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When Andrew Minutillo was 19 years previous, his father sat him down and delivered an ominous pronouncement: “It’s coming and you need to get ready for it,” Minutillo recollects him saying.
The “it” was Minutillo’s hair thinning. “He would say things like that all the time, like ‘I’m bald, your mum’s father is bald, all my brothers are bald. It’s gonna come’.”
Despite his father’s reminders, Minutillo nonetheless panicked when his hair started to skinny. “I was awash with shame,” he says. “Because I’d been encultured to believe baldness is a negative trait … It’s almost as if my incapacity to retain my hairline was intrinsically linked to my worth.”
Minutillo thought-about his choices, together with treatment equivalent to minoxidil and finasteride, however trying into the unintended effects and price, he determined to embrace his bald-faced future and shave off his remaining hair.
“I don’t look back on that period of me losing my hair and then shaving my head with regret,” says the now 26-year-old, who lives in Redfern, in Sydney’s inside south.
“As much as I could search for a sad story around it or how it made me feel, there’s nothing of that kind. I really did love the final product.”
The numbers inform us that about half of all Australian males will resonate with some component of Minutillo’s story. National well being organisation Healthy Male estimates sample hair loss (referred to as androgenetic alopecia) impacts about one in 5 males of their 20s, and one in three males of their 30s. By their 40s, 50 per cent could have skilled a point of the situation.
Despite the ubiquity, studies have shown the situation can lead to emotions of low vanity, nervousness and despair, little question fuelled by popular culture and media stereotypes associating baldness with villainy, ugliness and sickness.
These vulnerabilities are then exploited by a booming hair restoration business, projected to be value $US19 billion ($27 billion) by 2033 worldwide. In a 2025 survey, the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery stated the variety of hair-transplant sufferers has surged 20 per cent since 2021.
“Losing your hair feels like losing your identity,” says Camille Gray, a registered psychologist who has lived for 26 years with full hair lack of her scalp, eyebrows and lashes because of the autoimmune situation referred to as alopecia areata. However, she additionally acknowledges that it’s a special expertise for males to ladies.
“I do feel sad for everyone with hair loss, but men with hair loss don’t receive the concern, empathy or support that women do. Why not?”
That is slowly altering. Against a backdrop of looksmaxxers who’re smashing bones and injecting illegal peptides in pursuit of bodily optimisation, there was a world embrace of the function lengthy related to unattractiveness in males: baldness.
In London final month, a Guinness World Record was damaged when 22,141 followers of proudly bald rapper Pitbull grew to become the biggest group to concurrently put on bald caps on the Grammy-award winner’s headline BST Hyde Park present.
Across the pond, 100 bald folks gathered in New York City’s Washington Square Park in June for the Bald Meet-Up, impressed by the same occasion that had taken place in Seattle earlier that month. Jubilant chants of “Bald is beautiful!” echoed across the occasion that the New York Times described as a “unique gathering to take a stand: being bald is nothing to be ashamed of”.
Fashion publication Highsnobiety even declared of the current Spring/Summer 2027 vogue season that “the best summer accessory is a shaved head”.
Noticing the rising sentiment, Minutillo threw “To Skin: A dinner for bald people”, inviting 14 fellow bald folks to satisfy over a meal. “I was really interested in the fact that baldness can transcend race, gender, age, identity, sexuality: there’s no set of people who are bald, genuinely anyone can be bald,” he explains.
Before assembly in particular person, one of many first locations many bald, balding or potential bald folks go to search out group is on-line. One 2024 study discovered that, in contrast with ladies, males with alopecia are extra reluctant to indicate concern about well being and have interaction much less with healthcare professionals. Instead, they search steerage on the web.
Given this, the rising recognition of Reddit discussion board r/Bald is a welcome improvement.
