The vast majority of men experience some anxiety when they discover that they are starting to go bald. In many ways this would seem to be a modern-day or "first world" problem, yet everyone is familiar with how Julius Caesar struggled with his own hair loss, which indicates that it has been considered a problem for well over 2,000 years.
It makes me wonder exactly when male pattern baldness began to be perceived as a problem. Even in much more recent times, men have generally not been as bothered by other signs of aging -- grey hair and wrinkles, for example -- and at some point in history people must have been much more worried about basic survival than how they looked.
It also makes me wonder why it took so damn long for humankind to embrace the obvious solution to this problem - i.e., shaving off the remaining hair. Being bald has never bothered me, but it would definitely bother me if it meant I had to go through life with an unbuzzed fringe, like bald men did up until fairly recently. Men who can't grow a decent beard keep their faces shaved; why would the same principle not apply to a scalp with less than full coverage?
Thoughts?
