OtherSyde

Alright, now for the more uplifting part: Results! First pic is four days post-op when they first unwrapped the foam and compression garment to see how I was looking. Much slimmer, but still a bit shapeless and formless due to all the swelling and accumulated fluid. This would probably have been along the lines of the final result if I'd chosen cheaper, older tumescent lipo or SmartLipo instead of going with an etching specialist using VASER. As it is, this is only the very early beginning! The next pics are Day 7, the morning after I had the drains removed; I'd removed the foam and compression garment for an hour or so to wash the garment and take a shower myself. You can see my abs just beginning to take shape, even at this early phase. Finally, in the last 3 pics I'm right at the 3-Week mark, just a few days ago wearing my Spanx tank top and peeling it off (I never wore Spanx before this; they are almost painfully difficult to squeeze into and peel off!) The difference is stark here, and you can really see the shape starting to come in. This is about what I look like today as of this posting.

Alright, now for the more uplifting part: Results! First pic is four days post-op when they first unwrapped the foam and compression garment to see how I was looking. Much slimmer, but still a bit shapeless and formless due to all the swelling and accumulated fluid. This would probably have been along the lines of the final result if I'd chosen cheaper, older tumescent lipo or SmartLipo instead of going with an etching specialist using VASER. As it is, this is only the very early beginning! The next pics are Day 7, the morning after I had the drains removed; I'd removed the foam and compression garment for an hour or so to wash the garment and take a shower myself. You can see my abs just beginning to take shape, even at this early phase. Finally, in the last 3 pics I'm right at the 3-Week mark, just a few days ago wearing my Spanx tank top and peeling it off (I never wore Spanx before this; they are almost painfully difficult to squeeze into and peel off!) The difference is stark here, and you can really see the shape starting to come in. This is about what I look like today.

