Coming Up With Arguments Right Off the Top of Their Heads

H air has been called a woman’s crowning glory, yet--from Samson to Sassoon--men have shown themselves to be every bit as obsessed with their hair as women. These days, women spend more time at the salon than men and invest more energy in styling their hair each day. But does that necessarily signify the end of men’s love affair with their hair?

SHE: There is surely nothing as touchy as a man who is thinning on top. No matter who he is with or what he is doing, he won’t pass up a chance to point out with unconcealed relish how much less hair some other guy has or--worse--what a dreadful hairpiece he is wearing. If that isn’t obsession, it’s close enough.

HE: Who on earth have you been hanging out with? None of the guys I know who are thinning on top--myself included--like it one bit, but you’re not going to hear us gnashing our teeth about it to each other. And the idea of pointing out another guy’s ill-fitting rug and snickering like a bunch of kids at summer camp is ludicrous.

Here’s the drill on hair: If you want to do something about it, fine. Do it, but don’t crow about it. If not--and I vote for this approach with two hands raised--shut up and age gracefully like a man.

SHE: From your lips to men’s ears. But until then, trust me on this one. Few men are as comfortable with the signs of creeping decrepitude as you and your friends seem to be.

Men who are touchy about their thinning locks will talk over a news flash about World War III just to make a snide comment about the news anchor’s receding hairline. And if I see one more thinso with his hair parted over his ear and his remaining eight strands of hair brushed over the top of his head like a plate of baby eels, I swear I’ll be hard-pressed to remember I’m a lady.

HE: When in doubt, blame the media, I suppose. Yul Brynner’s dead, Telly Savalas is shilling for Vegas credit cards and Michael Jordan’s so rich that nobody cares if he’s bald or not. “Star Trek: The Next Generation’s” Capt. Picard--Patrick Stewart, bless him--is our only standard bearer. Everywhere else a guy looks, he sees images of simpering bald guys getting beat up by a bunch of hairy Ah-nolds.

Buck us up. Didn’t you say that women don’t care one way or the other?

SHE: Hey, ease up! I happen to be married to one of you people, so you can bet it certainly doesn’t matter to me. It’s balding men’s behavior that drives us women nuts. And it’s not just the ones who are losing their hair that are hard to take. Just about any guy is a royal pain when it comes to the subject of his hair.

HE: Honest, most guys wouldn’t care a rap one way or the other if they could be sure that women weren’t laughing up their sleeves about it.

SHE: The experts, I’m afraid, beg to differ. Coiffeur Tony Ray, who created the famous “La Costa” look, says his male clients are much pickier than his female clients. Men, he says, are motivated not by aesthetics nor by the need to be stylish, but by a driving desire to look young forever, yet they refuse to change their hairstyle to do it.

They prefer the comb-overs and garish dye jobs that were once the private domain of stand-up comedians in the Catskills, and they are happy to pay a hairdresser hard money to make the look work for them.

HE: Most guys probably wish they had never read about Samson and Delilah, or seen a woodcut of that hairy sentimental boxer, Lord Byron.

We need to get away from the idea that hair is inextricably tied to masculinity, but I don’t hear anybody out there, male or female, willing to offer the first olive branch. In fact, if Rogaine sales are any indication, the jitters are getting worse. The Upjohn Co. sold $103 million worth of Rogaine last year to men who wanted some treatment to make more hair grow north of their ears.

We need better living examples. Hell, the entire U.S. Olympic volleyball team pared their skulls down to nubs. Are they wimps?

SHE: No, they--like countless men before them--decided that their hair was the perfect vehicle for making a statement about themselves.

So, if we have balding men burning rubber to get to the hair-restorer counters to grow what they ain’t got and hirsute guys shaving their hairy pates egg-smooth, is hair really so “unimportant” to you guys?

Hardly.

For men, hair never stopped being a metaphor. Yet for women, it represents nothing more than just another way to look good.

HE: There’s a rub there, though. Among women, hair is seen to have potential for beauty and adornment, no matter what women say about the dreaded “bad hair” days.

Among men, it’s either seen as inconsequential (assuming you have lots of it) or (if you don’t) having almost unlimited potential for disaster.

Between a bad hair day and a no-hair day, guess which one holds the greater terror?

Again, the best way to deal with it, I think, is simply to accept it with as much equanimity as you can. In any case, it helps to remember that, among body parts, hair is one of the least painful to lose permanently.