How my thinning hairline led me to a better life.

“Your hair looks like the southern portion of Florida: disappearing by the day.” a barber commented about my hair nonchalantly. This remark caught me off guard. I sat there wondering how I should respond. I just gave him an unsettling smile. Another customer, waiting on the bench with his face planted on the phone, smirked. An assistant who was cleaning the floor with his noisy vacuum shouted, “There are some handsome bald guys but most of them are taller” That was the last time I visited any barbershop.

I always knew my hairline was getting thinner but I could not accept being bald. After the movie Tere Naam came out in 2003, I wanted to copy Salman Khan’s hairstyle. I went over to my friend’s house and asked him to put the hair gel he bought from the store. That’s the first time I noticed that my upper forehead had practically no hair on both sides. I was 11 years old then. Still, I parted my hair in the middle and gave myself a short fringe look just like in the movie.

The struggle to keep a fuller hair look continued for the next decade. I changed styles over the years from a short buzz cut look to a long Chris Hemsworth look. Nothing worked as I expected. For a teenager who had all his self-worth tied to his physical appearance, this was heartbreaking. Around 20 years old, I could see my entire scalp when the wind blew my long hair, meant to hide the entire head, from one side to the other. On top of this, the worries compounded when I did not grow taller than 5’4”. Now, I was not only bald but also a short guy.

I was still a student in my early 20s, therefore I could not afford any medication for my hair. Living and college tuition took all my money, every month. Yet, I tried to be as “handsome” as possible with different looks. Being a short guy did not help either. I would go visit different barbers to get their opinions on what might work. Some suggested adding hair thickening spray while some suggested wearing a wig. I did not want to hide who I was because I associated these “solutions” with gimmicks. So I politely declined their suggestions every time. Just like my hair, my self-esteem had been falling apart and no hacks helped me regain it.

I was raised in Nepal and early on I understood that to be desired, I needed multiple qualities: height preferably above 5’7”, dark thick hair that makes the skin look lighter, and pale skin. I had none of these qualities. I am a short dark brown guy with thinning hair. It was clear to me that “bald could not equal beautiful.” For a while, I was OK with it. I was naive to believe that I would regain my lost hair once I am older. But the hair never came back. Neither I grew any taller and nor did I become any lighter.

Comedian and actor Jimmy O. Yang once said in his standup, “ I grew up with low self-esteem because I was raised by Asian parents.” While funny, this resonated with me. When I met my mom after eleven years, the first thing she wondered was about how I could lose all my hair at such a young age. “Your hair was thick as a rain forest when you were young.” She said while running her fingers through my thinning scalp. Although she said it with good intention, the comment bugged me for days. How can people just fixate on my physical appearance and forget about me? I could not understand it. It was not the first time that the entire conversation of the first hour had been about my hair. I had done it multiple times before, with other relatives.

The day I was graduating college, Kamal, whose name has been changed here, along with all other names, pointed out to me that I might need to wear the black graduation hat the entire day, otherwise people would think I am an “old man.” This was not the first time someone had pinched me hard. The day before graduation, a hairstylist in a mall chuckled if she should charge me a full price because I did not have “much hair to style.” I went with a short buzz cut on the side that day and paid the full price.

During the U.S army’s boot camp, everyone had to go with short buzz-cut hair during the training. We would line up for hours just to sit down for approximately three minutes while the barbers cut our hair with a vacuumed trimmer. That’s when the barber compared my hair with Florida’s map. Ironically, that comment hurt me enough to go and look for a solution to my limp self-esteem. I was tired of getting beaten down by people’s opinions, and their puzzled looks. I did not know how I wanted my appearance to be, but I was certain that I did not want to struggle with people’s remarks anymore. I wanted to be confident in myself.

After completing military boot camp, I started working as a clerk at a local gas station in southern Louisiana. Though the work was hectic at times, it gave me enough space to chat with people. Part of the job was to listen to customers about their day. It gave them some sense of friendship between us and they would come back again. That’s where I met Jose. He was a short chubby guy with a bald head who often bought a case of Pepsi with a case of beer on the side. He had been struggling to lose weight for a while. As he often told me “I try, but I fail every time. I wish I was thin like you man.” I had heard that sentiment multiple times before, from different people, “people wanting to be like me,” nonetheless I never paid much attention to it. It was at the end of my shift when Jose had said that to me. His non-judgemental smile and the constant compliment solidified a deeper understanding of people’s nature in me. He wants to be like me, while I want to be like some other guy. We all want to be someone else but don’t want to work on ourselves.

When I reached home that night, I asked myself “How about I become a short, bald, and handsome guy?” That question led me on a journey to improve myself. I watched and read what felt like hundreds of videos and articles on how to improve myself. I typed a variant of the same question “how to be handsome” on search engines, each time getting some modification of the same answer: exercise, wear fitted clothes, take care of your skin, get enough sleep, so on and so forth. I started working on each of those items as if my life depended on it. In some weird sense, it did. I could no longer go on living with shattered self-esteem.

I still take care of myself as if my self-worth depends on it. I have been exercising for over five years now and I have come a long way. I wear sunscreen lotion every day and eat healthy foods. I rock bald head these days, and I don’t care anymore. If The Rock can make it work, I can make it work too. I prefer this look these days. I have never been so comfortable in my skin for so long. Bald head helps me look clean and saves a trip to the barbershop. Self-improvement techniques did not make me “more handsome” as I had initially hoped for. But it did help me understand that there are parts of my life that I can work on, and be a better person in the process. Along this journey, I have managed to pick up shards of my broken self-esteem and put them together.

My thinning hairline taught me that we all have different insecurities, none of them immoral. We just have to find a way to work on it. And I learned a lot about myself while pursuing self-care. I learned that I deserve respect. And people’s opinions don’t shape me, my work does. I learned that bullies’ harsh opinions merely show their inability to empathize with my situation, and they have insecurities too, perhaps something they haven’t figured out yet.