Last Updated on May 9, 2020 by Robert Price
Guess Post by Eric
When I stated to go bald in my early 50s, it was a dream come true, as I have always wanted to go bald. But at first I panicked, fearing my wife would hate it. I need not have worried, as my wife was thrilled that I was finally going bald and begged me to not do anything to save my hair.
My Wife Loves My Shiny Head, and So Do I
I’m lucky to have married a woman who actually prefers bald men to men with a full head of hair, only I had no idea she felt that way until I actually began to go bald. So I just let it happen and it happened very fast. In less than two years, I went from about Norwood 2 or 3 to Norwood 6: totally bald on top with only a high fringe of hair on the sides and back. Typical male pattern baldness. It looks good, it feels great and I absolutely love it. So does my wife. She loves kissing me on top of my bald head. What a turn on!
Thank God I Went Bald!
It’s been 20 years since I went bald and I have enjoyed every minute of it and have never regretted letting it happen. My only regret now is that I didn’t go bald immediately after my wife and I got married, 45 years ago. In my opinion, male pattern baldness is not a disease in search of a cure. It is a normal, natural inherited trait.
Unfortunately for me, based on how many bald relatives I have, I had only a 50% chance of going bald, so it was a coin toss. Thank God in my case the coin landed heads up, that is, bald heads up. But why did I have to wait so long to get my wish fulfilled? By my 50th birthday I had finally accepted the fact that I would probably never go bald and I was deeply disappointed. Then suddenly my hairline started to recede and I developed a rapidly expanding bald spot in back.
I was both thrilled and scared, as going bald is a drastic change in appearance. And it WAS drastic and dramatic, but I thoroughly enjoyed the transition to bald. All the more, because it happened to fast. I loved finding wads of hair on my pillow every morning and hair clogging the shower drain every day. It was like I was making up for lost time.
Final Thoughts – Baldness, the Big Picture, and Society’s Perception of Hair Loss
I suspect there are a lot of other guys out there like me, who love being bald or wish they were bald. And I also suspect there are just as many women who would love it if their men would go bald. Why does male pattern baldness get such bad press? I don’t dare admit openly that I love being bald, for fear everyone will think I’m crazy. No, I’m not crazy. I just love male pattern baldness … especially on me. But my family and friends still feel sorry for me and often make good natured jokes about my shiny bald head. Their jokes and poking fun at me don’t bother. Actually, I like it. It reminds me that I am bald and how lucky I am to be bald.
Robert Price is a writer, consumer advocate, and hair loss researcher with thousands of hours of experience in the field. His goal is to keep you out of the hair loss rabbit hole, underworld, or whatever you want to call it. He founded Hair Loss Daily, the unbiased hair loss blog, in 2016. You can learn more about Robert in the my story section of this website.
Thanks to Eric for all his great comments over the last week or two! He’s a true MPB advocate and he offers some great perspective for younger guys (and older guys) who are dealing with hair loss. Fighting genetics isn’t for everyone. Often acceptance is the best course and Eric’s story is a testament to that fact.
This morning I got more positive feedback form the most important person in my life: my lovely wife. She said she had a meeting with old colleagues from work. One person in that group was one of her former bosses, who had recently gone MPB. She said I look much better bald than he. She said I have a better shaped head than her old boss and much less fuzz remaining. I guess fuzzy remnants of hair are as bad a no-no as a comb-over. Shave it off. She then said she is so happy I finally went bald. This just reinforces how much I love being male pattern bald. What little fuzz I have is almost all gone and I am now almost Norwood 7 bald.
You’re close to the finish line! I agree, the fuzz that some Norwood 6 guys still get doesn’t look good, in most cases. Prince William is a good example of this. Those few weak strands of hair he has left on top certainly aren’t enhancing his appearance any.
I know this is an old article, but I just stumbled on it and had to say something. The same sort of thing happened to me. I went bald in my 40s very quickly and suddenly. I was a Norwood 3, and within 2.5 years I was Norwood 7. I love it. I don’t shave and very seldom buzz. I go to a barber to get my fringe cut in a traditional taper, business length. Sometimes I wear a moustache for the full bald businessman look. It looks great, and I get compliments. I think it’s about confidence. I was happy to go bald, I like the way it looks on me, and people respond to that. I wouldn’t want my hair back if I could have it.
Thanks for the comment, Kevin! Undoubtedly, many guys look good rocking the Norwood 6/7 “businessman” style, with the fringe on the sides and back! It can exude sophistication and confidence in my opinion, especially for men in their 40s and 50s. Men in their 20s and 30s, probably not so much.
