I recently started a job with a CPA firm on Portland Street, which is several hundred yards from the TD Banknorth Garden (“the Gah-den”). I park my car in the Gah-den’s underground garage. The first few two weeks that I worked there were interesting because the Bruin and Celtics were both involved in playoff series (sadly both losses), making leaving the parking lot at the end of the work day a bit of an adventure. And, believe it or not, the maximum daily rate to park there is (I kid you not) $58. My first suit out of college did not cost that much.
During my first two weeks, I was a victim of a new and insidious form of hatred, which I will call “follicle profiling.” That’s right – I was harassed for the crime of parking while bald! The Bruins and Celtics combined to play four home games at times I was in the office. During those four games, three different times I was approached by the police and taken to the security office, where security personnel went through my personal belongings. All three times I feel that I looked professional, dressed in a suit and tie, carrying my laptop back to my car. Something about my appearance attracted security’s attention: my hair – or lack thereof. You see, I am a bald who shaves his head. This makes me a criminal in some people’s eyes.
I do not believe that the security guards were bad people or baldists. But clearly, they do have subtle prejudices against bald men. How can I, a respected and well-educated business person simply trying to go home the end of the work day, be considered a threat, just because I am bald? And, there are other, more subtle forms of baldism. Are you aware that since the advent of television, the United States has not elected a non-incumbent President who was bald? Lyndon Johnson was re-elected in 1964…but he became President only because of the assassination of President Kennedy. This pairing in and of itself was a form of subtle baldism – many feel Kennedy had the nicest hair of any President in US history, and he was elected President largely on the basis of this hair. A bald man like Johnson, despite being far more experienced and capable than Kennedy, had no shot at being elected President because Americans simply don’t want a bald man as their leader. If you look at every presidential election since 1968, in every case the candidate with the nicer hair won except George W. Bush, who arguably defeated two men with nice hair than his own (Al Gore and John Kerry). John Edwards in 2004 was picked as a vice presidential candidate primarily for his thick, lustrous hair. And, it is nice hair.
In the United States, the government does not have the right to conduct searches based solely on follicle profiling. The 4th Amendment of the Constitution guarantees the right to be safe from unreasonable search and seizure without probable cause. Since the majority of people of all hair styles are law-abiding citizens, merely having a hair style which a police officer or security official believes to be more likely to commit a crime than another is not probable cause. In addition, the 14th Amendment requires that all citizens be treated equally under the law. I would argue that this makes it unconstitutional for a security official to make decisions on what people pose a security threat based on hair style. Follicle profiling involves police use of hair style as a factor in decisions to stop and interrogate people. I found on source that defined it as “the practice of constructing a set of characteristics or behaviors based on hair style and using that set of characteristics to decide whether an individual might be guilty of some crime and therefore worthy of investigation or arrest.” In airports men of Middle Eastern descent claim with credibility that they are more likely to be stopped and searched thoroughly than, say, a blonde female of European ancestry. As a bald man, I feel that I suffer a similar indignity, and a similar violation of my civil rights, as these Middle Eastern men.
Questions:
- If you are a bald man, have you ever been the victim of discrimination in a hiring or a promotional opportunity?
- To the women reading this, would you prefer to date an intelligent, nice and successful bald man, or an unemployed sociopath with a history of violence with hair like John Edwards?
- When you see a man with a shaved head dressed in a suit and tie, carrying a laptop bag, do you automatically think he might be a terrorist?