On Being a Bald PUA

I'm bald. Or balding. However you want to call it, I've been losing my hair since I was 21 and eventually I'll have a very shiny dome over my head (unless they perfect hair cloning within a few years). When I first moved to Seattle in 2004, I decided to shave my hair down completely to a nice smooth touch. It turned out this was a bad idea as I'm a big tall white guy with a very large head, so the sheer amount of surface area made me look like a glowing beacon at night. Easy to spot, but not as stylish as I would have liked.

There are two proper ways to treat this if you are like me: pale white skin but losing your hair and concerned about it. You can either shave it completely down and tan your skin regularly (I prefer using spray tan if possible over tanning beds as us pale freckled blue-eyed folk are highly susceptible to skin cancer). This is what Neil Strauss did in The Game, and it does look pretty hot if your personality and confidence can support it. Throw in a solid body (lean and strong) and you're a very attractive man physically.

The problem with this style for me is maintenance. You will need to shave your head with a razor at best every other day, and you will need to regularly spray tan your head or re-tan in a booth if you lose your tan quickly. With the spray tan, you will also have to worry about timing since the spray tan takes several hours to fully stick to your skin, and if you apply it at 8 PM on a Friday night, you will most likely drip in the field and soil your nice pillow on your bed.

Whatever you do, don't just shave your hair down completely with a razor and leave it at that. If you have darker skin, you can pull it off, but I went months with a shaved head and no woman told me how out of style that particular look is.

The better solution is to use an electric razor with around a 1.5mm height setting/clip. You can shave every other day normally and still have a Bruce Willis short-hair-but-hot look. This is much easier to maintain with cutting times under a couple of minutes, it's much more stylish and popular with the ladies, and it provides much more definition to your head. I was out the other night with my LTR, who took a picture of me and a buddy at a bar in Belltown. We were chilling on a couch and I was sporting my delightful purple velvet jacket, looking out to the crowd, and quite frankly we looked like we were in a liquor advertisement. The short hair gave so much more character to my head, whereas cleanly shaven hair would have taken away that definition and looked more like a blank spot on the picture where the camera flash washed out any features.

This solution is best for me because I like having a simple life. Or maybe I'm just lazy. Or both.

But why does this matter, you ask? Strong enough confidence should be all that matters, right? Holding your frame and being the better man is more important than how you look, yes? Well, yes and no. Perception is everything in the field and in life. Your first impressions with girls are so important for your later interactions with them. In those first few seconds and minutes they are going to be attracted to you or not, and while confidence is ultimately the most important tool in your arsenal, your looks are important as well during the first meeting and the later interactions. Imagine you are a stylish girl and are looking for a boyfriend: you want someone who is going to look good all the time for when you are him around to your friends and family.

(begin tangent)
This extends to all areas of your life. If you work in a corporate environment, dressing very well always looks better to others (this includes those of you who work at technical/IT places -- even though everyone else is walking around wearing t-shirts and sweatpants doesn't mean you should).
(end tangent)

But what about that confidence? We all know that confidence is the most attractive characteristic possible in a man, yet it seems to be the most difficult trait for a nervous and insecure aspiring PUA to obtain. All I can say is that you can get confidence by doing courage. (credit: Dr. Paul) Opening more and more sets, extending the length and quality of your interactions with men and women, and being more comfortable with who you are -- these are how you can become confident. It may take a lot of time, but if you stick with it, it will come. If you are bald, embrace it! Use any disadvantage you think you have as an advantage. You may one day realize it was never a disadvantage anyway.

When I first started into the community, I was really concerned and insecure about my baldness. After all, I previously had a beautiful head of vibrant natural red, similar to Conan O'Brien's, and when girls (or guys) would call me baldie, Mr. Clean, or worst of all, "skinhead," I would take a beating inside and often lose my frame entirely. Through lots of practice and eventual successes, I stopped really worrying about it. When I meet someone new and they call me baldie in a quasi-joking quasi-insulting way, I know they are insecure about themselves. The most confident people I've ever met have never insulted me about my baldness (they may tease about it afterward -- last month Juggler was in town and joked that Britney Spears had stolen my idea). The people who insult you or call you "baldie" in an obviously non-teasing way or behind your back have lower self-esteem than you, and they are trying to raise themselves up to others or themselves. (trust me: I used to do this a lot)

Just last night I was out in the field and was having great interactions with people in the bars. I opened up this two set of Asian girls while I was waiting for a friend and started having a really great conversation with one of them. The other one was obviously drunk but also dangerously low in the self esteem department. She grew anxious and called me baldie while I was talking to her friend. I didn't flinch at all: I kept engaging the girl with whom I was conversing. I could see this girl was very attracted to me and would be willing to continue talking if her friend were not so wasted. I have a very loving LTR with whom I am very happy, so escalation is not of interest to me, so I said goodbye and implored her to take good care of her friend.

This, for me, was a great reminder of how far I've come. My "inner game"/confidence/charisma has increased so much since I first headed down this path. The fact that I didn't so much as feel even slightly bad about myself when her friend joked "baldie" helped me appreciate my progress in personal growth.

Most quality PUAs will say focus on your inner game. This is a very vague suggestion in an enormous problem space without any deterministic or linear solution paths (this is why we have entire industries based around psychiatrists and anti-depressants: so many people have inner game issues!). To a newbie this can seem very difficult since we want instant results or a simple script we can follow to obtain a rockstar lifestyle full of orgies with HB10s -- or even just an awesome girlfriend. But I truly believe how powerful the inner game is, and I would implore all those who have read my blog to focus your efforts on it. Don't waste your money on hot sports cars like I did (now I am rectifying the myopia of my early days). Don't watch every pickup-related movie or read every eBook out there. Figure out who you are and what you want, and the rest will all come to you naturally.