Contributions by other people

Walter Davenport, USA

Suppose that bald, for men or women, were just another haircut. Then losing your hair might be inconvenient, but the world would be full of other people who looked like you because they shaved their heads for fun.

It has been difficult to carve a niche in our fashions for bald heads, because the prejudice against a bare scalp has been so fierce. However, there is a tiny movement starting that might help open up our minds to hairlessness.

A couple of years ago, the boys in a fifth grade class in California gained national fame by shaving their heads to legitimize the baldness of one of their friends who was taking chemotherapy. Last year, the employees of in Phoenix shaved their heads to welcome back a fellow employee, who was bald from cancer therapy. Before the hair- razing tale was over, 297 employees, including four women, had shaved their heads and the owner had donated $100 per head to the American Cancer Society - and shaved his own head.

Therein lies a strategy for bringing hairlessness into the realm of normal hairstyles; anyone who has a friend, neighbor, co-worker, or family member who has lost his or her hair, organize a campaign to make baldness respectable, at least locally, by recruiting volunteers to shave their heads.

The first protest that I expect is "But I'd never make fun of anybody without hair, and I would certainly tell him, or her, that he looked fine to me." That may be so, but words are weak, and "white lies" are easy. The proverb says "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." It is also the sincerest form of reassurance. If an egg-bald person tells you that you look good without hair, you are more likely to believe him, or her, than if the same words were spoken from under a full head of hair. If we organize to help our friends by removing the stigma from baldness, we might find ourselves having fun feeling the breeze blow over our bare heads.