If you can call me bald, I can call you fat

I’m sitting in the boardroom at work one day when the lights flicker then fade. Too dark to continue the meeting? Nah, quips a colleague, “there’s enough shine coming off the cranium of baldy over there”. His fat finger was thrust in my direction. Sorry, just his finger; I would never be so unkind as to point out his weight, his height, his odour – his anything.

Bald jokes, I’ve heard them all. Why pay for satellite TV when I’m around? Do I run on renewable energy because of the free solar panel on my roof? Did I not make the party on Saturday because I was washing my hair? Who needs a cueball to play pool when I’m around? If I ever got made redundant I could get a gig as a lighthouse. Etc etc etc...

At the risk of splitting hairs, in a PC society obsessed with inclusion, representation and respect, it’s ironic how baldness remains ripe for ridicule. Race, gender, body size, sexual orientation — all rightly protected by evolving social norms. Yet the bald guy remains the butt of the joke.

Like water off a duck’s back, or a bald head, most of these jokes don’t pack a punch with me because I’ve embraced my lack of locks. Once a week the razor comes out and it’s all stations to smooth. But for those yet to be at peace, those considering a comb-over or a brush forward or a transplant or even boot polish (I’ve seen it done), such quips cause the kind of anxiety people pull their hair out over.

I wasn’t always immune. Going bald was worse than being bald. When I realised I was losing my hair (I can’t remember the precise date off the top of my head), I confess I did keep an eye on my options. I saw a story on a Colombian crank who claimed his cow’s saliva could cure baldness. That was when I realised I needed to try something more technologically advanced.

This was around the time a former Australian cricketer, Greg Matthews, was spruiking fake hair – yeah yeah. But I ruled out such an intervention when I heard that Matthews had to go back to the factory periodically to have the mould cleaned out from under the carpet.

My mum suggested I enter a hair replacement competition she’d seen in FHM magazine. (Why my mother was reading FHM, I know not.) I had to write why I deserved one year’s free hair replacement therapy, so I came up with the very terrible dad joke that my self-esteem was so low I’d started tattooing rabbits on my forehead so that from a distance they might look like hares.

I won.

Massages, lotions, pills, repeat. Massages, lotions, pills, repeat … I had to share my updates with the mag and when I realised I was a guinea pig (if slightly less hairy) I gave up after six months, declaring if unadorned was the way Mother Nature intended me to be, then unadorned I should be.

No tricks. No secrets. I do what it says on my tin and encourage wig wearers to follow suit. Which is why I applaud Rafael Nadal, a man who could afford the most modern of hair replacements but who refuses to fight the deforestation to his north. In a recent news.com.au article headlined Fans say the same thing as Rafael Nadal photo causes stir, the message from those “fans” was summed up by this eloquent post on X:

Well done, Rafa, for not preying on people’s insecurities for financial gain, unlike the late great Shane Warne, who I hope it’s not too soon to criticise, and who changed his look after Liz Hurley hit him through the covers.

Whether actually balding or not, Warnie was an ambassador for Advanced Hair Studio. NO HAIR, NO LIFE read his T-shirt in one of the ads, outraging not just cancer charities and patients but also, to a lesser extent, bald blokes like me.

As a bald man with some sort of life, at least on weekends, I found the NO HAIR, NO LIFE campaign to be over the top and I appeal to every shiny top out there to be your brave, bold self. There is indeed life after hair. It doesn’t involve shampoo, but that doesn’t make it unconditional.

People assume making fun of the bald guy is harmless, a punchline with no real victim. They think baldness invites less emotional vulnerability than, say, a joke about weight or appearance. But such assumptions ignore the deep personal impact hair loss can have on self-esteem, identity and even perceptions of ageing or virility.

In pop culture, the bald character is often stereotyped: either the villain, the buffoon or the hypermasculine outlier. When a celebrity shaves their head, it’s brave. When someone loses their hair naturally, like Rafa, he’s a free target. Imagine if people still casually mocked someone’s acne – there’d be outrage. But toss in a bald joke and no one blinks.

I’m not saying it’s a good thing how PC we’ve become. You can’t say anything these days without the risk of offending someone. In the name of inclusion, we exclude certain words that haunt our vocabularies from times when tongues were far less tied. I just wanted to point out a double standard, you tubby little shortarse.

Chris Harrison is content director at The Sydney Morning Herald.