Actually, Norwood 6/7 would have done me a great deal of good in my 20s and 30s. Back then I had a ‘baby face’, and still look a lot younger than my age, now in my mid 70s. Looking a lot younger than my age now is great, but back in my 20s it hurt me a lot in the job market. I was never taken seriously and I didn’t get a promotion until my mid 50s. That hurt! I believe a seriously receding hairline would have done me a world of good back then. And it wasn’t just career considerations that mattered to me. Frankly, I was obsessed with going bald and deeply depressed about my ‘un-receding’ hairline. I remember the first time my barber commented that he thought my hair was thinning on top and it looked like my hairline was receding. My reaction was: “What!?” “Are you sure?” Then my wife showed me a recent photo of me that clearly showed my hairline was advanced Norwood 3. After the initial shock, I said, “Finally! What took so long?” The rest, as they said, is history and you can find that narrative in another post on this site, so I won’t bore you. Again(?) 🙂 P.S.
P.S. Bald is beautiful. Bald rocks!
Congratulations on going bald in only 2 1/2 years while still in your 40s. You were ten years luckier than I. As far as I’m concerned, there is no such thing as ‘premature baldness’. After puberty, a guy is never too young to go bald. I wish I had gone bald quickly in my late 20s, immediately after my wife and I got married. To have been Norwood 6 or 7 bald by my 30th birthday would have been awesome! But unfortunately, we don’t get to choose whether or not to go bald or the timing.
As eager as I was to go bald, it was still a shock. I was afraid my wife would hate it, but it turns out she was ecstatic about it and loves it as much as I do. Going bald quickly in my 20s would have been an even bigger shock, but I am sure I would have gotten over the shock very quickly and relished the look and feel of male pattern baldness. My wife just left to run an errand, but before she left, she came into my ‘man cave’ and kissed me passionately on top of my shiny bald head (then even more passionately on my lips!). I think she still loves ‘it’ (my MPB) … and ME, of course. It doesn’t get any better than this.
You couldn’t pay me enough to regrow a full head of hair. I absolutely LOVE male pattern baldness. It’s one of God best inventions and I thank Him every day he did MPB to me. If only He had done it 25 years earlier.
Hey Eric, thanks! Yeah, I felt pretty lucky it went so fast. I’m fine with the early stages and the late stages, but I’m not too crazy about the less tidy in-between stages, like 4 and 5. So happily a 7 and wearing it proudly. No ‘sly’ for me!
I agree about stages 4 and 5. Messy, and incomplete. I was worried my balding would stop there, but lucky for me, those stages only lasted about one year. My wife tells me I have an ‘almost perfect’ hairline. By that, she means I could lose a bit more hair in back. What used to be my bald spot in back (until it merged with my frontal receding hairline) is still only 4 inches across. 5 inches would be perfect, so I have a bit more balding to do. I also have just a bit of almost invisible short hair (fuzz) which I shave off about twice a month. I would love to get rid of that permanently, but it’s only a tiny annoyance, which I can live with. So you could say I am nearly Norwood 7 in front and on top, but still only Norwood 6 in back. Not quite perfect, but close enough. The other day my wife said the thinks I have recently receded in back a little bit. Or maybe she is just trying to encourage me and make me feel better about it. What about you, do you still have some thin, short fuzzy hair on top? How do you deal with it? For awhile I tweezed the few hairs that stubbornly refused to stop growing, but thankfully, that didn’t last very long. I did it because feeling just a little stubble where I should be totally smooth bald was very annoying. And while there was still enough of it, it looked messy. Now it is a pleasure to run my hands across my smooth, shiny bald head. I also love my remaining ‘horseshoe fringe’ or hair, as I don’t like the totally bald look. I tried that once, and it didn’t work for me. It made me look like a cancer patient with chemo hair loss. Not cool! Besides, the horseshoe fringe screams ‘MALE PATTERN BALDNESS!’, something I am very proud of. I do wear a hat, though. Not to hide my MPB, but to protect my head: keep my head warm in cold weather and protect my bald head from sunburn. I did sunburn once and regretted it. Never again! Sunburn really hurts and skin cancer is even worse.
I wonder how many other ‘lucky guys’ like us there are out there? Heck, there are so many of us bald guys, but how many out there secretly love their MPB. Also, how many guys out there secretly wish they were male pattern bald like us, but don’t have the trait in their DNA and will never go bald? I really pity them and wish there were a MPB pill they could take, to fulfill their desire to go bald.
