Coprolite Newsletter, April 2004

From the time I was in fourth grade until a couple of weeks ago, I never received any compliments on my hair. In fact, from my thirties through nearly all of my sixties, good-natured insults have been the norm. Then an attractive woman stood on stage and singled out my bald head from an audience of hundreds of people, actually praising its absence of hair. Well, it’s changed my whole outlook! In fact, her insight casts a new light on the already shiny subject of baldness.

As a toddler, I had long, blonde, curly hair. Honest, there are pictures to prove it. By the fourth grade, my hair was slightly less blonde but was still, as I look back, fairly gorgeous. Then my mother gave me 35¢ (the price of a haircut back then) and sent me to the neighborhood barber by myself.

Do I hear a gasp? No, my mother was not neglectful—in those days, it was okay for moms to let their kids walk around town. The dangers that now stalk children at every turn had not been invented yet.

Anyway, when I came home I announced (although I didn’t really need to): “I got a heinie!” Another thing you should know is that in those days a heinie was not the posterior part of your anatomy, but a very short haircut. I think the name referred to the sort of hairdo favored for many years by German soldiers. Even in those World War II days, political correctness had not yet changed the name to “crew cut” in my town. All my friends were getting heinies, so naturally I thought I should too.

My mother was devastated by the loss of my curls. What’s more, like other forms of lost innocence, they never came back. My hair remained straight when I returned to the longer style with the wave in front that was later copied by the Fonz, Richie Cunningham, and Elvis Presley.

Shortly after high school, two of my friends started losing their hair. One responded with an ever-more-elaborate combover, while the other cut his hair short and went defiantly bald. I thought he looked much better. So when my own hair started leaving in my late twenties, I embraced this new look that nature had decreed for me.

From that time until now, I’ve accepted the way I look. Still, I can’t say it’s the way I would have chosen. People tend to be amused by baldness, even though they wouldn’t make fun of you if you had some other defect.

I think the problem is that, down deep, society thinks a man should have hair where women have hair—and only there. If he lacks hair on his head, he’s old and decrepit. Hair on his face and chest and back, however, means he’s bestial and uncouth. Consequently, we have men wearing wigs to make up for the lack of hair on their heads and scrupulously shaving to counter the growth of hair on their faces. It’s like having a low-grade sex change operation every day in an effort to conform to the standards of a matriarchal society.

I figure that hair grows where it wants to, and I’m okay with that. As a result, I’ve probably saved a lot of money on razor blades and combs over the years. But I’ve always felt in the minority regarding my views on hair—at least until two weeks ago.

It happened at the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Conference in Dayton, Ohio. One of the keynote speakers was author and columnist Patricia Wynn Brown. She also produces Hair Theatre, a one-woman show that explains much of the human condition through attitudes toward hair. A cancer survivor herself, she donates proceeds from Hair Theatre to buy wigs for women and girls who need them after chemotherapy. At a reception the night before her speech, she went around asking people for their personal hair stories. I shared my experience trading my curls for a heinie, and she included it in her presentation the next day.

Then she singled me out in the audience. “You’ll notice that Wayne is a REAL MAN!” she said (emphasis added by the author). “Baldness, of course, is caused by having plenty of testosterone.” And she congratulated me for what everybody else has been teasing me about for all these years.

I think I could have saved the price of an airline ticket and flown home just on that remark.

What’s more, I may start poking some fun at the men I know who are still burdened with abundant hair. It’s not that I want to be mean, exactly. It’s just that they’ve spent years laughing at my head in the belief that its shine signaled a loss of vigor. I think I’m entitled to a little snicker at the thick locks that call their manhood into question.

––Wayne Adams
wayne@coprolites.com
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