Male Pattern Baldness (MPB) disproportionately affects white men. As a group, white men receive privilege from the moment they are born, and this is only denied by whingey fascistic nut-jobs. So why hasn't a problem that afflicts society's dominant group been fixed?
Easy: status.
White hetero men love a sense of superiority and they're used to having one: they've had a banging 2016. Who led the victors in the UK's Brexit referendum? Who won the Presidential Election in the USA? Who got awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature?
White men are on top. But not any white men: Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and Bob "Literature" Dylan have one thing in common besides their gender, race and sexuality: they all have hair, or constantly pretend they do.
Think of bald politicians and you'll think of men who lost elections. Think of bald actors and you'll think of men who don't win Oscars. Think of bald musicians and you'll think of wealthy men, sure, but none you'd want to be friends with and none you'd want anyone you intended to bonk knowing you listened to.
Successful men avoid baldness through either luck or money. By "luck" I mean not going bald naturally, and by "money" I mean hair transplants and unflappable wigs. Money can't buy the rich man love, but money can buy him hair (and sex, which many prefer).
A friend told me he'd read about Donald Trump describing baldness as a "character flaw". Though I cannot find said quotation, the point is valid. There hasn't been a bald American president since television became mainstream, and (other than the exceptions) most people don't have bald friends.
In the entrenched power structures of the cis-gendered heteronormative patriarchy, bald men are not at the peak. Men gifted hair by the luck of genes or the heat of cash want to maintain status and thus stop research into affordable bald cures.
AND, because heterosexuality is part of the designated identity of the top tier, powerful men don't care about other men's looks. Men have created a society that normalises body hair removal for adult women (evidencing a clear, paedophilic, urge), they keep strip clubs/brothels thriving, and they buy their lovers plastic surgery and gym memberships. They don't make men be beautiful. If the elite cared about the sexual desires of heterosexual women or homosexual men, MPB would no longer exist.
Baldness ain't hot. No hetero woman or gay man - unless they have a fetish - wants a bald lover as preference. They may want a handsome bald lover rather than an ugly hairy one, but they will ALWAYS prefer a handsome man with hair to a handsome man without hair. It's human nature, confirmed by the fact that no one wants a hairless cat (other than cinematic villains or my one friend who has one). A bald man is always a second choice lover, and a nightmare rarely considered is the life of a gay man or hetero woman whose normal (i.e. unbald) lover starts losing his hair. They are the people whose lives are ruined by MPB: us baldies may lack hair and thus beauty, but only a handful of us who are bald, gay and unlucky-in-love ever have to experience the horror of opening eyes mid-coitus to see a hairless head panting in heat. It's a terrifying mental image. Personally, I can no longer masturbate in a room containing mirrors.
Hetero women and gay men are socially conditioned to think that they can't break up with a man for going bald. This is the patriarchy at work, locking up risk-free relationships. I cannot think of a single bald man I know who got dumped for losing his hair. What a disgrace. Think of how many men you know who've left their partners because the other put on weight or visibly aged - both are common occurrences and broadly considered acceptable [citation needed]. If society respected the desires of people who lust men, former hotties like me wouldn't be going bald.
Bald men are another victim of the patriarchy. We know anyone we're humping would prefer a hairier model, and we know that the hairy men who run the world don't want us getting the Samsonian strength they use to wield power. Gay men and hetero women lose out, trapped in relationships with men they no longer desire, and us baldies have to live our empty, hairless, lives knowing that our gender isn't enough to secure absolute privilege.
It doesn't matter what you've got in your pants; power is all about the scalp.
Scott Manley Hadley blogs at TriumphoftheNow.com.