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Let's stop hiding hypocrisies under comb-overs

Monday, June 09, 2003

By Joe Donatelli

I recently attended a wedding reception where I witnessed a glorious sight. Shaved heads. Scores of them.

	(Illustrated by Tec Crow, Post-Gazette)

White heads. Black heads. Square heads. Round heads. Ugly heads. Handsome heads. Dozens of heads united in luminous defiance against a repulsive monstrosity -- the comb-over.

As the world's leading champion of shaved heads, I feel as if the tide has turned. The battle is being won. Bad hair is down by two touchdowns late in the fourth quarter, we've got the ball, and NFL star Eddie George (himself bald) just ran one up the middle for 15 yards.

Yes, I have a slight obsession with this topic. Last August I wrote a column calling for balding men to shave their heads. You can read it at Life Support: The bald and the beautiful. My main reason: it just looks better than a comb-over.

But as I sat at my friend Dave's wedding, noticing his shaved head and the shaved heads of both of his best men, it occurred to me as I rubbed my own freshly shorn dome that something very important is happening here, something that speaks well of my generation.

At a very young age, the men of Generations X and Y are coming to grips with reality.

I cannot stress how important this. For both fashion and, if you're into such things, the future of mankind.

The problem with much of the world is that we tend to comb over our problems instead of acknowledging them directly. Like smokers who claim they only smoke when they drink -- five nights a week. Or short people who wear vertical stripes -- as if it makes a difference. Or fat people who drink Diet Coke with their cheeseburger and chili fries.

If you know someone who is in serious reality denial, you know that they often lose credibility in the eyes of others -- consciously or subconsciously. This holds true for both entire generations and individuals.

Example: Say what you will about the Supreme Court and hanging chads, but I blame Al Gore's close loss in the 2000 presidential election on his hair. How can a person who wants to be ruler of the free world honestly think his massive hair-helmet comb-over looks better than a nice tight trim or a complete shave?

I think, subconsciously, a swing group of style-conscious voters saw his bald spot and thought the same thing -- I cannot trust a man to tell me the truth when his hair is a complete and utter lie.

Gore is not alone. He is simply indicative of baby-boomer denial.

The same generation that demanded cleaner air and more efficient gas mileage is buying SUVs en masse. The generation that made eating meat a sin has depleted the oceans of fish. And the hypocrites who introduced the world to LSD now harp about youth drug use, even though they made movies about the drug culture, wrote songs about it, had concerts to celebrate it!

Now I have hope. Maybe my generation will be the first to embrace reality. We didn't invent the shaved head, but we sure have popularized it. If reality has to start somewhere, why not personal appearance?

It's about time a generation stopped dragging a comb over its problems and cut them off at the source. Our path is clear. It's up to us to shave the world.

Joe Donatelli writes about his travels on the Gen-X landscape. Contact him at www.joedonatelli.com.