ReZoom

Blame it on our culture's obsession with youth and outward appearance, but among American men, premature baldness is a waking nightmare. Day after day, some 30 million balding men are offered dozens of small reminders—on pillows, in hairbrushes and shower drains—that all we are is dust in the wind. Small wonder why a Google search for "hair loss treatment" collects more than 760,000 hits.

But most hair loss treatments, for men at least, are folly, according to Russell David Harper, author of "Bald," a novel based on his experiences as one of the follicle-ly challenged. Part beer-soaked confessional, part pop culture study, "Bald" was called "funny as all get-out" by the Seattle Times.

"I have some pretty strong opinions about the folly of hair replacement (for men) for all but the super rich," Harper said. "The objections only multiply with age."

Hard won objections, to be sure, seeing as he wore a hairpiece from 1989 to 1997. It all started one day in Los Angeles, when a then-22-year-old Harper came across a pictorial in "Muscle & Fitness" magazine. Noticing bodybuilder Gary Strydom's suddenly thick head of hair, he set out to find where it had come from.

A couple of months later, Harper was stepping out of a hair treatment office wearing his new hair replacement "system." It is a day he remembers fondly.

"It began with the car ride home, catching glimpses of myself in the rearview mirror and seeing that I had all this hair," he said. "I started to feel more confidence."

But over time, as the details of upkeep grew in number, the illusion of sporting a full head of hair began to falter. There were frantic mornings when he couldn't make his "hair" appear natural. There were bad dreams about being found out. Worst of all were the confessions to potential lifemates.

"There was one long-term girlfriend who told me she could tell the whole time," he remembered. "She said it looked a little bit like doll's hair. It was mortifying."

The beginning of the end came in 1995, when Harper moved from Los Angeles to Chicago. While it's not known as "the windy city" for meteorological reasons, the canyon effect of so many skyscrapers had him looking for a way out.

Two years later, while earning his Master's degree in general studies at the University of Chicago, Harper let his naked dome once again see the light of day. He remembers the date in much the same way that alcoholics remember the day they stopped drinking.

Coming up on ten rug-free years this month, Harper, now 40, believes hairpieces are appropriate to only a small segment of the male population.

"If Sean Connery wants to do it for a movie, fine," he said. "But if you yourself want to do it, you've got to realize you'll be living with the physical reality of it—the sweat, the molting of the scalp, going in for service every couple of weeks to get it cleaned and clamped down."

And despite promised advances—in 2004, the New York Times reported that the cloning of individual hair cells is "only a decade away"—hair transplant surgery is still too costly for so much trouble, according to Harper.

"If you want a scalp that grows hair again, you need successful skin grafting," he said. "I'd rather wait for something to turn the genes back on. There are people working on that, of course."

Harper's advice to anyone wanting to appear younger, more vital? Join a gym.

"The first thing you should ask yourself is, ‘Am I as fit as I can possibly be?'" he said. "If the answer is no, then you might want to reconsider.

"In terms of age, I do feel like now I won't reach some midlife crisis point and start saying, ‘If only I had more hair,'" he added. "For me, there's no going back."