Why is shaving seen as being confident

[Al - Moderator]

This is something that's bugged me for years and I think about it any time someone tells me I should just shave my head.

Why is shaving your head seen as being confident? I never understood that. When is giving up and quitting seen as being confident? Imagine anything you ever wanted to do or tried to do. Let's say you want to learn how to play the piano. Of course you suck at first. Then you practice and practice and hopefully get a bit better. Let's suppose you are taking longer to get good at it then your friend is, so you decide to just quit. Are you confident in your ability to play the piano? No. Of course not. I think you can pretty much apply that to anything. If you can't do something you are trying to do and give up, I just can't see how that is showing confidence in yourself. It's always just the opposite.

I'd love to hear what you guys think on this.

 

[baddecisions]

As far as I am concerned, It is not regarded as giving up but rather as accepting it. On the opposite, there would be (us, lol) those who try to hide the hairloss, including (but on different levels) combing hair in weird ways, hairtransplants (obvious ones), smp, hairsystems an so on. 

[Fox243]

15 minutes ago, Al - formerly BeHappy said:

This is something that's bugged me for years and I think about it any time someone tells me I should just shave my head.

Why is shaving your head seen as being confident? I never understood that. When is giving up and quitting seen as being confident? Imagine anything you ever wanted to do or tried to do. Let's say you want to learn how to play the piano. Of course you suck at first. Then you practice and practice and hopefully get a bit better. Let's suppose you are taking longer to get good at it then your friend is, so you decide to just quit. Are you confident in your ability to play the piano? No. Of course not. I think you can pretty much apply that to anything. If you can't do something you are trying to do and give up, I just can't see how that is showing confidence in yourself. It's always just the opposite.

I'd love to hear what you guys think on this.

 

I think it's because the other options require potentially nasty tradeoffs (side effects of lifelong meds) i.e. people are always like you risk your dick with fin for a cosmetic issue.

[BackFromTheBrink]

1 hour ago, Fox243 said:

I think it's because the other options require potentially nasty tradeoffs (side effects of lifelong meds) i.e. people are always like you risk your dick with fin for a cosmetic issue.

Wow! You really do seem to have an issue with people who choose to take meds.

I'm wager the average person who suggests shaving your head knows nothing about medication or the potential side effects. They're more likely to consider alternatives such as hair styling, powder, hair systems etc.

I agree with the comments above and that it's brave since it's taking control,  knowledging the situation and accepting it.

[Fox243]

38 minutes ago, BackFromTheBrink said:

Wow! You really do seem to have an issue with people who choose to take meds.

I'm wager the average person who suggests shaving your head knows nothing about medication or the potential side effects. They're more likely to consider alternatives such as hair styling, powder, hair systems etc.

I agree with the comments above and that it's brave since it's taking control,  knowledging the situation and accepting it.

lol I don't have anything against meds in particular -- in fact, I'm on several meds myself. I'm only against them being prescribed without considering risk reward. Don't appreciate you bringing comments from other threads here. 

[Gatsby]

@Al - formerly BeHappy when we began our hair transplant journey it was at a time when our role models were Kojack and Yul Brynner! Even worse the technology was not just bad but surgically barbaric! The last decade or two has seen the media have male role models like Bruce Willis, The Rock, Vin Diesel, Jason Statham, etc. It's often said lately that going bald is now an option. But going bald and buzzing your head is now an option. In our day if we shaved out head when we were young we looked like convicts. Today if you shave your head you need to rock it with wearing a sit. What's in vogue today is not tomorrow. As I have said several times before if it were not for the scars I would have stayed with the shaved head look. I felt confident because it was now a legitimate look.

[asterix0]

There is a transition zone, let's say from norwood 4 until becoming slick bald, where there is a perception that you are essentially holding on to something that is not worth salvaging. Meaning, those who shave it off at that point are perceived as confident because they are not living in a delusion that their norwood 4, unstylable hair with bald spots looks good enough to display in public.

Now, I disagree with this notion, and I never judged anyone by their hair or lack-thereof, and that was before I even started losing my hair very quickly. It just seemed like a very superficial and unfair way to characterize people. However, our society collectively is very much judgmental and cruel, and I quickly realized that my idealized notions were far from the pragmatic reality I saw. 

 

[Maorizio]

As other said, it’s mean confidence because you don’t try to hide it or fight it, but accept what nature gave you.

I think if a guy looks good with shaved head due to other features in his face, it’s best to embrace the hair loss.

[YodaHead]

In my opinion, I think more than giving up, shaving it off  is seen more as not being hesitant/tentative. It is more like addressing the elephant in the room and facing the fears.. For eg. You meet an old friend who had last seen you years ago when you had a full head of hair. You know he is going to notice your baldness…so instead of avoiding the topic, you just make a joke about your baldness and address the situation—putting yourself and your friend at ease. This is usually seen as being confident. 

