Slaphead Sanctuary

Why has the male wig wearer been a figure of fun since the silent movie age? It doesn’t make sense when given anything more than superficial scrutiny.

In the modern age, if a man or woman finds anything objectionable or unattractive about their physical appearance, they can do something about it.

Bit overweight? Get down the gym, go on a diet or have liposuction. Don’t like those wrinkles? Apply expensive creams or have a bit of botulism inserted into your face. Got a bit more body hair than you need and don’t like resembling Oddbod from Carry On Screaming? Apply some Immac or subject yourself to an assault from a bloke with a spatula and a pot of wax.

Anything you want to do, you can have done, man or woman. If you want to put so much fake tan on that you look like a human satsuma, nobody will bat an eyelid. Gastric bands, hairless hands, new thyroid glands, all acceptable. Teeth like a row of condemned houses? Two grand and you can look like Bingo from the Banana Splits.

The only thing that you can do to alter your appearance that will subject you to unwanted attention, is to be a bald man who starts wearing a hairpiece.

To apply a napper-rat to your shiny bonce is to invite ridicule from all and sundry and that just seems a tad unfair to me. Why shouldn’t a man who feels a bit self-conscious about falling victim to Male Pattern Baldness take steps to put things back as they were?

I think that the problem lies with a manly reluctance to be seen to be taking personal vanity seriously. This is a throwback to my dad’s days, when male grooming simply consisted of throwing neat Hai Karate onto a red raw face, after it had been shaved by a Bic Razor (£2.00 for a bag of 50) that was on its 100th use. Anything more elaborate was deemed repugnant and would suggest that the shaver lacked moral fibre.

Times have moved on and moisturising is now considered socially acceptable to all, but the wearing of the syrup is vanity’s last taboo. I suppose that there’s a Catch 22 at work. We only notice the bad ones. It’s possible that there are men wandering about with hair like The Fonz who are yet to be rumbled by their admiring public.

But what chance has the average wig-wearer when someone with bottomless pockets spends a fortune, yet achieves results that remind of me the last time I got bollocked by a dinner lady?

 
Something needs to be done about wig standards in the United Kingdom, so that men can go about their hairy headed business without fear of victimisation, or shouts of "Wiggy! Wiggy! Wiggy!" followed by that most unfair of enquiries, "Did you have to fight the dog for that this morning, mate?"