It’s not easy being bald and under 30. Just ask Scott Manley Hadley.
“My name is Scott Manley Hadley,” his essay begins, “and I am prematurely bald.”
Hadley says he first shaved his head when he was 26 year old after accepting that his receding hairline was both “unstoppable and accelerating.” It’s a harsh and often difficult reality that most every man, gay or straight, must confront at some point in their lives. In fact, a 2013 study found that male pattern baldness can actually trigger severe emotional burdens, including depression and body dysmorphic disorder, which is when a person suffers acute anxiety about their looks.
Related: Man Claims Propecia Made His Weenie Shrink Then Drove Him To Insanity
How about we take this to the next level?
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Some of this is due to a person’s own self-image. But it’s often aggravated by society, as has been the case for Hadley.
“In the year and a half since then,” he writes. “I’ve been the victim of constant discrimination.”
“Shaved heads are a popular and stereotypical look within two UK communities,” he explains. “Many people presume that a man with a shaved head is one of two things: gay or racist.”
He continues: “If I’m dressed in an even remotely flamboyantly way (i.e. a patterned shirt), strangers regularly presume I’m gay. If, however, I’m dressed in unexciting jeans and a plain T-shirt, people presume I’m some EDL-loving thug.”
In Hadley’s case, he’s neither of those things, though, he says, he doesn’t take offense when people think he’s gay. (In fact, in another blog post, he admits that he’s “tried” to whole gay thing but in the process he learned “the bit that actually matters just isn’t my kinda thing.”)
Related: PHOTOS: Guys With Receding Hairlines Are Sexy As Hell
“I’m neither a football-hooligan-turned-bouncer nor a gay man,” he writes. Be, he says, “I find it interesting how these two groups, which are in many ways ideologically opposed, share such a striking symbol.”
He adds: “What else do gay men and skinhead thugs have in common? Both groups enjoy wearing leather. Both groups organize street parades where they loudly expound personal pride.”
Hadley then takes a deep dive into what this all means:
A bald head looks like the tip of an erect penis without the external urethral meatus, and one would be foolish to deny that there are few things more masculine than a b*ner. It makes sense for gay men to fetishize the shaven head, as the defining feature of a male homosexual is his eroticization of the penis. For a fascistic thug, though, the deification of the c*ck makes less sense, unless one subscribes to the sneering viewpoint that every homophobe is a repressed homosexual scared of his own desires.
Sure, he may be overthinking. Or maybe he’s onto something. After all, a recent study found that straight-identifying guys with negative attitudes toward gay men appeared to be waaaay more interested in gay imagery than the those who didn’t express homophobic sentiments.
Then, of course, there are all those antigay religious and political leaders who have been exposed as keeping secret Grindr profiles.
Related: Study Shows Homophobic Male College Students Attracted To Gay Imagery
So what’s the takeaway from all this?
A few things:
First, Hadley writes, “men who shave their heads receive prejudice from both the socially liberal and the socially conservative, seeing us as a demon representative of something they abhor.”
So stop make snap judgments about bald guys!
And second, he says, male pattern baldness is a “disease” that typically affects “men who identify as outside of the mainstream (be that through sexuality or extreme political beliefs) [and] often want to draw extra attention to something that puts them at the heart of our patriarchal, white-led, society: their ethnicity and gender.”
Hmmm. We’re not so sure about that one.
What do you think? Sound off in the comments section below…
IDoNotHaveToAgreeWithYou
Um just put on a cap. There problem solved.
Paco
At least he had the good sense to just shave off the remaining hair and own his baldness. Comb-overs and wigs are terrible.
ted72
He should move to the states. Gay men don’t have any issues with a bald gay man. Nor do straight women, typically.
Aromaeus
Speak for yourself, I can count on one hand the number of bald men I’ve even had the mildest of interest in and they usually had nice beards to make up for it.
dwes09
It is fascinating how here in the US a shaved head is simply a ubiquitous style cliche, lightly infused with macho overtones. Hard to believe that in the UK is is uniquely associated with gay men or skinheads (and gay skinhead fetshists, who are surprisingly common).
Kathy Green
So, in Britain baldness is a gay thing!? I have never heard of this before. Here in Germany baldness is only associated with neo-Nazis, not with gays. However, most neo-Nazis aren’t just bald but also muscular and tattooed. It would never occur to me to discriminate against someone simply because he’s bald. A while ago, I watched the comedy show of a bald Jew (Alexej Boris). He joked that he would make a great neo-Nazi because of his “hairstyle”.
Mr-DJ
Yeah, I’ve been around a long time, and here in America I’ve never heard of being bald as a Gay thing. It’s a natural thing you have no control over, so it’s not really any kind of “thing”. Other than being ‘hot’ to some, especially present day while ‘shaved’ heads are considered a popular style. Period. And not within any single group.
SonOfKings
The thing about a shaved head is that you can’t just be bald and nothing else. You need something else to go with it. You need muscles, tattoos, a goatee, or simply to be black. Now if your bald, muscular, tatted up, and goateed, you are everybody’s dream lover!
Dave Downunder
You can’t tell me he is the only bald man in the UK who is not either gay or a skinhead. There has to be other ordinary blokes with bald heads over there. This just sounds like a lame excuse for a blog.
barkomatic
If he grew a beard maybe that would help
money718
Weird story
viveutvivas
@Kathy Green, here in the U.S. the bald, muscular, tattooed look is a very popular gay clone look. Beards are not mandatory but are a plus. We don’t really have the skinhead association here. (We do have fascists but they are usually disguised as regular people here.)