1. Heads you lose.
THEY smear their heads in vain with mucky herbal remedies and allow people to insert synthetic fibre strands into their scalp in the hope that it will look like real hair. The loss of their crowning glory can be so traumatic for some people that they will try anything to replace it.
We are so phobic about baldness in our society that for some people with cancer, the fear of becoming hairless as a result of chemotherapy is 10 times worse than the cancer itself. Young men have become suicidal when they realised they were losing their hair. Ms Ann Goldsmith of Universal Hair and Scalp Clinics Ltd regularly gets calls from the mothers of desperate young men who are losing their hair through male pattern baldness. "They beg me, please do something for my son, I don't care if it works or not as long as he thinks there's some hope'."
And that is precisely the basis on which many para medical treatments for baldness work. Hair clinics come and go, but Ms Goldsmith has been 32 years in business and her neon sign in South Great George's street is a Dublin landmark (the baldy man smiles when he has hair, and frowns when he loses it). She offers a sympathetic ear to her clients - male and female - many of whom are losing their hair as a result of stressful lifestyles, she believes. Men often sneak into Universal Hair without their wives knowing in the hope that they can surreptitiously regain their hair. The potions which she massages into their scalps contain secret ingredients which she refuses to divulge.
Dr Gillian Murphy, a dermatologist in Dublin, doesn't believe massage works: nor does she, feel any potion exists that restores hair, other than minoxydil, a medicine which when rubbed into the scalp has been proven in clinical trials to help hair return, although it's usually only a downy growth and only five per cent of users are completely happy with the result.
If hair is going to fill out, it's going to fall out and you cannot stop it. The gene for baldness is inherited from either or both the mother's and father's side of the families. It is not caused by wearing hats or any other such practise. Balding is fundamentally related to the growth cycles of hair follicles, some of which are inclined to shut down after a while.
"People who are losing their hair can get deeply, deeply depressed about their changing body image," Dr Murphy has observed. She tries to convince young men with male pattern baldness that bald is beautiful. "I will say, `Look at your Dad. Doesn't he look fine?' Of course, if they hate their Dad you've got a problem.
Young men mourning the loss of their hair are vulnerable, which can be disastrous.
"I have seen dreadful side effects of fibre implants with awful consequences, including people with abscesses all over their scalp," she says. "To perform such a procedure is a travesty of what should be considered good medical practise and I hope no medical person would do such a thing."
Hair transplants are plugs of skin and hair which are taken from the lush back of the head and transplanted in the front like skin grafts in corn row fashion. Dr Murphy warns that hair transplants should be done only by an expert plastic surgeon in a hospital consultant post. Anybody else cannot by definition be proficient enough to do the job, she says.
At the Mater Hospital, Dublin, Mr Michael Early, a plastic surgeon, treats people with severe scarring of the scalp by using tissue expanders to encourage the healthy portion of scalp which does have hair to stretch over the damaged part. But he works on accident victims only.
We tend to think of all baldness as inevitable, yet there are many treatable causes for hair loss. "I see people freaking out because their hair is falling out and often it's a completely curable situation," says Dr Murphy.
Certain diseases, childbirth, being rundown or iron deficient and even a severe shock like a car accident can make all your hair stop growing at the same time with the result that two or three months later it all falls out at once (including sometimes the eyebrows as well). Anyone losing hair should see their GP to look for underlying medical problems.
Chemotherapy is many people's first experience of baldness and it can be terribly traumatic. Men can shave their heads and wear hats but women may feel cruelly exposed. Baldness for women - with the exception of Sinead O'Connor and catwalk models - is not accepted as being aesthetic in our society's limited definition of attractiveness.
Fortunately, wigs have become so fashionable that at Wigwam, in the Powerscourt Centre, Dublin, Linda Murphy is selling them to perfectly tressed women in their teens and 20s as fashion items.
With 200 wigs on the premises (priced at £50-£120 each) and others available on order within days, Linda is determined that no one should go out her door looking anything less than spectacular. The new natural looking wigs are so flattering that women who accompany their friends on chemotherapy to Wigwam as moral support sometimes return, in secret, a few days later to buy wigs for themselves purely as a fashion accessory, says Linda.
Why toupees should not enjoy as good a reputation may have something to do with the fact that we tend to notice only badly fitted or uncared for toupees, suggests Alan Harrap of the shop Grooms. The good ones (£380 each) are so realistic that we don't spot them. Several of his clients are well known people who, unknown to the public, wear toupees to prevent themselves feeling that their personalities were lost with their hair.
Men with male pattern baldness who don't want to wear toupees, should get their hair cut very short and try growing beards, he advises. They should never grow their remaining hair long and comb it over the balding part in an attempt to fool people (or themselves, perhaps) because it doesn't work, he warns.
2. Unwanted Facial Hair
THE SPROUTING of a coarse black hair or two on the upper lip or chin can drive some women into a state of quietly imploding hysteria - and with good reason.
"Society ostracises women with facial - hair problems, that's the feedback I get here," says Ann McDevitt, who has been removing unwanted hair for 18 years through diathermy at Body Diathermy Skin in Wicklow Street, Dublin.
