The Indignities of Aging: Male of the Species

1. Start (or finish) saying goodbye to hair that was once full and thick and lustrous upon much of that male cranium. It either has departed, or will depart, heading for the body’s dorsal and nether regions, or will simply disappear for good. In the process, it will also become drier, crinkly, more erratic in its growth, impossible to groom, and uncooperative to lint brushes and vacuum cleaners alike. (And forget anyone but you or the undertaker ever again running their fingers through it.)

2. Any facial hair that chooses to stay behind also becomes increasingly brittle, gray or white, spiky, gnarly and erratic — and also surprisingly patchy: what happened to all that testosterone? The sole grooming styles that remain completely non-repulsive to the fairer sex, small children and domestic animals are the 3-day stubble, the skull-encircling fuzz-fringe, the creepy soul patch, and the dreaded dead-rope ponytail. (That’s right. Forget the Fu Manchus, that walrusy Wilford Brimley type thing, and anything that involves braiding of beard hair.)

3. As there will no longer be any considerable amount of concealing hair or sideburns to speak of, the ears will become much more pronounced and evident, making the approaching male head resemble nothing so much as a New York City taxicab going down a narrow one-way street with both driver’s and passenger’s door open.

4. Eyebrows that once upon a time seemed so trim and dashing and dapper, go berserkers, sprouting and expanding like wacky weeds in a long-neglected herb garden. Simultaneously, tufts of unsavory, wiry hair pop up from within ears and nostrils (among other orifices), from earlobes, and out of all sorts of other strange and decidedly ungratifying places. Man the tweezers boys! And no longer diss those bizarre little battery operated rotary hair trimmers hawked during midnight cable shows.

5. Losing its cover, the hapless and careworn skull is increasingly revealed as out-of-round, asymmetrical, and bearing an odd assortment of randomly placed bumps and knobs, old nicks and scars, moles and hair-tufts. (Hey, after all those years of leading with your head, you should have expected it to eventually show signs of all the wear and tear.)

6. Any fashion sense once contained by the brain within that battered dome soon leaks out, with predictably outdated and unattractive (some say laughable) results.

7. Over the decades, gravity does its relentless work upon the rind of that melon. Musculature sags and drags, flesh droops, and any chiseled features, strong cheekbones or cleft chin are soon buried within the amorphous, ever-changing and putty-like facial physiognomy.

8. Skin that in days gone by was once flush and flawless takes on a noticeably chalky patina, becoming ever drabber and duller in color, its increasingly papery surface pockmarked and stained, like an old and overcooked baked potato.

9. Eyes that could at one time have been referred to as ‘dreamy’: clear, strong, penetrating and richly umber, lose their focus and clarity, as well as their ability to read food labels or get the car in the garage damage-free without the use of ‘cheaters’.

10. After all of this, be thankful I’m not cataloging the cringe-inducing indignities inflicted by time and tide upon those remaining portions of the body below the neck!