On the Edge...

You’ve heard about them all your life. You’ve seen them in the backs of magazines. The third season of every sitcom has a storyline about them. But you always think people are exaggerating; making more of them than is actual reality. Then, you see one in the wild. A man’s hairpiece. Not a full-on wig or a little spray-on hair in the back. It’s that half-head thing. The front is bushy and full, with a little wave, a little sass. Then there’s hair that stretches about halfway back so the wearer can comb it in with his own hair so it looks “natural”. Oh me oh, oh my oh, oh Cleveland, Ohio. Standing perfectly still in front of your bathroom mirror, I’m sure it blends and disappears beautifully. Standing in the aisle of an airplane near that whooshy stream of air vent air, however, the truth is revealed. The line of demarcation between store bought and home grown: the dreaded edge of hair.

I won’t insult balding men by asking why they go to such lengths to cover a receding hairline. It is naïve to think that people aren’t judged by their looks and “penalized” (especially by other men) for a lack of a full head of hair. Additionally, there are, of course, people with medical conditions or birthmarks or scars or whatever that they prefer to keep to themselves. My observations are not directed solely at the wig wearers. They are also to shake a finger at the wig makers. Surely, if we can put a souped-up off-road vehicle on Mars, we can create a head covering for men that doesn’t leave them open for all those squirrel-pelt-on-your-head jokes comedians are always tossing out while the strippers change g-strings.

Certainly women have wonderful hair options. Women who wear wigs for religious reasons, cancer patients, and actresses who love period films have forced wig makers to step up their game. I also believe women simply insist on a higher standard of fake hair. Unlike men who probably never paid attention to their hair until they started losing it, women often base their beauty self-perception on the state of their hair. Women would never tolerate the edge of hair.

Another basic mistake made by men is they insist on growing hair everywhere to make up for the lack on their head. My fellow traveler had a beard and a moustache and an enthusiastic pair of eyebrows. In and of itself, I suppose that’s not a tragedy. But, again, the devil is in the details. His beard was an attractive salt and pepper grey and black, nicely trimmed. The moustache was, hmmm, kind of reddish brown. His eyebrows were dark brown. His wig and back of the head hair were darrrrk brown. So somewhere in that mix, hair dye must have been involved. Even at first glance, from his neck up, every follicle on the man’s head was screaming “I AM LOSING MY HAIR AND I PANICKED AND THE LADY IN THE BEAUTY SUPPLY STORE SALON SOLD ME A PACKAGE DEAL!”

The gentleman on the airplane caught me staring at him. I smiled, he smiled, and I shifted my gaze to the video monitor nearby, hopefully pulling off the “oh, I wasn’t staring at the thing on your head, I was watching television” ruse. Once he sat, I found I continued to glance up occasionally to check out the top of his head from behind. Like Waldo in those big picture books, once the edge of hair has been located, it’s all you can see. It’s harmless, though, and like our red and white stocking-capped pal, kind of sweet and silly. Like most men. Bless their hearts…

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