“We have at least one man coming in for a head shave every day,” Gill said. “Had Britney come here, we’d have shaved her all the way down. She’d have looked incandescent.”
For most of recent grooming history, having a totally bald pate was a look most likely found among men with formidable personalities and names to match — Kojak, Yul, Ike, Warbucks, Clean. It wasn’t a look for John over in accounting.
But in the late 1980s, Michael Jordan shaved it all off. Soon, the world was examining the scalps of Bruce Willis, Andre Agassi, Moby and just about one token character on every TV show — not to mention a swarm of Oscar nominees and presenters this year, including Jack Nicholson (who had shaved his head for a role).
The response is a booming market of products being developed and sold specifically to the unhirsute — a new front in the nearly $5 billion onslaught of male grooming products in the United States.
There are gels and ointments to help with the shave, to enhance the shine, to reduce the glare, to help with dryness or oiliness, to block the sun. There’s even a rolling razor to make the daily upkeep less stressful.
“I’m a former comb-over wearer,” confessed Howard Brauner, founder of the two-year-old company Bald Guyz, based in Manalapan, N.J. “I would spend half an hour in the morning making it look right, and then finally I just realized it was ridiculous. Once I decided to really go bald, my wife would get annoyed at me for using her expensive shampoos. But I had to use something to clean my head.”
For that particular ablution, Brauner now uses a head wash that’s part of the line of products he developed in response to his wife’s complaints. Bald Guyz also puts out pocket-size individual head wipes, for use on the go. And there is a conditioner, to be used twice a week. “Your skin up there is either dry or irritated or oily,” he said.
Men also complain about oily sunscreens that run into their eyes. Instead, there are scalp-specific blocks, like Bald Guyz’s SPF 30 sunblock gel. (About 2 percent of skin cancers occur on the scalp.) For men who have forgotten to block, there is an aloe-and-green-tea moisture gel for burns.
There is also Mission: Control Bald Head Balm, a creamy, nongreasy SPF 15 sunscreen, introduced last year by Sharps (one of the first non-scalp-specific toiletry companies to market a product for bald heads in the same line as products for hair care), and an SPF 25 Complete Head Care Lotion from the new scalp-care brand Matte for Men. HeadShade SPF 15 is a sunblock spritz by HeadBlade, a California-based company that sells products at CVS and Kmart, among other stores.
HeadBlade made its name developing a razor designed for head shaving. A yellow plastic-and-rubber handle loops onto the middle finger and is held in the palm. It resembles a snowmobile, with a razor on the front and two small wheels on the back, which ride on the scalp, keeping it steady.
There are two types of hairless men buying these products: those who do it as a simple antidote to hair erosion and those more diehard types for whom hairlessness is a way of life. Those in the latter group, who have not experienced hair loss at all, call themselves BBC or Bald by Choice. (There’s even a Web site, BaldlyGo.com, that allows visitors to send in their photos to be retouched for a preview before they slather their heads with Barbasol.) The goods are being marketed accordingly.
Bald Guyz targets the average guy who’s made a choice to adopt this look, either because it’s easier than creating the illusion of hair (if he doesn’t have it) or dealing with hair at all (if he does).
The products’ packages feature photos and mini-bios of “real bald guys.” The Head Wipes box shows Shawn, a goatee-wearing researcher from Texas who enjoys jazz and R&B, and Keith, a toothy Long Island firefighter who “puts his life on the line every day, making him a very special bald guy.”
“We’re for the guy who is saying, ‘This is just what nature handed me. This is who I am,’” Brauner said.
[via naplesnews.com]
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