05 Baldness Cures and Consequences: Serious Solutions
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This article is from the Self Improvement FAQ, by Loren Larsen llarsen@cs.clemson.edu with numerous contributions by others.
05 Baldness Cures and Consequences: Serious Solutions
If you still don't believe that bald can be beautiful (on you) and if
you still grieve for that which is not worthy of grief, then you're a
terribly superficial, materialistic creature and probably a Libra too.
But we still love you. The good news is that, if money is no object,
you can, in many cases, have as much hair as you want. Once you have
a full head of hair, it'll be easier to philosophize about how hair is
one of the illusions of Maya and thus makes no difference whatsoever.
As a good Libra, you'll enjoy doing that.
Timing is everything. The sooner you start taking some decisive
action before your baldness pattern reaches its limits, the smoother
your transition from a "balding" person to one with an apparently full
head of hair will be. This, of course, should be obvious. If your
hair is just now starting to thin, very few people other than you and
those very intimately involved with you will either notice or care if
you start to make changes. But if you're completely bald on top, or
have a full-crown bald spot, then its sudden disappearance will be
noticed by many people. This involves potential psychological
problems. If you make an abrupt transition, some people will ask you
what you've done to your hair. Maybe the comments will be well meant
or innocuous, such as, "Whatever you've done to your hair, it looks
great." Few will say, "I like your new wig." That's because few--if
any--will notice.
The reason why few people will notice most subtle changes you make to
your hair is that most people don't actually see you each time they
cast their eyes on you. What they "see" is their pre-formed mental
image of you (your "gestalt"). Their eyes scan you for identifying
features and then, satisfied that the person they are scanning matches
(more or less) their internalized gestalt of you, they're satisfied
about that and go on with what they're truly concerned about, which
is usually themselves. That's why people who have had beards for a
long time are often surprised that many people don't mention it when
they shave the beard off. At best, a few people will say, "There's
something different about you; did you used to wear glasses or
something?"
There are exceptions, however, to what we just said. Men who are
losing or have lost their hair are generally as perceptive as raptors
when it comes to other men's hair. If you used to look bald and then
start to look hairy, you'll be leaving the balding ones behind. Some
will resent the fact that you're choosing to leave the bald club;
somehow they've convinced themselves that they have to be in that club
for life and they believe you deserve the same sentence. Another
group of exceptions will be the few people who actually walk around
with their eyes open. Why do they do this? No one knows, but some
people actually have nothing better to do than to go around seeing and
enjoying the real world, rather than seeing their pre-formed image
of it. You can be assured that those people are few in number and
are usually such enlightened souls that they wouldn't think of
embarrassing you in public or private.
In any case, the avoidance of any comments at all is preferable to
most people. We want to look better, but not radically better. If
you look radically better, then your current gestalt will not match
people's preformed image of you and you'll wake them out of their
daze. A seamless transition is thus the ideal. If you gradually
make positive changes early in your pattern's progression, you will
get minimal or no unwelcome comments from others. If you are
currently fully bald, it will be harder to make slow, seamless
changes, but it is possible. To ease the social transition, you might
even consider going away for a while as you make your changes.
(Fleeing is not recommended, but you might think about making your
change if, for example, for other reasons you do need to move to a new
city or go on a long vacation. In that case, you can start again
fresh.)
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