Why hair restoration isn’t just vanity — it’s self-care

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Last year, a 32-year-old management consultant walked into our Bloomington clinic, a baseball cap pulled low over his forehead, his posture hunched and small. On paper, he was thriving — a great job at a top firm — but in the consultation, he said he was anxious and depressed.

His father was bald by 40. After lifting up his baseball cap, I could see he wasn’t far behind. He confided all the ways his balding hurt his confidence, dating life and even career advancement.

This year, when he came back for a check up after his hair transplant, he was standing taller, newly promoted and freshly engaged to be married. The baseball cap was also gone.

Hair loss isn’t about vanity; it’s about confidence, identity and mental well-being. A 2022 meta study found that 75% of women participants experiencing hair loss reported diminished self-confidence and 50% reported experiencing social problems, and men had significantly higher levels of anxiety and depression. Yet despite these real impacts and the many effective treatments available, one stubborn obstacle stands in the way of many people who want to improve their quality of life: social stigma.

This may sound like a pitch for my business, but I would give the same advice to friends who might choose a competitor clinic or fly to Turkey for hair treatments. If I have learned one thing after working with thousands of clients it is this: It’s time to retire the stigma around hair restoration just as we have with orthodontics, teeth whitening, hair coloring and skin care.

Because pattern balding is genetic, hair loss has been part of the human experience for millennia. In ancient Egypt, a full head of hair symbolized nobility and beards projected divine authority. That’s why archaeologists have unearthed wigs dating back more than 5,000 years and why pharaohs of both genders were depicted with false beards to signify their status as living gods.

In Rome, hair was such a symbol of power and virility that even Julius Caesar attempted to comb over his bald spot and hide it under a laurel wreath. Centuries later, when the most powerful monarch of his time, King Louis XIV of France, started balding at 17, he sparked a craze for elaborate wigs that lasted generations.

Even mankind’s earliest medical text, the Ebers Papyrus from 1550 BCE, includes a prescription for treating hair loss. And the first female self-made millionaire in the U.S., Madam C.J. Walker, built her business selling treatments for hair loss.

Across cultures, hair holds deep significance. In many Native American traditions, long hair represents strength and spiritual identity. The Hmong people believe hair carries ancestral power. Orthodox Jewish men show their religious devotion through long beards and unshaven temples. Even the Prophet Muhammed is quoted as saying, “Whoever has hair should honor it.”

So when hair starts to fall out, the impact isn’t just physical — it’s emotional, even spiritual.

When I meet with Minnesotans who have hair loss, some are hesitant to do anything they see as purely for the sake of “vanity.” But vanity never comes up in our consultations. Instead, when men talk to me about hair loss, they actually talk about how it affects their confidence at work or on a first date. Women don’t talk about beauty, they talk about feminine identity and the ways they see themselves subconsciously withdraw from social activities they used to love. For trans individuals, we’re not discussing shafts of hair, we’re discussing gender affirmation. In short, a hair on the beard, eyebrow or scalp is more than just a strand. It is an element of masculinity, femininity and identity.

The good news is that we are in the midst of what might be called a “Menaissance” — which to me is about a new era of health and self-care benefiting everyone, but especially men who traditionally resisted self-care. Prescription medicines available today can stop hair loss in 90% of cases. Surgeons have perfected transplants to permanently fill in bald areas. Cosmetologists have developed undetectable non-surgical hair systems that seamlessly blend real human hair with existing bio-hair. All of these advances pervade social media and never before have so many been aware they exist.

The truth of this Menaissance is that people don’t undergo hair restoration to look different; they do it to look more like themselves. Unlike other cosmetic procedures like rhinoplasty, breast augmentation or BBLs that create a new look by enhancing or creating features, hair restoration reverses aging, repairs damage and restores lost features. Assigning a stigma of inauthenticity is misplaced when the goal is to regain what was lost.

Just because hair loss is the one thing out of people’s control doesn’t mean that they should be shamed into accepting it.

Nathan Bruschi serves as the chief executive officer of the Hair Restoration Institute of Minnesota.