Dubbed the “weirdly wonderful” by The Guardian, the web chat thread has ballooned this yr to greater than 1.7 million weekly customers (principally males, some ladies) following a number of viral posts and the rising pro-bald sentiment. People have found it’s a spot the place they’ll share their private considerations or anxieties and be met with kindness, empathy and encouragement. Pictures of bald transformations after folks shave their head are greeted with a whole bunch of feedback of congratulations and constructive affirmations.
“I’m obsessed with r/Bald,” says Luke Ryan, a 36-year-old from Newtown in Sydney’s inside west who has been bald for 16 years and attended Minutillo’s bald dinner after they met at their native fitness center.
“It’s the best thing because it is so daunting for people to shave their head, but I haven’t seen a single post where they aren’t like, ‘wow, I should have done this 10 years ago’. There’s nothing worse than when you see someone clinging on to anything for too long.
“If you want to get inspired to shave your head, go visit r/Bald, and you’ll understand the transformation,” he provides.
A equally glad nook of the web is the WhatsApp group of which 17-year-old Kyla Hodges is a member: “Bald Baddies”.
Hodges was recognized with alopecia areata six years in the past and began shedding patches of her hair instantly. Asked to pinpoint when she began feeling higher about her situation, Hodges says it was the day she shaved her head.
“It felt like a relief,” she recollects. “You don’t have to worry about people seeing it all messy and patchy.”
“Losing her hair has been the making of her,” provides her mom, Belinda Hodges. “She’s got a confidence that I don’t think she would have had if she still had her hair.”
After attending a camp for teenagers with alopecia, Hodges and her associates began the WhatsApp group to communicate, share life updates, change suggestions and ask for recommendation, equivalent to which wigs feel and appear greatest.
It’s helped her really feel much less alone: “It just gives you a sense that there are other people going through the same thing, and it just makes you feel not so embarrassed about it.”
The deep attachment folks need to their hair is one thing hairdresser Daniel Letizi, 36, offers with daily at his barber store in Carnegie in Melbourne’s south-east. “Helping guys embrace being bald is genuinely something we’re passionate about,” he says.
“We see a lot of clients dealing with hair transplants, alopecia, thinning and balding hair, and helping them through that transition [rather than just cutting around it] is a big part of what we do.”
To assist folks modify, Letizi and his workforce strategy the transition in levels the place they incrementally shorten the hair till shoppers are prepared for the complete shave.
“My job is to make sure people feel good and happy when they leave the shop. The last thing I would ever want is to just shave someone’s hair off, and have them walk out feeling worse,” he says.
“So it’s about helping them feel like they’re in control of a situation that, really, at that point, is out of their control.”
Psychologist Camille Gray agrees, explaining that for many individuals with alopecia areata, shaving their head turns into an necessary, empowering second.
“Because you have spent months, if not years, trying to cover up bald spots that are hard to cover. And to remove what’s left of your hair is a way of saying, ‘I’m in charge of me, I’m in charge of my body, I decide what stays and what goes’.”
In Letizi’s expertise, discuss to any bald particular person about life post-shave and they’re going to inform you a similar factor: zero regrets.
“I don’t ever think I can recall anyone regretting it,” he says, estimating the variety of heads he’s shaved in his profession is someplace within the hundreds.
“I know that a lot of people with areata say they wish they’d done it earlier,” provides Gray.
Minutillo has coached a number of associates to take the leap and believes the social stigma has all however dissipated. “Baldness is actually now quite desirable,” he says.
What he’s most enthusiastic about with the present bald renaissance, although, is “how fun it is”.
“We can politicise it as much as we want, we can put philosophical meaning behind what it is to be bald and its departure from being sad, but generally, when things are fun, you should just say that they’re fun,” he says.
Gray believes constructing confidence begins with acceptance.“It’s about trusting that you have been lied to by the hair-regrowth industry,” she says. “You can succeed in life, you can find love, and you can be successful, even if you’re balding or bald.”
If you’re on the lookout for extra info or help concerning alopecia areata, you may go to aaaf.org.au.
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