Slap Headline

Loaded Magazine - 1995

Don't come near me with your fancy beards and your goatee trims. You're bald, mate, now shove off...

Ho ho ho, what a minefield, what a joke. Tell me, why do men get so obsessed about their hair? Poor creatures, you spend hours fretting and fussing over the state of your locks, or lack of, and the only other body-parts to merit equal attention are your breath and penis, which have much the same attendant worries: does it smell and is there enough of it?
I have a theory about Men and their Hair, and it is that checking out their rug is the only time they can pose and pout for eons in front of a mirror without being called a poof. But I have to tell you lads, from this woman's point-of-view there is nothing more unappealing than a coiffeured-up bloke who looks like he wouldn't be parted from his Braun Silencio and tube of naff styling gel on pain of death. I mean, take Jean-Claude Van Damme. Yes, he's handsome, if you like the conventional, but just look at that full head of shiny hair he proudly sports in his latest film Timecop; just nudging the collar of his no-doubt Armani shirt, it's so blow-dried, so horribly healthy, so Euro-Playboy stylee. Ugh, pass the clippers and the sickbag.
No matter how attractive he is, vanity does not become a man - it's seriously unsexy. As are balding man who try to cover why do they do that? They nearly always do it badly and embarrass themselves as well as everyone else around them. And they draw attention to their feelings of inadequacy as much as their hair loss by beating those few remaining hairs into lickety-spit submission across the scalp or by wearing a hairpiece.
Which brings us into the bitchy battlezone of The Weave versus The Wig. In the weave corner we have Elton John; in the wig corner are Burt Reynolds (who, according to his estranged wife Loni Anderson, insists on a new £1,000 hairpiece every week), William Shatner and Roger Moore (have you noticed that our trichologically-challenged trio are also famous corset-wearers?). Bill Shatner, who did not baldly go, should have done a Patrick Stewart, who did and is much sexier for it.
Balding men will go to ridiculous extremes to conceal the fact that their hair's disappearing. I have in mind U2's The Edge and Brian Johnson fromAC/DC who both always wear hats or a cap, even to bed no doubt - certainly if there's a bird waiting for them in it. And that's another thing: there's not much worse (apart from the obvious, le, pulling a tall well-built man who turns out to have a tiny cock) than getting off with a bloke who's pushed all the right buttons and gets you home then takes off his dinky Stiissy taacosy to reveal that the thatcher had a half day. Of course you say nothing even though you feel totally conned, because you'd rather keep stumm than appear a heartless shallow cow, but why do they do it? After all, it's perfectly possible to be bald and sexy. Sean Connery still seems to do well with the ladies in spite of his chrome-dome status and I don't see Jack Nicholson having a nervous breakdown now that his crowning glory is abandoning ship. No, he just appears to take it in his usual don't-give-a-damn stride - which is heart-stoppingly, achingly horny. Even I once had a thing with a baldie - though he compensated for it in olher areas by having an absolutely enormous, er, brain.
The most aesthetically pleasing solution adopted by balding men is to crop their hair, going for the retired crim look (see John Mc Vicar, Keith Allen, Steven Berkoff), making the best of what's left and giving a superficial intimation of hardness. There’s nothing sexier than an intelligent ex-bruiser.
By some strange quirk of nature, many bald and balding men are very hirsute, their chests a forest, their pubic region a thicket, and even,
sometimes, their backs a shudderingly horrible copse. If I ruled the world I would pass a law prohibiting hairy backs and shoulders, to be kept shaved and smooth at all times on pain of being forced to wear six-inch heels 24 hours a day. Immac would be available on the National Health.
Beards would be banned too, with special dispensations granted only on aesthetic grounds for the disguise of treble chins, no chins and bad harelips. Bald men often sport beards and moustaches as if to prove they can grow hair somewhere. Beards are foul, disgusting things. Like some sort of fungal growth creeping from the neck upward, they are dirty and smelly, hell for romance (it's like snogging a Brillo pad, leaving one's soft, maidenly skin red raw), are utterly un-chic and turn their wearers into dead ringers for left-wing lecturers or real ale drinkers. Even the recent retro fashion for '50s cappuccino poet goatees wasn't that cool. Lots of the leery lads who strained for months to cultivate enough foliage to have one just looked silly.
Admittedly I did meet someone recently with a pair of slinky sideburns which rather tickled my fantasy: novelist Will Self. He has these really cool 'chads', long thin dark ones shaped like hooks and trained to undercut his cheek-bones like a knife edge, running very close to the comers of his mouth. Looks quite the hard bastard until he opens that mouth: "They take about three weeks to get going but they come and go because they're quite high-maintenance and I'm very lazy and I hate going to the barbers. I like them, they're literal and metaphorical hooks, hairy quotation marks and something to grab onto when interviewers are boring me."
Naturally darling, we all need something to grab onto when we're being bored - and talking of sex, men are finally experiencing the pulling power of peroxide, the latest trend. Now do you understand why legions of women over the decades swore undying loyalty to a bottle of bleach? It's been a real eye-opener to see how many mousy ducklings have turned into tasty swans courtesy of Clairol, how many men who were once a no-no are now a "yes please!" Unfortunately the reverse is also true. I'm thinking of having my bloke done under the Trade Descriptions Act because he was Born Blond when I met him and now he's reverted to a brunette.
It all boils down to this, then. Men are vain - they've always fussed over the state and shape of their tresses from Regency days onwards. But a dandy is fine, a fop is not. As far as I'm concerned hair should be like all the best men — rough and ready.