Letters to the Editor
-
Please clarify ....
"And most of the women counseling her that baldness can still be hot are, I would guess (and apologies if I’m off-base) either past the point of reproduction or rapidly approaching it."
??? What do you mean? I am now 38 but my husband began balding at around 28 and we are the same age. I see myself as high status - having compensated/replaced youth and umm... that's it really, with love, famiy, power, influence, achievement and money - as well as maintaining my looks and dressing well. In this way I intend to up my stakes as I age!
For women and men: there is a way to stay hot and beautiful and attractive as you age but it's hard. It involves work you love, people you love, a life you find exciting and interesting. If you can manage to pull those off you'll always be attractive and beautiful.
-
Mr. Cleanhead
The hell with you. I have always yearned for my hair to fall out so I could shave it all off without various asinine inquisitions as to why I would shave my hair off ('DO you think it looks tough?', 'black men look better bald, right?', 'were you some kind of KKK youth kid?'). So far, no good despite my maternal grandfather having been bald as a plucked eagle. Has the bastard no respect for wives' myths? Clearly not.
On the positive side, my eyesight is notably less acute, meaning at least one of my poorly conceived desires appears to be trending correctly.
-
How would you want him to act if you started getting fat, too skinny or whatever?
Yeah it's a vanity thing and guys have bald/hair issues and women have body image/weight issues. These two aren't all that different, although the psychology and psyche attached might be...but it's a start.
It's a cliche but look at things from the reverse and do some thinking. Imagine yourself 10-15 years from now - him bald as a queue ball and you frumpy from having 2.6 kids. Is it worth projecting, do you see it...or do you vomit at the thought?
-
Too easy
Just buy him a toupee. Problem solved.
-
too much woman for me
I lost a good deal of my hair by 22. I was balding in college and faced this early. It's nothing. A few simple, practical things can help. (and I'm assuming here that Cary was way off base, and you love the guy and just want to make him feel better).
Help him shave what's left, and tell him you like how it looks. Actually, you probably will like how it looks -- most guys look better with no hair than with just some hair.
Make him feel attractive. Use your imagination there.
Tell him (this is true) that it's testosterone levels that lead to hair loss, and progesterone that prevents it...so all those guys with full of heads of hair are just too much woman for you. What is great about him is the strength that is causing him to lose it, and you love that. Get him to the gym...baldness goes great with broader shoulders. I put on ten or fifteen pounds of muscle when I started shaving my head, and in truth, I like the way I look at 30 much better than the way I looked at 22...but I've got a good woman who loves me the way I am, grips the top of my head sometimes during...and found me better sunscreen, lol. I love being bald.
-
A Little Confused
I'm a little confused by the insinuations (by Cary and others) this the LW is considering leaving her boyfriend because he's balding. I really didn't get that impression from the letter. My impression was that she loves him very much but doesn't know how to comfort him and make him understand she doesn't give a crap about his hair. (Although I admit, LW, your comment about "half a decade younger"--er, you mean five years, right?--made me grin a little over the wonder of youth, when five years is a lot.)
LW, I think bald men are, in the main, VERY sexy. Jason Stratham, for example. Hubba hubba and damn. Hot. Very hot.
Heck, have a lot of very good sex with him. A lot. Seduce the hell out of him. Tell him how sexy he is to you, how dear, how much you love him. He should probably go ahead and do the 21st century bald man's comb-over, which is to shave his head, but let him come to that conclusion himself.
Your only real problem after he comes to term with the loss of his hair will be keeping other women from touching his head once he shaves it. Just give him time and be understanding about his situation. This way, you can make that approach to aging together.
Someday, if you're lucky and you're both happy and you're both still together, you can be one of those older couples in the park, holding hands, the envy of every young thing there, because you're still together after all these years. Sagging skin, liver spots, and other signs of age come to us all. It's finding love and keeping it that's way more difficult. If you love him, that's what he needs to know. Nothing else is nearly as important.
-
Who's the one in need of comforting?
