Yes, in a country where civil rights barriers are being shattered every day, bald men are as visible in Congress as fresh young faces in the Bush cabinet. If we learned anything from the election in November (other than the fact that Florida can’t get its act together, of course) it’s that men with hair have tightened their already-firm grip on the reigns of power.
How else can you explain that fewer than 30 percent of all top officeholders in America-governors, Senators and Congressmen-are bald?
If that doesn’t sound so bad-after all, there are plenty of 3 for 10 hitters in baseball’s Hall of Fame-you’re just not doing the math. By age 50, almost half of all men are bald or balding. So if the ages of our august elected officials are taken into account-they average just over 50-at least half of all male officeholders should be bald.
You may not even be aware of America’s prejudice against the follicly forlorn, but it is a fact that academics have long confirmed. Study after study has demonstrated that bald men are perceived as weaker, less likeable, less fun, less agreeable and, in one memorable report, less “good.”
But do bald men really face a harder time getting elected? Does a man with a good head of hair-think Ronald Reagan in 1980-convey a greater sense of vibrancy? Can a bald man ever be elected president again? And, more importantly, do I have a problem writing sentences that do not end in a question mark?
Perhaps. But that’s not important now. What is important is that I have a book coming out in March (makes a great St. Patrick’s Day gift!) that will positively rip the lid off of these and other glaring prejudices against the diminishingly haired (the book is called “HAIR! Mankind’s Historic Quest to End Baldness”-thank you for asking).
An important section of the book describes a landmark 1990 study by four professors at the University of Arizona (a state, by the way, which has only one bald official out of eight). For the study-“Hair Loss and Electability: The Bald Truth”-the professors spent hours (hours that could’ve easily been spent drinking coffee with comely teaching assistants) pouring over photos of officeholders. Their finding? Just over 37 percent of our top officeholders were bald or balding.
Conclusion? The number of bald elected officials “falls significantly below what would be expected of a randomly selected group of the same ages,” the authors wrote. “There is a bias against bald and balding men in high-level elective office.”
But that was 1990. So even while they were still counting chads in Florida, I conducted my own investigation and found that America’s prejudice against bald candidates is worse than ever. Now a decade after the original study, a whopping 368 (or 72.3 percent) of male officeholders possess their own hair while only 141 (or 27.5 percent) do not. If age is taken into account, the numbers should almost be even.
More shocking, my investigation also revealed that: Missouri, the same state that elected a dead guy to the Senate and sent a guy who doesn’t dance to Bush’s cabinet, is the only state where a balding guy-Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bob Holden-won an open seat from a guy with hair. The other five contests for open seats went to hairy guys.
Holden admitted that he was lucky that his constituents didn’t focus too closely on his balding pate.
“You can be an old man at 20 or a young man at 50,” he said, claiming to be the later. “It doesn’t have nearly as much to do with your appearance as the energy of your ideas.”
All I can say is: Bob, just wait ’til you lose that wispy frontal forelock. Voters can be so fickle. Men with hair knocked off bald incumbents in all four head-to-hair Congressional matchups. The only hairy incumbents who lost their seats lost them to-dammit!-other men with hair.
Nine states-Arkansas, Hawaii, Indiana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island and South Dakota - have no bald officials at all. Can a bald citizen in those states honestly believe that his interests are being properly represented?
Yet even now, some bald losers still refuse to accept the now undeniable fact that their thin pates caused their thin voter turnout.
“Baldness had nothing to do with [the loss],” said Brian Kennedy, a bald New Jersey Republican who lost to Democrat incumbent Frank Pallone. Kennedy preferred to blame that old standby, the underfunded campaign. “My opponent raised $900,000 and I only raised $25,000! Besides, I don’t look like I’m bald. I’m bal-ding.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s what they all say.
