You thought hair loss was bad? Beard loss is even worse

Facial hair thinning or alopecia barbae’ can be as damaging to a guy’s confidence as baldness. And it’s not as uncommon as you’d think

- MURRAY CLARK

i WAS 24 AND STARED INTO SPACE A LOT. A LOW-PAID JOB FOR A WATCH CONGLOMERATE WAS ALL-CONSUMING, and it only just covered London rent. Nevertheless, my weekends were spent going big with the little money I had: Ubers, takeaways and everything else in between. It was a constant hurricane of neuroses that ran on fumes. Oh, and I was also fresh from my first-ever apocalyptic break-up. So of course I looked like shit. I also felt like shit. And I was losing my hair.

Not on my head. That’d come a few years on, and is another redemptive tale of confidence lost and later found. This hair loss was in my beard. Below one corner of my mouth, a small patch in which nothing could thrive suddenly presented itself. In a few weeks, it had grown to the size of a R5 coin. In a few months, it was a crop circle. I pawed over it most mornings; another thing to be worried about. I suspect the constant inspections, the nervous fingers poking and prodding only served to accelerate the shedding. And even shaving my beard down to stubble didn’t help. With thick dark hair and pasty skin, the blight was even more pronounced, a smooth patch on my chin – a pock on the moon – that elicited all sorts of innocent questions and “ooooh”s from innocent (if not slightly insensitive) onlookers.