[Stewie]

I think tbh just do whats right for you. For me and like many others I had to make a choice to early on in life, I didn't realise I was going bald as it happened so quick, I had long hair at 17, cut it shorter at 18 and it looked different and I didn't know why, by 19 I made the tough decision to shave it off, and this was going through college and my first kind of jobs when everyone was rocking mega hair and I was getting talked about behind my back constantly. Once I accepted my own fears and owned the process, it was horrible to begin with, but I never looked back, and in all honesty, if I had not so rashly got a HT done after covid, then I would not of started on this road, and even after the first one I was tempted to laser it off and just stay bald as it really didn't bother me anymore. God I always wanted hair and still do, and feel very fortunate that I have had some great results. But shaving your head is a tough and brave move and some people can not build up the courage to own that, and like @Gatsby said, you both had surgery in a time when the results left your scalp in a not great condition for maybe shaving it down also, I nearly ended up with the same problem after getting kind of aggressively talked into a small FUT procedure when I was 18 and didn't understand anything about it, and this actually contributed to a lot of my native hair falling out and never growing back and leaving an unsightly triangle arrangement of plugs in the middle of my head, so even then when I took the decision at 19 to shave it down I had the horrible looking plugs in the middle of my head that I lived with till when at around 32 I realised I could get them lasered off over 3 sessions, but for the 13 years from 19-32/33 I had also that constantly on my mind and people again speaking behind my back and making jokes. Once that was done and dusted it left me in a better place, and dont get me wrong to be where I am now with what I can only describe as my wildest dream come true to rock some good looking hair again is amazing, the strength it takes and the level of acceptance should not be over looked

[Chrisno]

Playing the piano is a skill. Having hair is not a skill.

Generally, having hair is aesthetically more pleasing than being bald. I say generally, because e.g., being a high NW and doing an extreme comb-over etc. is aesthetically less pleasing than being bald. If society generally sees having hair a favourable trait, then shaving your head shows you are confident because you don't care what other people think of you. Confidence is about believing in yourself.

Not shaving your head when you have terrible hair is the opposite of being confident.

[Sunset Dune]

Shaving your head is not a sign of confidence, it is a submission to baldness. Honestly, content such as BaldCafe are not helping the hair loss community they are making people feel like it’s okay to be bald.

Look at baldcafe himself when he had hair he was a very handsome guy and then his physical appearance significantly degraded after he decided to “shave it off”.  He had a bald spot on his crown and it got to him so bad he thought shaving it off was the answer while his front hairline was still strong, he never took any medication due to fear mongering and his baldness spread over a short period of time.
I’m sure he secretly regrets his decision of not taking any hair loss medication due to fear mongering. 

[TorontoMan]

you're drawing a strange parallel to "giving up", its not giving up in the sense that you have some thing you need to accomplish and you're choosing to quit, hair loss isn't a binary thing that is easily achieved. 

I had a friend who was holding on to like a few strands of hair on his head, was very late to the party to intervening with medication and was also an incredibly paranoid person so he would never consider it anyway, he didn't have enough money for surgery, and for him his best option was truly shaving down and letting go of the little bit he was keeping that looked a lot worse. 

[GoliGoliGoli]

Fussing over your looks to an excessive extent is a feminine coded trait. Let's be real about it. Shaving it off is confident because it's a sign of accepting yourself as you are. 

If you want to do everything you can to hold on to it then go ahead that's why we're all here. But let's not make ill-fitting analogies in order to justify our vanity. 

Edited February 25 by GoliGoliGoli

[ScottishGuy21]

If you’ve been fighting hair loss for years shaving can be liberating. It’s a brave move to go from fighting to keep your hair to being at peace with baldness.

Some suit the shaved look and can rock it perfectly. Its subjective. 

Edited February 26 by ScottishGuy21

[asterix0]

21 hours ago, Sunset Dune said:

Shaving your head is not a sign of confidence, it is a submission to baldness. Honestly, content such as BaldCafe are not helping the hair loss community they are making people feel like it’s okay to be bald.

Look at baldcafe himself when he had hair he was a very handsome guy and then his physical appearance significantly degraded after he decided to “shave it off”.  He had a bald spot on his crown and it got to him so bad he thought shaving it off was the answer while his front hairline was still strong, he never took any medication due to fear mongering and his baldness spread over a short period of time.
I’m sure he secretly regrets his decision of not taking any hair loss medication due to fear mongering. 

Why does he not consider a transplant, he has a decent donor as a high Norwood from what I can tell.

I guess because then his whole "schtick" on YouTube would be ruined and he would be seen as a hypocrite. 

[bbb]

Acceptance isn't giving up and quitting.

 

It's confident because you are taking ownership of the situation, you are not letting it control you anymore and you are no longer hiding or trying to cover up anymore.

[HairFunk]

The amount of Hollywood hard men in films who are completely bald pretty much says it all 👍

[Gatsby]

On 2/26/2024 at 5:49 AM, Sunset Dune said:

Shaving your head is not a sign of confidence, it is a submission to baldness. Honestly, content such as BaldCafe are not helping the hair loss community they are making people feel like it’s okay to be bald.

I did a podcast with Harry James (Bald Cafe) and I have the utmost of respect for him and what he's doing. He's approaching baldness like we are but from the other side. There is another side. I remember when I threw away my hair piece and shaved my head. Friends I had known for years and people who I would meet when I told them my age all said that I looked ten years young!!!? I didn't get this at first. But it definitely made shaving a good choice for me (minus the scars).

[Al - Moderator]

Great discussion. I think everyone has different ideas about hair loss and shaving depending on their own experiences, where they are in their life, and what they want in life. For example if you are losing hair at a young age and always wanted to be in a boy band or K-pop band, then you are going to want lots of hair. But if you see yourself more as a tough guy bad a** then you may be fine shaving your head and rocking some beard hair with a few tattoos. It really all depends on how you see yourself and what your goals are. Someone striving to be the owner of a multi billion dollar company may not care about their hair as much as someone trying to be a movie star.

 

 

[Al - Moderator]

On 2/24/2024 at 7:42 PM, Gatsby said:

In our day if we shaved out head when we were young we looked like convicts.

Yes! Exactly that. Shaving your head was not something you wanted to be doing back then. Once it became an acceptable style I had too many scars to be able to do it.... not that I would have anyway as it's just not for me. I saw the entire top of my head shaved down whenever I went for the hair system cleaning and refittings and I felt like I looked so old. It was just not for me. That was before the hair transplants.

 

On 2/26/2024 at 10:35 AM, ScottishGuy21 said:

Some suit the shaved look and can rock it perfectly. Its subjective.

 I think black and dark skinned guys can usually look pretty good shaved, but lighter skin guys have a much harder time pulling off a good look unless they are much older.

 

On 2/25/2024 at 2:22 PM, GoliGoliGoli said:

Fussing over your looks to an excessive extent is a feminine coded trait. Let's be real about it. Shaving it off is confident because it's a sign of accepting yourself as you are.

Yeah if you get excessive about it I agree, but I never agreed with it being confident if you accept yourself as you are. If everyone accepted themselves as they are then we'd all be still crawling around on the floor like babies. Babies learn to sit up, crawl, walk, etc because they see others doing those things and believe it's possible and try until they can. They don't just lay on the floor and accept the way they are. This is with everything in life. You will never improve if you don't believe you can. Sure I guess there's a point with some things when you just say "Oh well. This is how it is". But again I personally never saw that as being confident. I always felt that's the point where you just give up on it.

 

On 2/26/2024 at 12:30 PM, bbb said:

It's confident because you are taking ownership of the situation, you are not letting it control you anymore and you are no longer hiding or trying to cover up anymore.

I get what you're saying. For me personally I don't ever wear a hat to cover up all my scars, so I always felt personally that I was doing my best not to let it control me and not cover it up or hide.... although I sure do want to hide when I feel people staring at my head or when they make comments.

 

 

[Kraki77]

Depends on how you're processing everything. Personally, I don't care that much about what others think about my looks. I just didn't like what I was seeing in front of the mirror every single day. Shaving did not change that perspective of myself. After surgery, I'm not wearing hat or cap during ugly duckling phase and I'm going to the gym where I look absolutely awful when sweat starts to demolish remnants of my hair. Deep down I believe that this surgery will improve my self satisfaction.

There are many people out there who will tell you that they've accepted their baldness and that they are satisfied with their shaved look, however there are many of them who just accepted it because every other option seemed impossible for them through lack of knowledge or general way of thinking in the crowd.

[ScottishGuy21]

2 hours ago, Al - formerly BeHappy said:

 I think black and dark skinned guys can usually look pretty good shaved, but lighter skin guys have a much harder time pulling off a good look unless they are much older.

Absolutely 

 I’d never been properly bald or had a low grade buzz cut before my procedure. Mid scalp thin and frontal third close to an island but I left my hair longer to cover what I could. I’m still mid to late 30s so I fall into the ‘doesn’t look great’ block.

Post procedure was the first time I was essentially bald. Personally I’d say it aged me 10 years + if not more. I enjoyed convenience of it, it was nice not worrying about hair / the wind etc 🤣. I kind of got used to it for a while but aesthetically it wasn’t great

[Al - Moderator]

This was a great discussion. Take a look at our next discussion about wearing hats and tell us your thoughts. 

 

 

 

[lunch_owl]

I think shaving it all off is a sign of confidence and liberation in a way. You no longer have to worry about lighting, wind, rain, sweat, angles etc. Most bald guys i see has a certain energy to them. They have an authority