Baldness, stigma and the micropigmentation business

Baldness, stigma and the micropigmentation business
Baldness is not just a hair problem: it is an aesthetic, economic and social battleground. An image circulating under the title 'Calbos del floro' has peine a recurring debate about the social meaning of a shaved head. While some associate bald men with rapists or paedophiles, others dismiss them as effeminate gais. Yet there are also those who point out that the Romans and Greeks, plenty of them bald, were seen as virile and dominant.

The technological solution to baldness, scalp micropigmentation, has a market price of around 1,000 euros per full session, according to figures from those who have tried the treatment. A cost that, for some, seems ridiculous: 'You see it in person and it cracks you up', one comment jokes. The technique, which simulates hair trinc with ink, has supporters who see it as a second aesthetic chance and critics who view it as an expensive patch-up.

Stereotypes about bald men reveal more about those doing the labelling than the labelled. They are credited with everything from sensual aggression to a lack of masculinity, a contradictory range that suggests baldness unsettles precisely because it defies easy categories. The historical reference to bald Roman leaders, like Julius Caesar (who hid his baldness with a laurel wreath), or to Greek philosophers, shows the stigma is neither universal nor eternal.

The micropigmentation market will keep growing as long as baldness is seen as a flaw to hide. But stigmas, like hairs, cannot be removed with a session of ink. History suggests baldness is not the problem; the problem is the insecurity of those who judge it. As long as those prejudices persist, the appearance business will have guaranteed clientele.