If you’re under 30 you can skip this post but you may want to bookmark it to read 20 years later.
A suggested slogan for my Last.FM group – New Weird America – was “grow some hair”. I objected to this on the grounds that, at 50, I’m at an age when loss rather than growth is the reality. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that I’m not actually losing hair but that it is being displaced. What is no longer on my head is now sprouting in my back, nose, ears + eyebrows.Entreprenuers are not slow at identifying a market opportunity in this field of male grooming. The finger shaped trimmer (pictured left ) is just one example of the gadgets available. This one is supposedly meant to personalise the process but looks like a sick recycling of an amputated body part.
Babette Cole wrote a marvellous book for kids called ‘Hair In Funny Places’ about what happens to your body during puberty. It’s full of wisdom about hormonal side effects, such as the fact that that which makes you feel horny also makes you smelly and spotty. ‘Mr & Mrs Hormone’ are depicted as grotesque rat-like figures concocting their dastardly chemicals in a lab.
I think there should be an adult version of this book which could be handed out to men aged 30 and over at health clinics. It could be called ‘Hair In Funnier Places’ and would give prior notice of the tricks nature continues to play through your life span. After all, when the Daily Apple blog confronted this issue in 2005 it revealed that testosterone is the culprit in the young and old.
You have been warned!
