by
I'm balding.
I used to joke about my receding hairline, until it wasn't a joke anymore. I'm actually balding.
I have androgenetic alopecia. It's the most common type of hair loss and it affects both men and women -- although men experience a greater degree of loss.
My fancy Parisian hairdresser broke the news to me on my visit to France last Christmas. His name is David, and every visit to France means an hour of indulgence at his haute-coiffure salon. David cuts hair like it's lacemaking. He trims, he layers, he styles, just so -- and it's perfect. But this time, none of the "you have a beautiful soul" and "the volume at the back is exquisite." All David was interested in this time was, "Where did all your hair go?"
I asked the same question the next day at the Hair Institute, located in Paris' Saint Louis hospital. The doctor showed me a chart. Pictures of a jovial guy at five different stages of baldness was staring right back at me. "Which one of these drawings depicts your father's hair the best?" she asked. I knew it was bad news when I pointed to the one on the far right, with the nearly hairless cranium. Then she did the most unwelcome thing. She tore out two strands of my hair. I'm sure I wasn't the first patient who objected to the incongruity of the procedure. I'm thinning, and she's making it possible for yet more hair to desert my depopulated scalp? She, however, seemed satisfied -- my locks in her hand like a flower bouquet, hair bulbs at the top. Next, she put her crop in a boxy machine that magnified each hair bulb so it looked like a gigantic Georgia O'Keeffe flower, minus the colors. She glanced at the screen, and confidently said, "Classic androgenetic alopecia." So, there it was -- the diagnosis. As for the prognosis, she said, "It's progressive, so you better get on with treatment."
Androgenetic alopecia in women is often brought on by an abnormally elevated level of testosterone in the body and a short supply of estrogens, the female sex hormone. Testosterone, a hormone that stimulates the development of male sex characteristics, shortens hair's lifespan, and eventually causes the shedding. As many as 20 million American women are affected by female baldness, most of them Caucasian. It usually starts around age 30 and becomes noticeable around 40. And there's no universal remedy for this kind of hair loss.
After my hospital visit, I sat in a Parisian café trying to digest the news of my disappearing mane. I tried to conjure examples of unconventional beauty ideals, like Sinead O'Connor's signature crewcut. I imagined what my dating life would be like if the hair loss became really noticeable. "So much value is placed on a woman's head of hair," I thought, "Who'll want a bold lover?" I couldn't decide whether to tell the guy I just started seeing before my trip. "Hi Cheri, Paris was a blast, and by the way I'm balding." That would certainly put a damper on things, wouldn't it? The many delicate ramifications of these bad hair scenarios made my head spin. All I wanted was to go back to David and ask him to shave my hair off.
But I didn't. Instead I made the medical rounds. First stop -- my dermatologist. She prescribed a hair spray called Rogaine. It's a nightmare. It's sticky and smelly and I have to rub it into my hair twice a day. I suspect it's innocuous, but I do it anyway --in the off chance.
Then I paid my gynecologist a visit. She suspected a hormonal imbalance, so she prescribed high doses of hormones -- so high in fact they'd kill both my libido and my figure in one shot. That didn't sound like an adequate compromise. So, I never bothered with that treatment.
Instead, I headed back to New York, and went to an acupuncturist. He took my pulse, and checked the color of my tongue. "Your Yin and Yang are out of balance," he said. The Yin-Yang theory in Chinese medicine holds that all phenomena consist of two opposite aspects, yin and yang, which are variously defined as: up and down, hot and cold, stillness and movement -- and in my case too much yang (the masculine) and not enough Yin (the feminine). It sounded an awful lot like the hormonal problem my Western doctors had mentioned, but his treatment didn't involve polluting my body with any chemicals, so I went for it.
The other day, four months and 78 needles later, I noticed baby hair growing on both sides of my hairline. So, it's working. I don't have to fantasize about military cuts anymore, and I no longer dread rejection from baldness-scorning guys. Hell, I'll even get to have bad hair days, and I'll take that over no hair days anytime.