For many men, losing your hair can be a highly-charged, deeply emotional journey, one that can feel embarrassing or even shameful, despite the regularity with which it occurs. But, most of all, it offers a shocking yet obvious solution to balding men, one that may have previously been unthinkable and even counter-intuitive: to shave their heads. He lives in Southampton, England and since 2018 has carved out a small but mighty corner on the Internet: an 93,000 subscriber-strong YouTube channel that covers all aspects of losing your hair. Now I can do anything freely, with no worries about how I look.”īALDCAFE IS the digital gathering spot created and overseen by Harry James, who is, indeed, a bald man named Harry. “All of those insecurities, the times when I turned down sports and events purely because I thought my head would be exposed. “It was a weight off my shoulders once I finally shaved my head,” Carty says (pun very much intended). Along the way, his narration shifts from guarded and confessional to ultimately upbeat and inspirational, which may be part of the reason the video has racked up 2.8 million views. In February, Carty semi-officially joined those ranks by submitting his own video to the channel it's a nine-minute odyssey in which he first removes his ball cap, then toupee, before finally beginning to shear away what's beneath. They’re a look at how small transformations can make a big difference they are a window into our cultural ideas of masculinity, self-image, power, and so much more. BaldCafe videos can rack up tens of millions of views, a hint at the powerful, purgative, and imminently gratifying act of seeing a man take control of a problem and conquer it. Suddenly, a problem that felt so all-consuming and life-defining seemed like something he could actually overcome. “The videos seemed very positive and a great community of like minded men going through the same thing,” Carty says. On BaldCafe, not only was hair loss spoken about, men did so frankly, with a hopeful, optimistic attitude. Like a caterpillar into a butterfly, it promised that we can be reborn as something better than ourselves-that an optimized version of ourselves is already within us.Ĭarty had noticed that some of his friends had thinning hair, too, but the idea of discussing their shared struggle felt taboo, like he'd inadvertently joined a brotherhood sworn to secrecy. There was something cathartic in hearing the buzz of the clippers and watching the razor plow through a field of thinning, wispy strands of hair, to reveal the dignified stubble beneath. The videos themselves had a strangely satisfying quality, almost ASMR-like in their transfixing, soothing appeal. These men would discuss how they felt about balding with a surprising amount of vulnerability. To Carty's surprise, BaldCafe was filled with videos of men shaving their heads and ending with a big reveal: They looked infinitely younger, more handsome, and more confident afterwards. ![]() Then one day, while looking at hair loss videos on YouTube, the streaming service recommended one from the channel BaldCafe. To combat it, he tried various anti-hair-loss techniques-both clinical, like the drug Finasteride and micro-needling, and unproven, like rubbing olive oil on his scalp and doing 10 minute handstands to increase blood flow to the area-but to no avail. It came as a shock because, growing up, many people commented on how thick his hair was, but from the ages of 17 to 20, his hairline retreated precipitously. ![]() Surprisingly though, the hair system ended up holding on for dear life and stayed on.”Ĭarty had been aware of his thinning hair since 16, when a classmate pointed it out. You can see the stress in my eyes leading up to it. “I was certain that after I jumped out of the plane, my deepest darkest secret would be exposed for the world to see. “The entire day I was incredibly stressed,” he says. When he found out that skydiving wouldn’t require a helmet, he realized that his fake hair would be colliding head on with some very real high velocity winds. WHEN THOMAS CARTY went skydiving last year, it wasn’t the idea of jumping out of a plane that scared him.Ĭarty was balding and had recently employed the use of a hair system-or, more plainly, a toupee-across his crown, where the thinning was most apparent.
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