So I decided to take a break this year from my biennial hair transplants to focus on a different area that was aging poorly: My torso. As usual, I researched this extensively before I picked a doc and took the plunge, as always (skills I largely learned on this forum!). I'm just posting this for anyone who is curious, since I would imagine a large portion of us are much like me: Over 30, and and toting an anoyingly invincible stubborn little belly that just will not freaking GO AWAY no matter how much you run on the treadmill and lift weights (both of which I do fairly often). After my previous 7-month deployment ending in December 2017 (during which time I worked out a lot and got stronger and more muscular but could not lose the belly), I had saved a fair chunk of change (outside of what I had stashed in my 401k for retirement of course - I'm not completely irresponsible) and decided that while some guys want to buy a big fancy truck, or a sports car, or a bigger newer house after a deployment, I decided I wanted to not have to incessantly and hopelessly battle my stupid gut anymore. It was an uphill battle, and it's always a losing one since we only get older and our metabolism only slows down more and more. So I tentatively began looking into the various forms of lipoplasty; here are the results of my research, very truncated of course: -Traditional "tumescent" lipo is good for sucking out large amounts of loose fat at once, and mostly for low-definition fat removal and removal of free-floating fat. It's suited for rather significantly overweight people, and I was still pretty slim; mostly I just had subcutaneous fat (meaning directly under the skin, merged/entrenched into the under-layers of the skin) and visceral fat (referring to the fat in between the muscles and organs). -Smart-Lipo (aka - "Laser Lipo") is a better option, since the laser beam mounted on the end of the cannula (the wand at the end of the suction hose which they insert under the skin to suck the fat out) is said to melt fat more rapidly and also stimulate collagen production which, especially for significantly overweight people losing a lot of weight, will nicely tighten up the skin afterwards. It also allows for somewhat higher-definition sculpting of musculature due to using smaller and more precise cannulas than traditional tumescent lipo. This is was a good option for me and I was really looking at it, since it is very widespread and getting less expensive. Until I looked at VASER. VASER, or Vibration Amplification of Sound Energy at Resonance, is a more rarely-utilized technology and a specialized form of liposuction, more appropriately called liposculpture due to the more specific goals it's specifically used to achieve. VASER uses a high-frequency sound/vibration emitter at the end of the small cannula which emits a specific frequency that emulsifies soft squishy fat, but leaves the more solid/dense aspects of the surrounding anatomy intact and unaffected - most importantly the delicate meshwork of connective tissue directly underneath your skin and between your organs (exactly my problem areas). This allows a skilled surgeon to intricately etch out the lines between your musculature without damaging supporting connective tissue or muscle tissue, as well as removing the blubbery subcutaneous layers of fat on the underside of your skin which are embedded in the aforementioned meshwork of denser connective tissue. Finally, VASER is known for resulting is far less bruising and bleeding than other forms of lipo due to its less brutal/invasive nature, meaning smoother results and faster healing. This was clearly my ticket, right here. So I researched surgeons, looking for not just a VASER lipo surgeon in general, but specifically one who very directly specializes in high-definition male body liposculpture. Dr. Henry Mentz in Texas pioneered a lot of ab-etching techniques over the last decade, so he was an immediate consideration, but he was located awfully far from San Diego for me which would really complicate the follow-up appointments. Dr. Jason Emer is much closer and does amazing work, but is still 2-3 hours north of me and resides in Beverly Hills, and from my brief research he charges a premium beyond what a mere peasant such as myself can afford - unsurprising, seeing as his clientele is probably mostly very wealthy Beverly Hills/Los Angeles/Hollywood people who considers $15k to $25k to be pocket-change that one uses to buy hot dogs and fish tacos from street vendors or something. Certainly an outstanding surgeon - just not one aimed at me as an intended client demographic, it seemed. Finally I found a doc, courtesy of RealSelf. I settled on Dr. Arian Mowlavi - a mere hour north in Laguna Beach - after seeing numerous beautifully sculpted results and reviews, as well as reading his whole, very-detailed web site that elaborates on the specifics of targeted abdominal etching for men with apt descriptions and sharp anatomical diagrams. I won't link it here because I don't know if I'm supposed to do that, but you can Google it if you're curious. Additionally, he was trained in VASER etching by the renowned UK surgeon Dr. Grant Hamlet. I contacted Dr. M's establishment in November and set up a consultation on December 12th. Despite being very busy, the doctor himself made time to come in and meet with me and assess my situation - he is a very enthusiastic, cheery guy; quick and to the point as well, and didn't try to up-sell anything beyond what I was asking about. He looked me over and said I was an ideal candidate: Already fairly fit, slim, and muscular - just plagued by the typical post-age-30 belly fat obscuring my torso's musculature. So we set the date for January 20th - and as an extra bonus, it turned out Dr. Hamlet was flying in from the UK for a scheduled visitation/collaboration event during that period, so I'd have not one but two high-end VASER experts from nearly opposite ends of the Western World working me over! Finally (for those curious/concerned with price point), since they were doing basically my whole entire torso (ab/six-pack etching, lower side-flanks, upper side serratus anterior - aka "side-pipes," external obliques - aka "Lats," and under/between/outside edges of my pecs to make them pop out more), the whole procedure was billed at $18,500 including $500 for the post-op lymphatic massages detailed below. However, he's partnered with RealSelf (or something like that, I'm not exactly sure) and had a promotion specifically for VASER posted on there which I claimed, so it came to $12,500 total: $6,000 off - not bad. A little steeper than I'd wanted to go for lipo (I'd budgeted for up to $10k) and way more than I've spent on any individual hair transplant, but it's a once-in-a-lifetime thing, I really wanted this, and I was convinced I was getting the best here, so I made it happen. This is when having a decent credit score comes in handy I guess; I just financed what I didn't have cash for. Anyway, the 20th came quickly enough; long story short, the surgery was quick and surprisingly lacking in the crippling pain I thought I would be in; they inserted the IV, I blinked, and then woke up in the recovery room feeling like I'd done about 500 situps the day before and then someone had punched me in the abs a few times and left them bruised - sore, but not debilitating. I was up and walking around within 20 minutes, and once I downed a provided Percocet I felt basically no pain for the rest of the day until I ate a Valium at about 6pm and went to sleep. The bruised-abs pain, accompanied by the intermittent stabbing/tugging feeling from the fluid/blood drain tubes inserted into my abdomen - which really only happened when I would change positions from sitting/standing/laying which would cause the tubes to shift under my skin - was troublesome but bearable; it came and went for a week or so until I got the drains removed and stopped taking Percocet. They also had an on-staff dedicated masseuse (a nice pretty British lady) who would give me lymphatic massages on my torso to squeeze out all the drainage and make sure no weird lumps of fat or scar tissue accumulated. The 30-minute massages (five in total - every two days for ten days) were grueling on my traumatized torso, but I always felt way better and somehow more rejuvenated afterwards. By Day 7 my drains were out and I was far more mobile and active, and down to only around 4-6 Tylenol per day (no more Percocet; I had another week's worth, but I hate how they make me all slow and dumb and useless, and I really didn't need them). I still had to wear the custom foam body-wrap with the tight black compression garment over it for another week and a half to keep me from swelling too much or healing weirdly, but once that came off at about Week 2.5 or Day 20 I was even better. As of this writing I'm at the one-month mark and most of the pain is gone (and no pain meds at all), just a weird numb/tight feeling all over the front of my torso as the inside of my skin attaches itself to its new home directly over my now-exposed bodily musculature. Some weird pins-and-needles feelings here and there, too. My abs are really starting to take shape now though, and I'm wearing a super-tight Spanx tank top for another week or so just to make sure they stay that way. Here are some initial pics... The first pic is a montage of my BodySpace pics at Age 29-30ish, when I lived in Hawaii and worked out constantly and hit the beach all the time, before the post-30 fatness set in like a slow, unstoppable avalanche of demoralizing misery. The next 3 pics are varying dates but within a month or three of Pre-Op - just shots of how craptacular I'd come to look in the gut region. In the blue towel pics I am, sadly, actually flexing my abs, which are pretty much hidden under the layer of fat. The headless shot is just a pic I screen-grabbed from my in-surgery video, showing me on the operating table directly pre-op. Not as fat-looking when lying down, more just... soft and shapeless. Next up is surgery day directly pre-op, with Dr. Mowlavi on the left and Dr. Hamlet on the right. Then there's a shot of me all marked-up in color-coded sections indicating muscle locations and edges, negative space to be sucked out, etc. It was a bit weird being the only naked guy in a room with a female surgical assistant, my girlfriend, and two doctors who were intently feeling up my torso and marking all over me like I was a piece of anatomical artwork, but surprisingly less weird than one would think. I was too busy being excited and nervous. For your viewing convenience I did Photoshop out the little bit of my junk you could see in the original pic so it's just a shadowed area now Finally, the last two pics in this post are about 5 hours post-op. The surgery started at about 7:00am and lasted until about 11:00am, and I was out and home by noonish. You can see my tight compression garment and the layers of custom-cut hypo-allergenic foam wrapping my torso tightly, and in the final pic you can see my little drain balls - the tubes lead up to little incisions on either side of my lower-abdomen and also one to my belly button. It looks all bloody, but the fluid soon became less bloody and more yellowish - residual emulsified fat and expelled lymphatic fluid.

