Hail! The Bald and the Beautiful

“C’mon, bring your bald head over here,” roars John T. Capps III as I enter the Holiday Inn. With six other baldies, I face the lobby’s wall-size mirror as we pose for a Philadelphia TV station. Between our heads and the lights, there’s plenty of glare. Capps exhorts us to rub our domes in unison and chant: “Hip-hip! Bald is beautiful! Bald is beautiful! Bald is beautiful!”

As Capps choreographs our movements, he takes phone calls from the news media. He will interrupt anything for the media, which eagerly dispatch his homespun, shrewd message.

“We’re head to head in Morehead,” he tells reporters, “looking for the smoothest head.”

My friend Steve shies away from the action. He’s not sure he wants to be here (he told no one his destination) and pleads that his bald spot is too small to fit in, a claim that is demonstrably false. In his distinctive drawl, Capps bellows, “By Sunday, he’ll be as bald as the rest of us.”

This was the opening ceremony of last weekend’s 16th annual Bald-Headed Men of America convention, a semi-serious paean to baldness consciousness-raising. It is also the John Capps Show: part evangelical revival, part cornball comedy act, part power-of-positive-thinking seminar.

Capps, a beefy 48-year-old with gray stubble framing his dome, wears a trademark yellow shirt with “Bald John” inscribed in black letters on the pocket. He bounds about like a man on a mission. And he is. A local printer and civic leader, Capps never thought of baldness as a problem. His father and uncles were unhaired, and he used being bald as an icebreaker and personal rallying point.

But 16 years ago, he was rejected for a job because his bare dome was said not to project the young, dynamic image the company wanted. Thus was launched the BHMA in Dunn, N.C. The group grew, and Capps serendipitously moved to Morehead, as if only to provide a great newspaper dateline.

Capps is like the Mao of his cause. His Baldosophy is well-known and frequently quoted by followers. Capps encourages devotees to use his wisdom freely, for spreading the gospel that bald is not only OK, but better than having hair.

Words to Loose Hair By

A sampler of Capps’ hairless sagacity:

“Baldness is just mind over matter. It doesn’t matter if the person doesn’t mind.”

“We don’t have time for plugs, rugs or drugs.”

“If you don’t got it, flaunt it.”

“The Lord is just, the Lord is fair. He gave some brains, the others hair.”

“Skin is in.”

The convention moved as smoothly as the fully shaved heads in attendance. But a year ago, the company that makes the Helsinki Formula, which purports to rejuvenate hair growth, wanted to set up a display at the hotel. Capps declined. When plans to stage a demonstration fizzled, the company rented an airplane to drag a banner declaring: “Real Men Don’t Go Topless. Use the Formula.”

Many Faces of Baldness

The convention is a strange affair. About 50 men, some with wives, girlfriends and children in tow, take over the Holiday Inn to talk about how they’ve accepted their pate’s fate, share bald stories, swap bald jokes, and vie for the honors of being named the prettiest, the smoothest, the shiniest, the most kissable, the most-tanned and best all-around bald heads.

It has the feel of joyous group therapy, where members support each other, seek out the introverted few who don’t enjoy their hairlessness and try to rid themselves of the vanity that produces negative emotions for baldies.

It’s the kind of place where “Hey, baldie” is a term of endearment that spurs dozens of men to turn around as one, wives coo about how cute their shorn men look, and men proudly stroll the halls with the imprints of red kisses atop their heads. One burr-headed young Marine, a possible future BHMA member, was overheard saying on a pay telephone: “You won’t believe this. This place is filled with bald guys. They’re everywhere. I mean it.”

Indeed we are. It’s not a huge gathering, when you consider that there are 20,000 members in the BHMA (and 30 million bald men nationwide).

Chanting Skinheads

Some avid baldies may find it difficult to persuade their wives to plan a getaway weekend with a platoon of aphorism-spouting skinheads. Yet this is the biggest thing to happen in the Atlantic Coast vacation town each year (The Chamber of Commerce posted a “Welcome Baldies” sign and the local paper published a laudatory editorial), and Capps gets lots of mileage out of 50 guys sans hair.

“Where else can you get 40 or 50 bald heads together?” Capps asked. “You ever hear of a hairy convention?”

The legion of Mr. Cleans was genially consumed with baldness as pain, baldness as fun, baldness as next to godliness, and baldness as a way to save money through fewer haircuts. The men, mostly Southerners, had nothing in common except what they don’t have, and when their weekend was over, they wanted to talk some more.

The pain: “It took me 15 years to accept being bald,” said John Brammer. “When I got out of the Army, and someone called me ‘baldie,’ I didn’t think; I’d just deck him. I got into a lot of fights over it.”

‘Have Fun With It’

The fun: “When I was in the tire retreading business,” said Mark Adams, of Tega Cay, N.C., “I had a sign outside saying, ‘Baldness Can Be Cured Here.’ A Cleveland station came down and I got a lot of coverage from it. You can let it discourage you or ruin you or you have a lot of fun with it.”

The inspirational: “I wouldn’t want hair,” said Walter Jackson of Asheboro, N.C., a 1989 BHMA Bald of Fame inductee whose business is called Mr. Clean and His Machine. “Being bald is clean. And cleanliness is next to godliness. People look at me and put me next to the Bible and God. I really believe if I had hair, people wouldn’t trust me as much as they do.”

The wives are conspicuously supportive. Vicki Jackson and her family never knew Walter as anything but bald. “When I met him, Jackson was losing it. But I just thought he was just the cutest thing!” In turn, Jackson ascribes a certain saintliness to the wives of bald men. “You look at them out of the corner of your eye, and she’s smilin’ at you,” he said. “Those wives are somethin’ special.”

Though they weren’t the stars, the wives weren’t left out of the baldfest. Several, along with other local women, judged the awards competition. In two rooms, the judges kissed, rubbed and examined a parade of baldies’ bussability, smoothness, prettiness and shine.

“I can’t wait to kiss all your beautiful bald heads,” said judge Carol Tunstall, a local nurse and model.

John Wood, a 74-year-old ex-Marine from Swansboro, N.C., with a fully-shorn head, admitted his desire to win as the best-tanned Solar Dome, a title he earned in 1987. “I’ve worked all year long,” he said, “played golf every day to get the right tan, but last week my skin peeled off.”

During the finals for the most kissable dome, the judges required a kiss-off to determine a victor. As the judges kissed Steve Comer of Dobson, N.C., he asked them, “Did I give you all my phone number?”

Gafner, winner of the Best All-Around Bald Head Award, said: “I was shocked. I had no idea I’d get it.” His son, fully-haired Travis, loves to talk about the time his father was on the deck of a ship and a helicopter pilot radioed down “to tell that guy to put a hat on because it made too much glare.”

Late Sunday morning: The convention has adjourned, and Capps is relaxing on a couch in the Bald-Headed Men of America’s hospitality suite. Then Capps, sort of a cross between Dale Carnegie and Uncle Fester of TV’s “The Addams Family,” is asked, “If there were a miracle cure that would give you hair without pain, would you use it?”

“I wouldn’t use it,” he says, “and I don’t think the guys in our organization would do it. I don’t think people want to look like everybody else, even if it’s what the economy and the media want.”