JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Toupees have always bothered me. They’re obviously alien to their environment (some man’s head), but the wearer is either unaware of how odd they look, or is hoping against hope that no one will notice his hair is synthetic. Or else he is aware of how synthetic his hairpiece looks, but claims not to care what people think, in which case he should’ve announced his baldness to the world (Maybe he just wants to keep his scalp warm). If there are toupees that look exactly like real hair, I have not seen them. True, there are men who still have their own hair, but look like they’re wearing wigs. That’s even more distressing than toupees.

In the 90s, a friend of mine had a boss who believed that his toupee looked like real hair. He was unaware that the thing on his head looked like it was about to sit up and beg for peanuts. Every month he would announce, loudly and without a shred of irony: “I’m leaving early, I have to get a haircut.” His staff would have sudden coughing fits, cram papers in their mouths, dive for wastebaskets in order to hide their laughter. The next day, the boss would show up with shorter hair—as if he really had been to the barber. His staff concluded from anecdotal evidence that their boss had three toupees of different lengths, to simulate hair growth. 

My mentor Yoda used to go into agonies over his impending baldness, but eventually accepted the truth. He took comfort from the fact that Ed Harris looks better without hair.