Thanks! Since I won't likely be able to get any more work done before I deploy out into the ocean for another 7 months or so starting in either May or June, some use of dye might be a thing for me to look at... Do you use Just For Men, or something else? Do you think my scar isn't too wide for SMP to hide? I just figured it was too big/wide to hide at this point. I'm really interested in this procedure now that it's matured in technology/methodology and gained traction in the market (i.e. - the artists are better, and also they're using actual pigmentation instead of crappy tattoo ink that fades and changes color over time, along with other various innovations), and there's a local place about 1.5 hours north of me in L.A. that looks very promising - so it could be an option, at least for resolving the scar issue. Do you have any close-up/detailed pics of yours pre- and post-SMP?

Hello again! So I'm about 13 months in from my third HT with Dr. Gabel in Oregon. Everything is looking like it's supposed to, although it's obvious to me that my hairline area on either side of my widow's peak (the new area) will need a little thickening (to be clear, I expected this from the beginning - I'm aware that hairlines almost always need a second pass to look dense enough). Additionally, after chopping three whole big slices out of my donor area my scar is too big to hide even when leaving my hair at a generous 5-guard shave as seen in the pics - so I'll be getting a scar revision to reduce it down to a super-slim scar like it was the first time I got it. I should emphasize that this isn't due to a sub-par suture job or anything - it's just because during subsequent donor strip extractions, the entirety of the previous incision's scar tissue wasn't able to be removed while also removing sufficient grafts, so maybe 20% to 30% of the previous scar tissue was left each time, gradually increasing the scar size each time. With a scar revision, the sole purpose will be to remove all of the previous scar tissue while removing no grafts for transplantation, thus greatly reducing the scar width. I knew all of this going into my third procedure so I'm not complaining The final part of the erasure (granted, yes, technically the illusion of erasure) of my scar will be some high-quality SMP to further camouflage it about a year after the scar reduction. Finally, although I love where my hairline is now in regards to my temple points (it doesn't swoop waaay back in a "receding" fashion leaving big bald temple areas anymore), the new hairs there are a bit darker than the hairs behind them towards my ears, thus making a sort of noticeably-darker line of hair down either side of my head on the far left/right sides of my forehead - this is most starkly visible only up-close and under bright lights, as in the final attached picture. So, we'll have to work something there - I'm thinking of maybe speckling some intermittent darker hairs along behind the line of new dark hairs to sort of blend it back into the the hairs behind, in a sort of salt-and-pepper look on the sides. What do you think?

