A 31-year-old bachelor from Leeds has revealed the findings of a social experiment that he undertook to see how users of a popular dating site respond to men with
hair loss.
Richard King teamed up with the Farjo Hair Institute for the 10-day study, in which he posted two personal profiles on Tinder that were identical in all but one way: one showed Richard sporting the results of his lustrous new hair transplant, the other showed him with his previously
thinning hair.
Results not exactly surprising
Richard, who had been losing hair to the genetic hair loss condition
Male Pattern Baldness for a number of years, wanted to test just how much his ‘before’ and ‘after’ shots affected the number of responses he got from women. The results were pretty conclusive, if not exactly surprising: almost twice as many women responded to Richard when his profile showed him with a full head of hair.
Richard told the
Daily Mirror that he became attracted to the idea of a hair transplant after being ribbed by friends that his thinning locks made him look older. “
It got to the point where my thinning hair was really affecting my self-esteem and overall confidence, so surgery became a viable option," says Richard, whose transplant was carried out by the noted surgeon, Belgravia hair transplant partner and blog contributor,
Dr Bessam Farjo.
It is not known if Richard first tried a clinically-proven pharmaceutical
hair loss treatment course, which is a very popular, less intrusive and less expensive way to deal with genetic balding, successfully employed by millions of men around the world.
What the MHRA licensed and FDA approved components usually contained in these courses do is tackle Male Pattern Baldness on two fronts, blocking the enzyme
DHT which causes the hair around the top of the head to gradually thin and fall out in those with a genetic predisposition towards MPB, and helping to accelerate hair growth.
Whilst many see a
hair transplant as a 'quick fix', what they often don't realise is that the new grafts may take a little while to settle in and it can also take more than one operation to achieve the desired results -
Wayne Rooney has admitted to two procedures so far whilst
Calum Best has said his third operation is his last. Furthermore, in order to maintain the results and look of the hair after surgery it is important to follow a hair loss treatment plan as part of the on-going after care. This is necessary in order to prevent the hair surrounding the transplanted areas from thinning out and leaving a potentially unnatural pattern of hair loss. It is also recommended that a similar course is undergone for at least six months prior to surgery to maximise hair growth.
Hair loss and dating
Hair loss
crops up quite regularly in stories about dating websites, where first impressions appear to be increasingly important when people are making snap decisions about whether or not they like the look of someone. In one alarming study, two-thirds of
Singaporean women said that they would not date a bald man at all.
And yet men who have lost their hair to Male Pattern Baldness sometimes embrace it often because it suits their rugged good looks and they are brimming with confidence. People like Jason Statham and Vin Diesel would arguably need no help from anyone to find themselves inundated on Tinder.
Confidence can play a big part in how people deal with hair loss, and not all dating sites encourage people to post the most flattering and possibly
old pictures of themselves.
Settle For Love, for example, was set up by balding entrepreneur David Wheeler, and encourages people to post ‘real’ shots of themselves, because, as Wheeler puts it: “
We believe that being upfront from the start will not only show one’s personality, but build happier, healthier relationships.”