It's telling that this letter is ostensibly about comforting the boyfriend, but the girl is the one who's unsure of herself here. I love the line, "My boyfriend is a good half-decade older than me, in his late 20s." A half decade? She means five years, right? That's not a big difference in age, but she makes it sound so dramatic. I think she would be able to reassure her man if she weren't so conflicted herself. Can she love a balding, "older" man who has most of the important qualities of the ideal partner? Can she overcome her superficiality? Looks doubtful to me.
-
ER
DID ANYONE mention Monoxidil? Very high success rate; not very expensive.
-
How can I comfort my girlfriend about her sagging breasts?
Aug. 10, 2007 | Dear Cary,
I'm writing to you because I can't find any good info on this subject, despite the fact that it must be a pretty widespread problem. My girlfriend is a good 2 to 3 years older than me, in her late 20s, beautiful, athletic, a graduate student at a good school, and one of the most thoughtful and caring people I know.
She is also getting droopy boobs. It has happened relatively quickly. In the last two years she has experienced a great deal of stress for various reasons (family problems, stress from her research, and general anguish about nearing her 30s and fearing the end of her youth). Within these two years she has gotten noticeably more pendulous and "less perky" and seems to be hanging lower every day. Making matters worse, all ofher closest friends still bounce and jiggle in a firm, pert manner, as does her mother! I think it is this perceived loss of her physical beauty in the eyes of others (as she puts it) that causes her so much anguish and makes the perceived "loss" of her youth all the more evident and painful.
I have to admit, she has a beautiful rack and I hate to see her high-powered torpedo balloons deflate into a sad pair of melted flapjacks. I don't tell her this, though, and I make sure to reassure her that I care for her just as much no matter how many pencils she could hide under her stretched-out fun bags. I agree that it must be awful for women, especially young women, to lose their knockers to gravity. The loss of such a powerful symbol of fertility, youth and beauty... I can see why it hurts her so much. Is there anything I can do to come to grips with the feelings we are both experiencing because of this? What does a well-meaning guy who really loves his gal say when her golden bozos have morphed into two fried eggs hanging off of a nail and there's no denying it?
Never Been Through It Before
Dear Never Been Through It,
If you do not live with the constant awareness that everything is fleeting and everything will be taken from you, then early tomato-droopage may come as an affront. But everything is fleeting and everything will be taken from you. Your bazongas, your eyes, your skin, it will all go. The folly of youth is to ignore this.
But ignore it we do, when we are young. We ignore it as long as possible.
To come to grips with the feelings you are both experiencing, what you can do is to face the facts.
Youth is like a luxury hotel room in Hawaii. You'd like to stay but you know you have to leave. What you want to do is leave with some dignity.
You go to the front desk and say, We'll be checking out of the luxury hotel of youth today. We have some matters of profound sagging to attend to.
You hold your chin up and dare the desk clerk to make a comment. What I mean is, this is a good time to start practicing how to respond to life's innumerable indignities with dignity.
It's a cruel world. Let's not kid ourselves. You're younger than she is. You don't have to watch her turn into a haggy dried-up shell of her former Playmate-of-the-Month-quality self. Youth is positively amoral in that respect. You could get a new girlfriend with a better set of cans. You could say, There will be time later to read "Passages." Right now I want to squeeze a fabulously firm set of mammalian protruberances.
There is no law that says you have to be prematurely mature. As distressing as it is to see an older person pretending to be young, it is even more distressing to see a young person pretending to be old.
So if you want, you could turn around right now and say, You know, I'm just not ready to be dating a woman with her tits on her tummy.
I know it sounds cruel. And I seem to be contradicting myself. On the one hand I say, Hey, this is big, profound life, deal with it. On the other hand I say, Hey, you could say screw it and get another girlfriend if you don't like the whole low-swingin'-boobie business. I just want to say that the option is there. As a young and presumably attractive man, you have enormous power and freedom.
But what I would like to see you do, if she is the right woman for you, is to try to deal with what this moment means right now.
If you choose to stay with this chick, it means something. I would hope what it means is that you and she do not spend the next 10 years paying for breast implants. I would hope what it means is that you and she make room in your relationship for time, aging, imperfection, and stretch marks.