Navy calls them Ensigns (pronounced ENN-sins), and Star Trek calls them Red-Shirts.

The problem here is that he, like many of us, already has a linear scar. Still, FUE would be a great way to fill in a scar from what I've read/heard. It's what I plan on doing soon. Haha yeah no hate or anything, the Chair Force thing is just sort of a running joke; the truth is every service has its tough areas and ugly jobs, not saying the Air Force is any different. During A-School to become an IT in the Navy back in 2009 I actually knew a woman who had transferred into the Navy because the AF was too grueling for her - being stuck at a promotion-ceiling as an E3 due to overcrowding in her extremely crappy, grimy job of apparently changing out and lugging around 100lb+ airplane tires all day, and changing oil all day in the intense heat out on an airfield. I think it's mostly just where you end up as far as your job and location/duty station.

Yeah I wouldn't worry about it, honestly most of the young guys won't notice you as much; the older guys tend to have more of an experienced, no-nonsense, long-view type of attitude whereas the young fresh-out-of-high-school 18/19-year-olds are too energetic, distractible, and busy cavorting with each other (like they've been doing in high school or college for the last 4-6 years) to notice the older guys who tend not to be so involved in the social circles. If you just act sort of down-to-business and borderline curmudgeonly they might not ask at all, and if they do ask what the scar is from, just grumpily say something along the lines of "a surgery from a long time ago, don't really want to talk about it" and they'll generally drop it. It's worked for me many times. There are just too many other things going on to worry about, and there will always be a few bone-head screw-ups in the division (the "failure-to-launch" kid whose parents basically pushed them into the military just to get them out of their house), and they will do you the favor of attracting all the negative attention for the most part. You, being older and having common sense and an understanding of what is going on around you, will easily far-outpace the retards and dunces. If you can multitask and keep a pretty good grasp on what's going on during the training (which should not be difficult to guys in our age-group - this is some seriously basic training designed for high school-level kids who barely know how to wipe their own asses without their parents' help, let alone lead other people or take responsibility for bigger things in the greater scope of a career), you'll be made some kind of squad-leader by default. Or if you're a quiet non-manager type, it's easy to exist as a shadow among your louder peers (the Navy pushes divisions of 80 recruits through boot camp at a time - not sure what size groups the AF pushes through at a time, but if it's anywhere near that size you should easily be able to lay low while staying out of trouble). And yeah, the Air Force, also affectionately known among the other branches as the Chair Force Corporation, is renowned for its tendency towards allowing the smaller/nicer things in life - getting a legitimate prescription through if you have the paperwork should not be a problem. If they ask, it's "Allergy Meds" or - even better and more truthfully - to prevent the inherent risk of impending prostate cancer/issues/etc. (something necessary; it's none of their business what it's for as long as it's a legitimate prescription and not a prescription for an ailment that would disqualify you for service (which it's obviously not). Definitely get it in writing before you go in though, as recruiters aren't held to ANY kind of verbal agreements once you sign that contract.