Yeah, we are the lucky ones! Especially me, as based on the very few bald males in my family, I had only perhaps a 25% probability of going bald. So I lucked out.
I still have some fuzz on top, but like you, I prefer a smooth finish, so I epilate the fuzz whenever I start to feel it again. I like my mpb to be tidy…
In the summer sometimes I will get my fringe tightly faded, but generally I prefer a business-length taper. In the winter, I let it fill in a good bit. Work is too busy for me to get to the barber very often, so I just wear it a little longer, very old school. I actually think baldness suits me at least as well as having hair did, so the power donut is no problem for me.
I live in the desert, so I do wear hats a lot…but my dip is pretty low, so few hats actually completely hide my baldness. No “hatfishing here either.
Baldness suits me much better than a full head of hair ever did. Not only do I love the look and feel of MPB, there was a also a practical reason why I wanted to go bald. While it’s true that I had a lot of hairs, each hair was fine and fly-away, so it was always difficult to style. I had ‘cowlicks in back and at my hairline. I was always fussing with my hair, so my comb got constant use. If I wore it short, it stuck up awkwardly and looked strange. I hated my hair and dreamed about going male pattern bald. When it finally happened, it was a dream come true. MPB meant freedom for me. Me and my comb could finally part ways, but out of habit, my comb remained in my hip pocket unused. Until a few days ago. I reached for my comb to transfer it into a clean pair of jeans and panicked when I realized my comb was missing. Then it hit me. How silly! I haven’t used (or even needed) that comb for over twenty years! Old habits die hard. I’ve carried a comb in my hip pocket for nearly 70 years and I suddenly realized it was missing. I smiled. No more bad hair days. Ever. No need for a comb, so long as I keep my horseshoe fringe trimmed short and neat. It looks best that way, anyway.
I left a comment in another thread as well, but I’m not sure it went through.
I’m 42, and probably NW6-7. I too really like being bald. It has never bothered me at all to lose the hair on top, but I’ve noticed some recession at the back of my neck and above my ears. Strangely, that kinda bothers me. I hope I don’t end up with a couple of thin strips of hair on the sides, and nothing in the back.
I commented on the other thread, wondering if you all shave the bald area to get rid of the fuzz…this thread answered that. Does anyone get waxed anymore? I like for the bald area to be clean and smooth…no fuzz!
I have a couple little high spots of hair that keep me from being NW7, but I can tell they’re going pretty quickly. It doesn’t bother me in the least, and I’ve always been afraid that makes me weird. But, I just hate to follow all the lemmings who shave their heads. It’s great to know I’m not alone!
Hey Gary, congrats on liking the way you look! Yeah, I definitely wax or epilate the fuzz on top. I prefer a conservative fringe and shiny dome. I almost never shave or buzz. I also don’t really think mpb is despised as much as people say or seem to think. It’s not caused any problems for me, anyway…
Just found this article. Sorry for being late to the party. What a great article and comments. I can relate. I’ve always wanted to be bald. I’ve shaved my head for a number of years starting out with pretty much a full head of hair despite some recession in the front hairline. Overtime, hair loss set in with a growing bald spot in the rear and thinning throughout. I’m just not a ‘hair guy’. I was never good at styling it so i pretty much wore some type of short military haircut or had a fully shaved head.
I’m pretty much a Norwood 4. I started receding in my 20s and progressed to a 4 at age 50. Progression from a 3 to a 4 has been more recent in the last year. I’m starting to see the beginning stage of that ‘bridge’ appearing across the top. The bald spot in the back has definitely gotten more pronounced and hair at the temples and front hairline definitely is more of a ‘see through’.
It’s interesting how hair loss can occur at midlife and not just in your 20s and 30s. I’ve thought about using treatments to stop hair loss, but I admire guys who are bald or balding and embrace it. It’s very masculine. And I think I prefer a natural journey through male pattern baldness even if the end result is sporting a nice businessman’s fringe.
I appreciate the comments about the ‘fuzz’ on top. I’ve wondered how balding guys with fuzz managed that fuzz. Do they ask the barber to clear it out for them by buzzing or shaving it for them or just cut is short? And at what stage of hair loss, does a guy ask the barber to do that since stage 5 is kind of messy stage. I’d be interested in hearing more about that. How does a balding guy address haircuts with their barber to better manage the appearance of hair loss.
Thanks!