It's on my pillow when I wake up. Clumps come off in the shower. They're on my keyboard, in my food, and in my books. My follicles are falling like helicopter seeds from a maple on a brisk autumn day.
I'm going bald, and I hate every second of it.
The truth is, I was destined to go bald from the beginning. It's in my blood and it has been for generations. My dad's bald. My grandfather's were bald. My grandfathers' fathers were bald.
The first-ever Ilgunas-a bald caveman sometime in the Pleistocene-had to find alternative means to attract a potential mate.
Since he couldn't swirl his head and taunt the women with his luscious locks, his crude sense of humor and grisly forearms had to suffice. Every Ilgunas has since followed suit, and soon that'll be all I have to work with.
But what bothers me most about my hair problem is not the anxiety, loss of confidence, or degradation of appearance, but for the fact that my body is making up for the loss by growing an overabundance of hair everywhere else.
While my facial stubble provides enough texture to light a match, you can spark the Olympic torch on my happy trail.
In the dark pockets of my body, there is a burgeoning overgrowth of forestry that must be regulated with a routine weed whacking.
This hair is a curse. I either want it gone, or I want more of it.
I know I'm not the only one with these concerns. Many males in college worry about going bald. We equate hair with sex appeal and even if women don't care about it, we do.
But the fact of the matter is that baldness shouldn't have this much of an impact on us. Both women and men have an impossible standard to meet in regards to beauty. It is this standard that makes us waste our money on expensive hair growth products or beauty supplies. It is this standard that causes eating disorders, depression, and those waste-of-life metrosexuals.
It's absurd when you think about it. Why is baldness automatically associated with ugliness? Why do women feel as if they must be a certain weight, even if it demands that they take hazardous measures to reach it? Why do women bother shaving their legs, and forbid nature from taking its rightful course?
The answer is profits.
Although there have been some great bald men in history (Gandhi, Karl Malone, Larry David), I tend to see myself as George Costanza because society tells me that baldness is bad. Now I'm supposed to feel pressured to buy Propecia or a NordicTrack to compensate.
Male baldness is just part of the conspiracy. Think about all the weird crap we do to be attractive.
Bulimics eat food and then throw it up. Is anything more illogical than this? This is like taking a shower, stepping out, and rubbing your morning bowel movement on yourself.
People who go to tanning salons-acknowledge your phoniness right now. Nature intended you to be palely white, not burnt Crisco.
This conceptualization of beauty consumes more time and money than we should be willing to sacrifice. I bet you 90 percent of this school spends more time grooming their armpits than participating in their government. I bet the same people spend more money on lipstick and hair gel than they give to charity.
Instead of caring about things that matter, we're worried about climbing the social ladder to the top rung as alpha male or female in our respective circles. And though I'd like to gloss this over with a big happy Mr. Clean smile and say everything's going to be okay and I'll be cool with my looks no matter what, we're all in this Hair Hell together and until our perception of what beauty is changes, our priorities won't.