Hey thanks for the shout-out Speegs, I definitely have some experience with HT's in the military in terms of both paperwork and dealing socially. 1. Yeah, you'll probably just have to deal with having a scar in boot camp. Just have a thick skin about it. Even though you can grow you hair out longer after boot camp, the military barbers are a crap-shoot and they've misunderstood my directions (even after I pull up my hair and show them the scar) and shaved my donor area way too low on numerous occasions, resulting in the usual inquires about whether I've been in some sort of car wreck, had brain surgery, etc. and the varying lengths of explanations I give them depending on what kind of interest they show in it - I usually don't bother with people who wouldn't care or ever need to understand (i.e. - women or the lucky guys with natural good hair). In boot camp though, you will never see 90% or more of those people ever again, so it doesn't really matter. 2. You'll probably have to drop the Rogaine for the 8-9 weeks of boot camp, but if you have an active prescription for Proscar/Finasteride then bring it (and several copies) to MEPS/boot camp to go into your medical record, and they should let you keep your doctor-prescribed meds. I saw some guys with prescription allergy meds, etc. in boot camp, and the Air Force is notoriously lenient among the various Armed Forces with this kind of thing. I'm here to try and provide insight to any more questions you have, so ask away

Updates here!

Previous Thread: 1,303 FUT - Hairline by Dr. Gabel - 6 Months Well, I'm hitting the 9-month mark right about now. Sorry for the lack of updates, I'm deployed to the Middle East area at the moment, it makes things kind of difficult as far as communications, internet, etc... Anyway, the first and second pics are from a few weeks ago in Sri Lanka; there was a huge flood, and we were called in for emergency relief efforts (giving food, water, cleaning out flooded/contaminated wells, etc.) In the first pic I am helping clean out the flood debris from a temple that doubles as a grade school. In the second I am sunburned and sweaty, drinking a sweet nectar from some kind of indigenous fruit type thing that the locals gave us. Third pic is me in the middle of the Arabian Desert outside Abu Dhabi. The fourth and fifth ones are of me in a rare few moments of free time, doing what Sailors do: Getting drunk. At a resort hotel in Abu Dhabi. Sorry for the crappy quality on these last two - I'll have to get around to taking some better up-close ones with good lighting, although as can be gleaned from all these pictures, my hairline is looking very good! The doc worked his magic once again for sure! The final pic is me on my ship wearing a harness and also filthy and sunburned (this happens a lot right now), about 60 feet up on the main mast working on cleaning the dust from the Arabian Gulf off of the various communications antennas.

SHAS - Amazing outcome, you have one beautiful manly hairline! Very classy. Congrats!

Wow Harin, I hadn't seen this thread before - you are an inspiration! This is one of the singular most incredible results I've ever seen. Congratulations!

From what I've gleaned, FUT would be good for you for three reasons: One, you have curly hair - meaning the hairs curl under the scalp as well. This can be more hazardous for FUE because it's hard to see which way a hair goes under the scalp, and curly hair makes this noticeably more difficult than predictable, straight hair - if the punch isn't angled correctly when going it, it will bisect the hair follicle, cutting it and killing it. Based on what I've been told, curly hair ups the chance of the loss of a higher percentage of precious, irreplaceable hairs during the transplant. This also depends on the specific skill-set of you surgeon though. Two - Your curly hair may help conceal a narrow strip scar better than straight hair would. Three - Your first HT will likely be the biggest, and FUT is generally thought of as being the best for medium to large sessions, as it is far less labor-intensive, less time-consuming and more cost-effective than FUE in this regard. This hybrid "one-two punch" approach allows you to initially be more aggressive in fixing the issue - faster, sooner, and far less expensively than trying to brute-force it with pure FUE. This has been my route. After several FUT sessions (three so far, possibly one more), I will have a small-to-mid-sized FUE session to fill in my scar once and for all as densely as possible. This is a pretty common game plan for a lot of guys as I understand it. Everyone's physiology and desires are different though, so take this advice with a grain of salt

Haha no no, don't worry - I'm not going to jump on it again anytime real soon. Not until about the one to one-and-a-half year mark, after it all matures a bit more. Hopefully I do get some more refined density, but I know from experience that one pass is just not enough density for a truly convincing hairline. Plus I do eventually need to fill in my mid-scalp and crown area. So yeah. Not unplanned for. I'm optimistic but realistic

Thanks hdude; looking back now, I'm really pretty floored by it myself! And I don't currently have a pic of my scar area; I will try and get on up soon in this thread - however, it's not as great as it used to be for sure. I mean it's not horrendous, or even "bad" by the typical FUT standards and not the kind of situation that would require what we call "scar repair" work. It's just that three procedures extracting donor strips from the same area have left it wider than I'd like it ultimately be when I'm done with all this, which is just an inevitable side-effect of multiple consecutive strip extractions from one concentrated place. Dr. Gabel warned me that after this session I might want to do a scar revision, so this is no surprise. Since I was already privy that one pass isn't really ever enough to make a dense frontal hairline anyway, I fully expected to go back for one more procedure in order to reinforce my newly advanced areas of hairline (on either side of the frontal peak) and to throw a couple hundred at the crown and mid-scalp area. I've wanted to have a go at FUE for a while now anyway, so I plan on doing this procedure with FUE - which will allow me to do a scar revision at the same time and reduce my scar to its original thinness, before finally doing a small FUE session of 200-300 grafts (about a year and a half to two years later, once that scar is completely matured) to fill in the thinned scar for good. I don't know though, if it ends up healing well I might just fill it in this time. We'll see.

