From the archive: the hair in our lives issue, 1970

The bald facts about the male hair industry

An illustration of Rudolf Nureyev bald: ‘The onset of baldness causes more masculine dismay than ever. Baldness is a disfigurement.’ Photograph: Hargrave Hands for the Observer 

​A lot happened in 1970, the Beatles disbanded, the US invaded Cambodia, Boeing 747 made its first commercial flight to London, and men in the UK began buying toupées in droves.

February 1970 marked the winter of bald men’s discontent, the Observer Magazinereports. In an issue devoted to ‘The Hair In Our Lives’ and illustrated with a bald Rudolf Nureyev, who in reality had a full head of hair, Maureen Green gets to the root (sorry) of the exponential boom in the male hair industry. ‘Because a man’s hair is so openly admired as an increasingly important part of an attractive appearance,’ she writes, ‘the onset of baldness causes more masculine dismay than ever. Baldness is a disfigurement.’

With such attitudes flying about, it’s no wonder men were seeking drastic measures to restore their follically ravaged heads. In 1970 alone the NHS provided £1m of wigs. One dermatologist told Green: ‘I’ve suggested to long-haired patients who are young and balding that they should become skinheads, but they are horrified. It’s worse than switching from modern jazz to swing. You just don’t do it.’

And it’s not just the NHS that was under strain; hairless men were turning to crime to disguise their gleaming scalps. ‘Just as in 18th-century London, a robber might lift an expensive wig from a fashionable head, so again wig makers and hairdressers are the victims of persistent burglary.’

However, a pioneering technique was about to shake things up: enter ‘hair weaving’, the process of ‘attaching extra hairs to those that still remain’.

According to Iain Kelly of the Hair Extension Centre, the psychological benefits blow those of the humble toupée out the water. ‘A man never sees himself as bald again. With a toupée, he takes it off at night and reminds himself. With extensions, he can be lost in his new hair. The boost to the male ego is immense.’ Thank goodness for that!

This article appeared on The Guardian