According to a recent study carried out by food, heath and personal care multinational, Unilever, Saudi Arabia spends over SR 1.2 billion or $320 million a year fighting hair loss. That is a great deal of money. A good “guesstimate” is an average of SR1,400 a year being spent by balding individuals.
It has to be admitted that Saudi Arabia has something of a hair problem. There is a higher instance of dandruff here than in many other countries — and it is not because of using the wrong shampoo; climate, diet and vitamin deficiency play a major part. But in the rush for anti-baldness treatments, the word “vanity” firmly leaps to mind — not that Saudi Arabia is any different in this to other places.
There are, sadly, balding men everywhere who, no matter their age, are convinced that a fine head of hair will again make them seem young and attractive. How wise was the 18th century English poet William Cowper who wrote “What dotage will not vanity maintain?” how foolish the old man who imagines that a hair implant will make him seem 33-year-old again, the old woman who believes that no one will notice a face lift — though in truth, vanity is something we all, young and old, succumb to at times. Not for nothing has vanity been called the sixth sense.
Why do middle-aged balding men feel the need to look young again when they have wives that love them as they are? Or do they think it will make them appear young and dynamic in the boardroom or work place and therefore all the more impressive? What folly! Their inner qualities or lack of them will soon enough be seen, regardless of quantity of hair.
Folly in another sense too. The market is full of so-called hair restorers all with incredible claims of success. None works. If any did, baldness would be a thing of the past and magazines would stop publishing stories about the latest miracle cure discovered, be it bird droppings or some rare Amazonian plant extract. But people carry on buying. A balding man and his money are soon parted, it seems — unlike his hair.
To the Romans, baldness indicated virility. That view has made something of a comeback in the West where shaven heads are in fashion denoting machismo. Young (and not so young) men want to appear bald and therefore virile. It is just more vanity, but at least an inexpensive one and, moreover, in execution certain to come up with the desired look.
Here shaven heads are more usually a sign of having performed Umrah or Haj. It is an outward sign of an inner grace and humility. Perhaps if those rushing to waste their money on products that do not work were to think more about the inner rather than outer self, learning instead to live with what God and nature intended them to be, they might be more at ease with themselves and the world.
Even better if the money they then saved were donated to good causes.