Wow the 8-month update looks great! Personally I think you could just roll on that result for years to come, but if you're bent on higher density you could throw a few hundred more grafts at the front hairline; just don't waste too many there, as you don't want to be low on grafts when the inevitable balding of your rear half starts in a few years to a decade. Awesome result though! You must be living it up in real life now!

I've not seen it myself, but I heard it's full of political social justice BS... Ugh. Dammit Bill. Stick with reverence for science, not championing moronic ephemeral causes in a feeble attempt to placate the mindless hordes of whining, insipid braindead post-millennial idiots who have no experience or grasp of how the real world works. Hopefully he learns, and things go back to normal in that arena at least. Again, to be fair though, I haven't seen it myself so maybe I should just reserve judgment for now.

New 6-Month Mark post here, for anyone following...

So I hit the 6-Month mark about 2 weeks ago, but couldn't get to a computer to upload due to work and travel until now... Anyhow, here's about what I'm looking like right now. First pics are merciless bright-light pictures to show true density (I do plan to get a second pass-over with FUE to fill in some more density, just like last time). In normal non-haggard lighting it looks quite passable, and I've even had complements on it, so looking good overall despite the first-time-pass level density upon close inspection! [Previous thread here] . ..

Awesome! I'm another of Dr. G's more well-documented success stories myself, and couldn't agree more about the level of knowledge and professionalism at his establishment; do you have a pics thread up yet?

Looking awesome! I'm right behind you, hitting my 6-month milestone on May 23rd (Hence I'll be posting new update pictures very soon). Dr. Gabel (who I gather worked very closely with Dr. Konior in the past and exhibits very similar processes and attention to detail - not to mention they wrote a hair transplantation book together) did my procedure - which was also largely advancing my frontal hairline much like your situation here. I'm in a similar boat, awaiting density. If my past experiences have taught me anything however, there is still quite a bit of growing to do! If your procedure goes anything like my multiple ones in the past went, then in the coming months your new hair in that newly-transplanted area will thicken up a bit more, and also sort of "calm down" and become less unruly/wiry and start to follow a more trained, natural, uniform pattern which, in addition to the increase in density, will really start to look nice very soon! Looking great - keep us posted!

Thanks for all the positive support! Although it's still a bit sparse and needs some more growth (to be expected at a point as early as 4.5 months), it's definitely made some more improvement in the last 2-3 weeks and I've gained just enough length and density to revert to my previous hair-style; no more temporary comb-over thing Still got a little redness, but looking better every day and healing faster than my last 2 procedures. These are just quick cell-phone pics with crap lighting, nothing fancy - I'll post better ones at the 5-month mark...

Thanks guys! I like posting as often and as concisely as I can, as I know it helps all the other guys who are on the fence about the whole thing to get a better idea of what to expect and when. I definitely appreciated all the guys who did the same while I was first researching this scary, complicated stuff! Plus, we all love hair-porn 4-Month Update thread here!

Alright! Quick 4-month update. Definitely a noticeable amount of growth since my 3-month mark here. Usually the 5 or 6 month mark is when things really start picking up as well, so I'm really looking forward to the next 2 months! As an added bonus, almost all of the redness except a little went away in the last 2-3 weeks since my last update! Sorry for the potato-quality pics, I did as well as I could in my current environment - also, I only took left-side pics because at the time I didn't think the growth had progressed any further since my last update; only later when I compared the pics to my last ones, did I realize how far it had come. I'm also including a sort of lo-res mirror pic after a workout (not Photoshopped or modified, just lo-res so that you just see a sort of generally darker area where the new hair is), just to illustrate where my hairline will be once it all grows in more completely. I'll throw up more pics soon. Happy growing!