No, we do NOT all agree that the average woman prefers their men to have a full or partial head of hair. As Satya pointed out, women have a wide difference in their views of what constitutes sex-appeal in a Man(much like men), and bald people are also seen as more intelligent, which would be a bonus for some women.

 Plus, if all or most women really did view baldness as being so bad, why is it that as much as 1 in 4 men noticeably grow bald in their twenties(NOT in old age) with 3 in 4 growing bald, later on? The only plausible explanation for the 1 in 4 figure for young men is that there must be some reproductive bonus to being bald. And it's also been pointed out  that the greater number of androgen receptors you have on the surface of your follicle cells, the more DHT activation is likely to be induced and the more likely it is that your hair will fall out and stay out. The distribution of androgen receptors is thought to be determined almost entirely by your genes.

Re why does it only happen to men as they age:- First of all, baldness is heavily influenced by testosterone, which only becomes a factor in men, around puberty, so that if one assumes fluctuating hormone-levels in the 20s that would explain baldness at that stage(20, not 14 or 18, is actually the age at which both males and females stop maturing, funnily enough). Secondly, a lot of animals go through initial stages such as cocoons or keep certain atavistic characteristics from earlier phases of that species' evolution(eg:- tadpoles becoming frogs), so it.


Here's a most interesting theory re baldness and sexual selection from the web:-

http://ask.metafilter.com/69507/How-does-natural-selection-account-for-male-pattern-balding


"One theory, advanced by Muscarella and Cunningham, suggests baldness evolved in males through sexual selection as an enhanced signal of aging and social maturity, whereby aggression and risk-taking decrease and nurturing behaviours increase.(1) This may have conveyed a male with enhanced social status but reduced physical threat, which could enhance ability to secure reproductive partners and raise offspring to adulthood.

In a study by Muscarella and Cunnhingham, males and females viewed 6 male models with different levels of facial hair (beard and moustache or clean) and cranial hair (full head of hair, receding and bald). Participants rated each combination on 32 adjectives related to social perceptions. Males with facial hair and those with bald or receding hair were rated as being older than those who were clean-shaven or had a full head of hair. Beards and a full head of hair were seen as being more aggressive and less socially mature, and baldness was associated with more social maturity.

Here's the abstract from that study:

Both male facial hair and male pattern baldness are genetically based, suggesting that they contributed to fitness. The multiple fitness model provides an evolutionary interpretation of the social perception of male pattern baldness and beardedness in terms of the multidimensional meaning of physical maturational stages. Male facial beardedness is associated with the sexual maturation stage and is hypothesized to signal aggressive dominance. Male pattern baldness, by contrast, is associated with the next stage of physical maturation, termed senescence. Pattern baldness may signal social maturity, a non-threatening form of dominance associated with wisdom and nurturance. We tested these hypotheses on social perceptions using manipulated male facial stimuli. We presented faces with three levels of cranial hair, including full, receding, and bald, and two levels of facial hair, beard with moustache and clean shaven. Consistent with the model, a decrease in the amount of cranial hair was associated with increased perceptions of social maturity, appeasement, and age, and decreased perceptions of attractiveness and aggressiveness. Targets with facial hair were perceived as more aggressive, less appeasing, less attractive, older, and lower on social maturity than clean shaven faces.

So maybe women tend to chase hairy, irresponsible and aggressive young guys, but settle down and raise kids with balding but stable and nurturing men, even though they find them less attractive than men with full heads of hair.

Or male baldness may be associated with another, yet identified trait that is being directly selected, and baldness survives as a tagalong."


Of course, the clincher re the testosterone-genetics theory  is that if a man is castrated before or at the very start of puberty, he gets a full head of hair. Castration is the one sure defence against baldness. This blows the whole notion linking baldness and ill-health out of the water. Besides, if one takes the theory of baldness and ill-health too seriously, one would have to assume that Asians were healthier/had healthier diets etc. than other racial groups, which is very unlikely.

These associations with baldness are simply cultural though. Different societies will associate different things will baldness (in this case its claimed intelligence). The only consistent thing between cultures is that having hair is physically more attractive than being bald.

All illness increases as people age. Diabetes is more common in older people than young. No reproductive advantage, simply bad diet affecting particular people worse/differently. Everything doctors don't understand is thought to be "genetic". I think very little is.


Not true. Castrating a man might stop him going bald, since baldness is only a symptom of illness. He would not be able to produce the hormones needed to go bald, but he would likely develop another illness instread. Seems to be going back and fourth. Raw Kyle already said that you don't have to assume that Asians were healthier, since Asians are more likely to get other diseases than other people were - they suffer from the same underlying problem but the body shows it in different ways. It's not as if 100% of Asians had there hair or that baldness was scarce compared to Native Americans, Aboriginals. But after world war 2 Baldness in Japan increased dramatically with a change in dietary practices. Evolution can't take place within a few decades. The Australian Aboriginals also have lost any seemingly baldness immunity Weston Price talked about. Even if he exaggerated it, it's beyond doubt that baldness has increased consistent with other health problems in people adopting a SAD.

I would love to see any evidence that baldness was less in primitive cultures.  Please provide any reference to support this idea.  I mean, fossils don't give any evidence about hair, do they?

For the selection of baldness:

http://newyork.broowaha.com/article.php?id=1512
"Looking back through prehistory to the hunter-gatherer mode of human existence, he notes that, in contrast to our society today, elders in the relatively small groups garnered great benefits in power, occupying a high position within the social hierarchy. Concomitant with this posturing of power and status by male elders within the tribe (life expectancy was remember closer to 30 than 80) was the implication of "well, he must being doing something right if he's lived this long," making them attractive mates for prospective females, with good genes and resources to pass on to progeny. In addition, some primeval societies upheld an ideology of patriarchy that promoted elder men within the group to mate with younger, fertile women, thereby increasing the chances of producing offspring (as opposed to elder men mating with elder women).

"In other words, the older men who ran the show got first dibs on the chicks. Consequently, men might conceivably gain reproductive fitness by appearing older than they really were (celebrating one's birthday hadn't quite come of age yet). Physical traits that would make one (male) appear older (such as baldness) would become more prevalent as the potential reproductive benefits the individual gained became more tangible. And hence, the scourge of premature baldness has become rampant."

Not exactly the best evidence, but how do you explain:

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Baldness#Evolutionary_theories_of_male_pattern_baldness
"There is no consensus regarding the origin of male pattern baldness. Most evolutionary theories regard it as resulting from sexual selection. A number of other primate species also experience hair loss following puberty, and some primate species clearly use an enlarged forehead, created both anatomically and through strategies such as frontal balding, to convey a superior status and maturity. The assertion that MPB is intended to convey a social message is supported by the fact that the distribution of androgen receptors in the scalp differs between men and women, and older women or women with high androgen levels often exhibit diffuse thinning of hair as opposed to male pattern baldness."



If this directly above is true, then we can all sit back and smoke a pipe together, as the question of the evolutionary nature of male baldness is slam dunked with an affirmative answer.

a shaved head looks much better when u have a full head of hair because the hairline frames the face