It is, of course, essential to fight racism and antisemitism, both scourges ingrained in the hearts of men. But speaking of a scourge, there is another, more insidious scourge, which shamelessly attacks a whole swathe of the population, condemning them practically to excommunication. It is a very common form of racism that nobody talks about, yet it causes a mass of suicides every year.
Who can imagine what bald people – because yes, that’s who we’re talking about – have to endure? The constant discrimination, the shame, the looks, the judgements, the accusations, these stigmatizations so widespread in society I know of many who, for fear of being made a scapegoat, prefer never to leave their homes. Alternatively, you could wear a hat, a cap, a yarmulke, a skullcap, a beret, a pompom, all the possible and imaginable headdresses capable of hiding this unspeakable infirmity that science calls baldness, with sinister jokers using an ugly nickname to describe it: “Egghead! Egghead! “They gossip when they spot one, their lousy comments never failing to provoke the raucous laughter of hairy passers-by.
Oh, bald men of all countries, who can stand in your defence?
Which Zola, which Voltaire, which Badinter will risk their honour to denounce the stigma you suffer from? They drive you out of the cities, lock you up in ghettos, spit in your face, and shame you with the same ferocity as if you belonged to the chosen people. An attack that you have been subjected to since the dawn of time, yet which is met with indifference despite being more than simple mockery.
Who cares about you? Nobody. Who defends you when you are attacked by the faceless mob? Nobody. Who is sorry when you are turned away at the cinema doors on the pretext that your bare skull shines too brightly in the dark, or when you are refused access to certain professions such as barber or dermatologist? Once again, nobody. Your solitude is frightening. Even the Jews hate you. When a Jew has the misfortune of losing his hair, unquestionably, his wife leaves him. His children report him to the Kommandantur. The synagogues deny them asylum; they become the biggest pests, worse than any goy. Rabbis use them as an example to thwart inappropriate behaviour: “This one ate a croissant on Yom Kippur, the following year he went bald/ this one slept with his brother’s wife and when he woke up, his hair was gone/ this one ate cheese on the same plate as his steak, within an hour his hair was gone”, they cry in every yeshiva [Talmudic school] on the planet. At the Western Wall, when a bald Jew shows up, he is turned away like the last of the lepers. A little more and he would be stoned, told to aim for his skull, the object of all repudiations. A bald Jew is the worst curse of all. No woman could fall for him, and even matchmakers look away when the mother of a bald son comes begging for help. They are said to be sterile. Since nothing grows on his head, how could it grow elsewhere? Old legends claim that the Jew owes his baldness to a badly-performed circumcision, an accident involving the foreskin which would prompt, via a potential exchange of fluids, the irremediable loss of hair.
Let’s face it: Jewish and bald don’t mix. This one wanted to become a rabbi but when he couldn’t grow a beard, he ended up a tile washer. That one was predestined for the profession of shohet, slaughterer of animals, but the beasts were so frightened by the vision of his shining pate that they ran away before they were even caught.
Enough is enough.
This is why I have decided to launch a new organisation that will fight discrimination against bald people of all stripes—Jewish, Goy, Muslim, Buddhist, gay, LGBT, and many others: the ILDUB, or the International League against the Discrimination of Universal Baldness. Its mandate shall be clear: to enable all bald people to live their lives with respect and honour. It will be the fight of a lifetime. I will fight for as long as bald men continue to suffer from their condition. Nothing will stop me. Anti-baldness must be punished in the same way as racism and antisemitism, because whoever attacks one bald person, attacks all of humanity. Bald men from all over the world, you are no longer alone. A new dawn rises.
The time of the bald man has come.