Why we should be so phobic about body hair is anybody's guess. Perhaps we see errant hairs as unwanted signs of our true animal appetites. Or maybe the need to fit into strict gender definitions is much more important to our mental health than we realise. Even nuns, says beauty therapist and salon owner Bronwyn Conroy, now get funding to have their moustaches removed by electrolysis.
Dr Gillian Murphy stresses that anyone who suddenly sprouts hair all over the place should see their GP to discover the underlying cause, which may be malignancy or a biochemical imbalance, such as porphyria. The most common cause of coarse facial and body hair in women is an excess of male hormones, sometimes caused by polycystic ovary disease. Idiopathic hirsutism usually develops between the ages of 15 and 25, says Dr Tarek Faid, an endocrinologist at St Vincent's Hospital, Dublin. Hormone treatments can slowly bring a woman's problems with excess hair under control and in the meantime, electrolysis, waxing and hair removal creams can help cosmetically - but never shaving.
Bronwyn Conroy will never forget the young woman who came to her premises at night with a scarf wrapped around her face. This otherwise feminine creature had a stubbled chin which developed after her doctor told her to shave.
Shaving makes hair more stubbly and, not only that, more difficult to remove by electrolysis and diathermy. These are methods in which electric currents are used to remove the hair at the root so that eventually over a course of treatments the hairs may disappear altogether.
Waxing the upper lip and chin to remove hair is another option. Waxing is like widespread plucking: soft wax (traditionally warm but now also available in a cool version) is applied to the skin and allowed to dry then stripped off, taking the hair with it.
3. Nose
EIGHTEEN per cent of Ann McDevitt's clients are men and the place many of them need their hair removed from is as obvious as it gets: the tip of the nose. This she does using diathermy, which employs a short wave electric current to pull the hair out of the pore. Hair within the nostrils cannot be removed by diathermy due to the risk of infection if the mucous membranes are damaged. The only solution is to buy a special pair of scissors designed for the purpose: they are thin and curved at the end.
4. Ears
IN NEPAL, any male grooming session is not complete without the ritual burning off of the earlobe hair. An oil is applied to the skin, then a burning candle whisks the hairs away. At Wally's Barbershop in Brown Thomas, they simply trim or clip the hair away (they'll neaten up eyebrows too). Those men (or women) wanting a more permanent solution to the problem of ear hair, can go to Ann McDevitt, who will remove the hairs through diathermy. She can take stray hairs from the cheekbones as well.
5. Eyebrows and eyelashes
EYEBROWS are essential to the expression and personality of a face, after all, you can't raise a brow if you haven't got one. A lot of women plucked theirs out in the 1960s in order to be fashionable and they never grew back. Eyebrows may also disappear after childbirth. You can draw them on with eyebrow pencil but even the most adept and steady hand gets it wrong sometimes.
Ann McDevitt can create eyebrows using a process of micro pigmentation in which natural pigments are, placed in the upper level of the dermis. This "semi permanent make up" fades after two and a half years on average. Those who feel cheated in the eyelash department can also get semipermanent dots placed between the eyelashes, making them appear thicker and lusher.
6. Underarms
MOST women shave their underarm hair off, but hair which is shaved quickly returns in a stubbly condition. Yet fashion magazines are full of women exposing armpits as hairless as a newborn babe's. How do they do it? They wax it off (ouch!) but don't try it yourself at home unless you are willing to scrupulously heed the directions on the wax packet, warns Bronwyn Conroy.
She once saw a client come in with excruciatingly painful balls of hard wax stuck to her armpit hairs because somebody had told her that you need to grow it long before waxing it. In fact, the hair should be about one eighth of an inch (if it's longer, the operator will trim it to the correct length.) An underarm wax lasts between four and six weeks.
7. Arms and legs
REMOVING hair from the legs, forearms and from what is politely known as "the bikini line" - big business in the summer. Be warned, however: Never sunbathe before having your limbs waxed because if the skin is pink from the sun, it could strip off when the wax comes Off After the waxing, wait 24 hours to go swimming or risk the infection of the exposed pores.
8. Body
A RECENT Cosmopolitan centrefold of the world's (allegedly) most attractive men had Antoine de Caune sporting about as much body hair as a 12 year old boy. Mediterraneans may show off their horny hirsute chests, but in Northern Europe body hair is a virtual obscenity and many men feel embarrassed about having hair on their shoulders and backs.
Andre Agassi made headlines when he shaved his off, which is precisely what Dr Murphy suggests for men who do not like their body hair. Waxing the hair off is another option for men.
9. Nipples
WE HIDE our little hair shames like nothing else, so that even women who regularly have hair removed from other parts of their body may fear revealing their ultimate hairy secret. They will be relieved to know that "most women have hair on their breasts", says Bronwyn Conroy.
Some snip it off, some shave it off and others close their eyes and hope it goes away. Snipping is fine, Shaving is bad because it cuts away the downy hairs too, making them stubbly and resulting in even more obvious, coarser hair on the breast. Diathermy and electrolysis can remove hairs from the nipple permanently and don't be shy about asking for this at the beauty salon; they do it all the time.
10. Hair extensions
FOR MEN and women with thinning but not disappearing hair, tensions can create a thicker hairstyle which will not look fake. At Lunatic Fringe (Grafton Street, Dublin) it takes two people all day to do a typical hair extension session which lasts about three months. A minimum of three inches of hair all over the head is required.