News & Features Feedback
New This WeekAround TownMusicFilmArtTheaterNews & FeaturesFood & DrinkAstrology
  HOME
NEW THIS WEEK
EDITORS' PICKS
LISTINGS
NEWS & FEATURES
MUSIC
FILM
ART
BOOKS
THEATER
DANCE
TELEVISION
FOOD & DRINK
ARCHIVES
LETTERS
PERSONALS
CLASSIFIEDS
ADULT
ASTROLOGY
PHOENIX FORUM DOWNLOAD MP3s

  E-Mail This Article to a Friend
VOTING BLOCS
A bald-faced power grab
BY SETH GITELL

Finally, we have a gubernatorial candidate ready to stand up for an overlooked constituency: bald men. " You know, some people think bald is beautiful, " says former Watertown state senator Warren Tolman at the end of his most recent commercial, as he rubs his hairless pate.

Tolman’s new political spot carries special resonance for me: the tops of our heads look alike. At my recent high-school reunion, I didn’t hear a single comment about any other politician: " You’ve got the same hairdo as Tolman, " a former classmate joked. When I first met the state senator several years ago, he quipped, " We’ve got the same barber. "

I’m not the only one to appreciate Tolman’s new ads. The nation’s baldness experts are taking note of the former state senator and his campaign. " I’ve got to say he’s a hero already, " says author and New York Post columnist Gersh Kuntzman as his computer fixes on Tolman’s campaign Web site, which pictures side-by-side photos of Tolman and XXX star Vin Diesel. (Kuntzman’s book, Hair! Mankind’s Historic Quest to End Baldness, was published by Random House last year.) " He is very reminiscent of Vin Diesel. I don’t know if he’s a Republican or a Democrat, but I’ve got to say I’m impressed. " What catches the eye of Kuntzman, who boasts a full head of hair himself, is Tolman’s decision to claim his own baldness.

" He looks to be a shaver who shaves because he’s clearly bald, " says Kuntzman. " The point is important. They’re taking back their baldness. "

Tolman says his decision to shave his head came gradually. Back when he ran for lieutenant governor in 1998, Tolman was still going to the barber, who clipped his hair with what is known in the balding world as the " one. " This refers to the one-centimeter razor, which leaves behind just that measure of hair on the head. I, too, took the gradual route to the hairless look. In the mid 1990s, a barber shop in Manhattan gave me first the two and, eventually, the one. Sometime in 1998, I decided to go all the way and shave my head periodically with a Gillette. Tolman now relies on his wife — who in the latest ad exclaims, " I think he’s hot! " — to do the trick.

With his renegade campaign now embracing the cause of baldness, Tolman may have discovered a potential new constituency. Instead of " soccer moms " and " office-park dads, " Tolman is paying attention to the " shiny pates. " Let a new era of American politics proceed.

Issue Date: August 22 - 29, 2002
Back to the News and Features table of contents.
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend