Gen Y Speaks: What early onset balding taught me about life, loss and what it means to be a man

The boy was the son of a friend, and I was teasing him good-naturedly about a girl he had a crush on. 
“I will tell you about my girlfriend… if you tell me about your receding hairline!” the boy shouted across the room, in front of my friends.  
My ears stung, and I could feel heat gently rising on my face. Sure, he was only 11, but it still hurt. A lot. 
As a 27-year-old in June 2023, I didn’t know how to react when faced with the stark reality of my bald spot. So I shut up. 
Balding was always a problem that affected the men in my family. Growing up, my grandfather was always bald; I watched as my father eventually lost all his hair too. 
But it wasn’t until November last year that I realised how serious my own balding issues have become. While filming a series of videos for an exchange programme, I would watch the footage back and realise that I could see the lessening hair at the crown of my forehead. 
Of course, there are hacks and tricks for anyone with thinning hair to try — but no matter how much I tried to do the sweepover or the ruffle-over, that persistent gap always appeared.
While doing my reservist in March this year, this balding problem finally came to a head. Having to wear a helmet during training and outfield exercises means that our hair is often wet, dirty, and matted against our heads. It made my bald spot a lot more visible. 
By chance, I met someone who shared about his own balding journey — and how he’d decided to do something about it. 
He openly shared about how he got a hairpiece, and how it helped him to regain his confidence. 
He’d paid S$500 for his hairpiece, and he needed fortnightly treatments whereby specialists would treat his hair (not that it was really his) and patch up the glue, to ensure that it wouldn’t drop off midway during a run. 
You might laugh, but his hairpiece did nearly come off during an outfield exercise. 
He shared about other ways to deal with early onset baldness, such as thousand-dollar treatments that would remove hair follicles from the back of one’s head, where there was more hair, and move it to the bald spot at the front. 
That was when I finally realised how much money people were paying to get their balding problems treated. 
I was tempted, but the question on my mind wasn’t about money. It was this: Did having less hair make us any less of men? 
Every Singaporean male goes through two years of national service (NS). 
During my first week of NS back in May 2016, I remember a superior yelling: “We take everything away from you, so that you remember what it means to actually have something. 
“We take you away from your homes and put you on an island, so you remember what it means to have a home. We take away your hair and shave you botak (bald), so you remember what it means to have your dignity.” 
Losing one’s hair can sometimes feel like losing one’s dignity. 
Perhaps this sounds like an overstatement to some of us, but not to any young man losing their hair before their time. 
As men, this is often at the centre of our balding experiences.
When you first start balding, you wonder if it’s really happening. 
You start looking at your forehead a lot more closely whenever you stare at the mirror. Whenever you get caught in a bit of drizzle or rain, or when you get done with a sweaty workout, you quickly ruffle your hair, hoping your bald spot isn’t showing. 
You become a lot more self-conscious of your hair (or lack of). 
It made me think: What was it about hair that made it so hard to lose? Wasn’t I botak before in the army? 
Part of it has to do with how I used to think I was more dashing with hair. With a growing bald spot on my head, it was difficult to imagine how I would now win a girl’s heart. 
But perhaps the deeper, unsaid reason that made it so difficult, was that sense of insecurity that came with losing my hair. 
In movies, TV shows and other popular media, we don’t often see male attractiveness ascribed to balding men. Instead, we often see it attached to men with a rich head of hair — think Patrick Dempsey in his Grey’s Anatomy heyday, or silver screen heartthrob Matthew McConaughey’s full blond curls. 
Balding seems to be for those who are past their prime, well on their way out of the limelight. 
Because of that, what made balding tough for me was how it reflected my growing age, and its accompanying failings. 
You stare at yourself in the mirror, and you prod your stomach. It’s flabby. 
You squeeze your muscles, and they feel looser. 
You run your head through your hair, and it’s balding. 
It reminds me of how, in my late twenties, life seems to offer little of the excitement that my schooling years had promised, but so much more disappointment than we’ve been prepared for. 
And that was perhaps the deeper question that balding asked of me: When I’d graduated from university, throwing my mortar caps with all my peers, clutching our freshly conferred degrees and ready to conquer the world, was this what I expected — to not just be losing my hair, but also losing my sense of confidence in what the world would accept me for? 
When I was seven years old, I would gel my hair like a curry puff, ensuring that every strand stood strong and tall. 
A few months into Primary 1, I had my first crush on a classmate. That afternoon, in the staid, boring classroom where the teacher droned on about addition and subtraction, I remember reaching out for the girl’s hand, and tenderly clutching it. 
Strangely, she didn’t push it away. 
I held on to her hand for the rest of the class. 
Looking back, that moment taught me something important about life. 
When we’re young, we start out with little. Parents, friends love us for who we are, and not what we bring. 
But somehow, along the course of life, we learn that love comes with conditions. We learn that it comes because, and not in spite of. 
We hide behind our achievements and temporal attractions: Our degrees, our jobs, our looks, or even our hair. 
It’s not till we come to the end of our lives, frail and weak, that it strikes us that as our loved ones hold our hands, it’s not our strength they are holding onto. It’s not our wealth or possessions that we cling on to.
It’s the time we’ve spent together, the relationships we’ve formed, and the love we’ve shown and shared. 
I used to think that losing my hair would make me seem less of a man. I won’t lie, it’s still embarrassing when the light catches on my bald spot in a picture. 
But I’ve now realised the truth of this cliché we’ve all heard many times before — that masculinity, strength and beauty aren’t just about what’s on the outside, but what’s on the inside too. 
Loss will always be part of life and being human. Choosing how to face that loss and learning to stand up stronger — that is what truly determines the measure of a man. 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
John Lim, 28, writes on how young adults can “adult” better at liveyoungandwell.com and runs content marketing agency Media Lede.