Ben Shelley says he spent almost everything in his early 20s trying it out to fix it.
At first, he turned to topical medication. That didn’t help. He often relied on no pills prescribed by his doctor, nor oil, serum, delmaroller, or any other products that despaired people in his situation.
Five years later, Shelley, 26, says he finally surrendered to the inevitable.
“I’m taking this medicine,” he says. “That has no effect. At what point do I have to face the kind of acceptance part?”
According to the American Hair Removal Association, about two-thirds of men are affected by hair removal by the age of 35. Like Shelley, its effects will have a faster effect. A 1998 study found that 16% of men experienced moderate to dilated hair loss between the ages of 18 and 29. Shelley began to notice the signs when she was 18 years old.
As a general experience, hair removal still brings stigma. Shelley is about to change that. Social media raises awareness of the topic by sharing aspects of his life with hair removal in men’s patterns. One of his videos shows how he develops his wig, also known as the “hair system,” which has encouraged massive conversations with comments on narcissism, self-confidence and masculinity, over 41 million times on Tiktok and over 19 million on Instagram.
Shelley says he hopes his video will “normalize people losing their hair and not feeling great about it.”
But the “another message” is “one of the things that you don’t have to find confidence and be perfect,” he adds.
Many men alded. Still, there is a stigma.
Shelley says he always had thin hair. But by the time he entered university he realized he was beginning to lose it. He attributes his hair loss to genetics at the end of second year 2020.
Shelley knows firsthand how hair loss affects mental health and self-esteem. He can be particularly brutal for a new adult.
“I think these years, when you’re 18-22, are times when you think you’re not as sure of yourself as you’d like to,” he says. “At the end of the day it’s not that deep… it’s just hair, but you’re 19, 20,… because that’s something everyone else has.”
People can also make harmful comments about hair removal without even their friends realizing it. Shelley recalls one example of a friend being stabbed in particular when she pointed out hair loss at a social gathering.
“It’s one thing to be anxious about that in your own head,” he says. “It’s another thing to ask someone else to mention it or to call out that.”
Shelley began wearing her hair system in May. He says, and ultimately, he wants to go to a comfortable place where he doesn’t wear it.
But for now, he says he has helped him navigate the world, while accustomed to a hairless life. And there is no shame in it.
“This is what makes me feel confident right now,” he says. “I felt as confident as I could, so I went through life all the time and I actually faced with anxiety and those things.
Ben Shelley’s Viral Video and Hair Removal Message
Shelley didn’t expect his video about his hair system to blow up like it has. He also didn’t expect a volume of positivity inspired by the comments – a rare thing on the internet.
One Tiktok commenter wrote: An Instagram user said, “I think it’s super cool to show you this! This manliness and details of the man!”
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According to Shelley, the encouragement was refreshing, and he says many people have personally reached out to him. Some men have gone through the same thing and are looking for advice. Some are mothers, wives and girlfriends who ask how they can support men in their lives as they experience hair loss.
Shelley hopes his videos will help men, whether hair loss or not, find a way to embrace self-care and become the best version of themselves.
“At the end of the day, you have to deal with how you will appear in the world,” he says. “So talk kindly to yourself, treat yourself with respect, and make you feel confident and comfortable with how you present yourself and interact with others.”
