitely in the Hair Club for Men carpool lane.
Admittedly, these thoughts never crossed my mind because I've always had hair to spare. It is a hairline slight widow's peak and ample forehead for big ideas inherited from my father. A man, who at nearly 80 years old, retains an overwhelming percentage of his wit and hair. I always figured genetics were on my side, but I might have to part ways with that notion.
Throughout my life, each haircut, hairdo or coiffure adorning my head reflected the person I was, or perceived to be, at that particular moment in time. More than mere extensions of pigmented filaments, hair became an extension of my personality.
A child of the '70s, my grade school hair was an entity no back pocket plastic comb could penetrate. Each year a little less earlobes dangled beneath the helmet of mud brown hair in my glossy finish school pictures. Then puberty and junior high collided and strange noises were emitted from behind the bathroom door. I had discovered the world of blow dryers, styling mousse and feathered bangs. Hair and high school meant changing styles and personas. For four years, I chopped, bleached and buzzed my hair all in the name of perceived hipness.
By the time I entered my junior year of college, my hair was pulled back in a nearly shoulder-length ponytail to complete the young radical motif. I'm sure my parents wondered if they could trade in my merit scholarship for a haircut.
These days, the fashion police would book me for felonious assault on the senses for my lack of style hair or otherwise. I have shirts in my closet deemed non-Y2K compliant that still see the light of day. I spent 145 hours cutting the lawn last summer and 25 minutes on a haircut. I'm so low maintenance, I can even run on domestic beer.
So if the follicle fates change my hairdo to hair don't, I won't deny the inevitable. No six-foot long comb-over hair strands. No rugs, toupees or objects resembling a dead ferret on my head. No spray-on hair semigloss or enamel. Nor will I spend my daughter's college tuition on various elixirs, tonics or harebrained magic potions. Lastly, I will not grow a little ponytail to compensate for a big insecure bald spot.
This new year might mark the beginning of parting ways with both the words hair and style; not a pretty thought. But hey, beauty is more than skin deep just ask any phrenologist. I just hope I don't nick a cranial nerve while shaving my head that could get ugly.
Grand Traverse Herald editor Garret Leiva can be reached at 933-1416 or e-mail gleiva@gtherald.com