My father, Michael, who was a sociologist among other things, was once asked by a drug company to do some market research into a pill it was developing that could change skin colour from black to white. The company hoped it might go some way to tackling racial prejudice. After Michael interviewed some prospective customers in south London, he concluded there wouldn’t be much demand. The problem, they told him, was that it would leave their features unchanged so they’d end up looking like albinos – and there was no reason to think they’d experience any less racism. On balance, they’d prefer to remain as they were.
As a bald man, I’ve always felt the same way about hair transplants. Admittedly, it’s a slightly insensitive comparison – bald men plainly suffer far more discrimination than black men – but the same principle applies. It’s bleedin’ obvious when someone’s had the operation. I don’t just mean they’re bald one minute, then, after a three-day trip to Turkey, return with their head covered in bandages, only to emerge a few weeks later with a thin layer of hair. I mean the results of the procedure invariably look a bit weird – more like a grid composed of large red dots than hair follicles. ‘Plugs’ is a better word than ‘transplant’ because the dots look like tiny flowerpots that someone has tried to plant a few hairs in, and not always successfully. A trichologist once described the effect to me as resembling ‘autumn leaves scattered on an empty carpark’.
