Now that every other young victim of male-pattern baldness takes a razor to his skull, keeping a shaved head is about as novel as growing a soul patch was in the ‘90s.

There was a time when a completely shaved head had cachet. It recalled a hard-assed Samuel L. Jackson. A not-to-be-messed-with Yul Brynner. A scowling Bruce Willis, scaling a building to save his wife. With a Bic and a glower, you could clear the comb-over hurdle and make losing half your hair before the age of 35 not just okay but cool.

Not so much anymore.

Peek in on happy hour at the Hawaiian Tropic Zone in Times Square, or just look around the plane on your next business trip. It’s like a Bruce Willis-worshipping alien nation invaded the country. Did Obadiah Stane, Jeff Bridges’s character in Iron Man, look familiar? That’s because he reminded you of a jackass ad ec you once met at a sales conference.

But even before the Bic head started to go the way of the soul patch, it was problematic. Largely because it actually telegraphs the very message the semi-baldy is trying to scramble: that he’s losing his hair. Anyone who looks at his skull can see the faint border of the bald spot as clearly as the yellow outline on a green lawn where a piece of furniture used to be. Face-lifts are subtler.

And maybe lift-and-tighten madness is what got us an army of poor-man’s Michael Chiklises (Chikli?) in the first place. Like shrinking lips and frown lines on women, a man’s half-naked head is now seen as a curable affliction, not a natural evolution. Hair-loss-remedy sales in chain drugstores and supermarkets increased almost 20 percent in 2007, according to Information Resources Inc., adding up to $64.9 million that year alone. If the choice is to either throw your money at the potionmakers or take matters into your own hands, no wonder most guys reach for the razor.

Well, consider this a call for resistance. An appeal to the brave. Imagine what would happen if you embraced the power donut, that ring of unshaved hair that clings to a balding man’s pate. Consider the company you’d be in: Gerald Ford, Ed Harris, Sean Connery, Captain Stubing—not to mention the guy radiating wealth from the next booth at the steak house. You think he ever looks wistfully at the phone during a late-night Propecia infomercial? Or wonders what kind of razor Steve Schmidt uses? He’s busy polishing his skull to a sheen and keeping his ring neatly combed. We’re not saying the Chiklis look has to be universally abandoned; we’re just saying that if a few of you took a page from the Captain’s book, maybe we could overthrow the stratified regime we live under. Maybe we could make balding cool again.

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