Harry James shaves his head in a moment from a TikTok posted to his account, Bald Cafe.Harry James (Bald Cafe)
Harry James was 25 years old when he first noticed he had a bald patch.
He saw it in the mirror and his first reaction was to ignore it.
Not long after the hair loss was evident and with it came the crisis.
He sat in the last row of classes so that no one could see him, he avoided eye contact with girls and isolated himself from the world because he felt ashamed.
He is now 32 years old and hundreds of thousands of people follow his channel, Bald Cafe, on YouTube and Instagram to see his advice on how to deal with baldness.
Not to hide it, but to accept it with dignity.
Like him, a new breed of
influencers
has recently emerged who want to show that a man can be attractive and self-confident without having a single hair on his head.
In the Instagram, YouTube or TikTok search engine, when typing keywords related to male pattern baldness, an overwhelming majority of the results are from men who teach how to counteract or stop hair loss.
Content creators like Harry are a niche, but one that is gaining more and more presence with their aesthetic routines, explanatory videos and photos in which they show off their heads without any concealment.
“Facing baldness without hiding allows you to see that you can really handle it, that you don't need to be afraid,” says Harry over video call.
In a recent study by World Population Review, it is concluded that the two countries with the highest percentage of bald people are, first, the Czech Republic, followed by Spain.
According to research from the National Institutes of Health, in the United States, approximately 16% of men between 18 and 29 years old and 53% of those between 30 and 49 experience hair loss to some extent.
In popular culture there is no need for important figures who sport a completely shaved head, from actors like Dwayne Johnson, The Rock, to public figures like William, the Prince of Wales.
On Bald Café's profile (218,000 subscribers on YouTube), as well as on that of other bald
influencers
such as Zeph Sanders (151,000 followers on Instagram), there are thousands of comments from men who are grateful to be able to see how the stigma of androgenic alopecia is broken. , a condition that is associated with psychological conditions such as anxiety, anger, depression, shame, decreased confidence, reduced work and sexual performance and even suicidal tendencies, according to a publication on the specialized website Medical News Today.
“What almost all men experience is similar: a process of denial eroded by moments of
shock,
like seeing a photo of yourself taken from above for the first time and wondering: 'Who is that bald guy standing exactly where I was?'” journalist Oscar Holland recounts in an article for CNN.
Since he started the Bald Cafe project, James began receiving messages from guys who felt tormented by their baldness and were looking for someone to talk to.
“Many wondered what they had done wrong, when we already know that this is something purely genetic,” explains the
influencer.
There were also other men who simply listened to Harry's experience and told him theirs.
Now, an important part of his channel is sharing these stories of men who, like him, overcame the crisis and accepted his baldness.
“Some can spend decades hiding behind a hat, preventing the world from seeing them that way.
"My goal is simply to do everything I can to help bring men out of that place where they hide, where they limit themselves and don't reach their true potential because of fear and anxiety about hair loss," he says. James.