During a recent interview, the noted actor Ben Kingsley was asked about his baldness.
Like the late Yul Brynner’s and the late Telly Savalas’, Kingsley’s scalp is totally without hair. No fringe, sideburns or fuzz.
Kingsley said he does not discuss personal matters. That was surprising for two reasons:
First, people in show business seldom consider anything too personal to talk about. They don’t hesitate to blab about who they are sleeping with or have slept with and if it was fun.
And when they get too old to sleep with anything but a denture holder, they write books with detailed accounts of everyone with whom they’ve had even a brief snuggle.
Kingsley should be praised for having the dignity to refuse to discuss a personal matter. Of course, he’s English, and English actors are more reserved than their American counterparts, except those who perform after drinking a quart of gin.
But of all the things he could consider “personal,” why baldness? Unless he wears a hat or a toup, his hairless dome is there for everyone to see. Including the reporter with whom he chatted over lunch.
Baldness is normal to hundreds of millions of men across the planet. Some are totally bald, as is Kingsley. Others are bare on top with a fringe on the side and back, which makes them the barber’s 10-minute delight. And some shamelessly let the side fringe get long and comb those few sad side strands across the bare top.
But baldness is no more a personal matter than your height, eye color or the size of your shoe. One way or another, it is a matter of genetics.
Unless, of course, there are peculiar circumstances involved in Kingsley’s baldness.
Let’s say, for example, that until recently, Kingsley had a lush head of hair. But then, during one of those lover-spats shows for which show-biz people are famous, every strand was plucked out by an enraged girlfriend.
Under those circumstances, it would be understandable that he would say his lack of hair was a personal matter. You couldn’t very well expect the man to say, “Well, I have no hair because my gorgeous live-in lover and I disagreed over the Oscars, and she plucked my entire thatch.”
But that’s highly improbable. At least I hope it is, for Kingsley’s sake.
It’s more likely that at some point his hair started falling out, either receding at the forehead, which is the most graceful way to lose it, or on top, creating that empty round spot, which is less desirable unless you are about 6-5 and nobody can see it.
The arrival of baldness can be traumatic, especially for men who are young. Young used to mean someone in their 20s. Later, it became the 30s. Now, because of the Baby Boomers, it covers those up to and in their 50s. Before long, we’ll hear ex-Boomer males in their 60s greeting each other with, “Hi, kid,” and “What’s up, lad?”
But as a great philosopher once put it, “Hey, doo-doo happens, man, dig? So be cool.”
And that’s the way it is with baldness. Just as some people become nearsighted or farsighted or have prominent noses, overbites, big ears or poor hand-eye coordination, others lose their hair.
Some young man staring with terror at a dozen hairs in his sink might disagree, but there are benefits to baldness.
For one thing, a young man who knows baldness is a family trait might be more inclined to seek an early, stable family life. He looks at his father, who has a head like a cue ball, and tells himself: “Uh oh, I’d better find a willing female and marry her now before I look like old dad.”
So young men who are inclined toward future baldness tend to marry young. Of course, when his hair falls out, he notes that his wife now weighs 180 pounds and has big blue veins in her legs. So she, too, was looking ahead. But that’s the breaks.
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Of course, men who are confident enough to wait until they are bald before seeking a mate will know that they have found someone who is not a ninny concerned only with appearances but is an intelligent, serious type who gives deep thought to a man’s net worth.
And as I’ve written before, there is nothing more time- and cost-efficient than baldness.
It takes me about two or three seconds to prepare my hair in the morning. I haven’t owned a comb for 15 years and spend nothing on sprays, shampoo or a blow dryer.
In contrast, a friend who is a TV anchor creature spends a minimum of 30 minutes a day at home and in the health club on his hair. Think about that. It comes to about 182 hours a year. That’s more than 7.5 full days. And if he keeps his hair and job, over the next 20 years he will have spent 150 days–or more than 21 weeks–using his blow dryer, comb and brush to tend the useless thatch.
If you think of the millions of man-hours that are wasted each year by the millions of men who are overhaired, it is an awesome economic waste by this country.
Because we are in a highly competitive global economy, maybe we should have a law requiring all men to have their heads shaved each day.
Women too. I don’t want to be accused of discrimination.