Can You Pull Off The Bald Look？ ｜ The Jason Statham Effect

It almost seems like every time being bald is brought up, Jason Statham's name somehow makes its way into the conversation. He is the first person people point to as the paragon or the perfect example of an attractive bald man. But the thing is, you're not Jason Statham and we really need to break down why is it that he is one of the few people that can pull off the bald look and the average person can't. Is it true that he looks better without hair? How does his lack of hair affect his facial attractiveness? And what if he actually looks better with hair, we've just seen him without hair for so long? These are the questions that nobody asked for but we have to answer anyway. In this video, we've enlisted the help of Dr. Gary Linkov himself, expert cosmetic surgeon, to give us some advice on what we think has changed here. If you like our content, you'll certainly love his as well. We'll even take a look at some photoshops of Jason with hair to prove if hair actually makes a difference. And just like in past celebrity analysis videos, we'll also get into some of the science It's worth mentioning that Jason's on-screen persona may contribute to his perceived masculinity and his ability to pull off the bald look. He usually just plays variations of the tough guy that is cool under pressure, but still he has a caring side. He basically just plays himself like a lot of actors do. Though he does do a very convincing job of playing the tough guy and he undoubtedly gets typecast for this role, his athletic build and masculine features do help to add believability to the casting. You see, Jason's ability to pull off a bald look has a lot to do with his facial dimorphism, or the masculinity of his face. When we photoshop his face to be more feminine and less dominant, his lack of hair now appears incongruent to his overall look. And so the baldness of the head and the appearance of the face have a correlation where we assume that a bad guy or villain must be dominant, aggressive, perhaps also capable and these all come with highly masculinised faces because masculinity is often tied to both the good and negative aspects of it. And so specifically in the western hemisphere, we associate baldness with masculinity because women do not suffer from pattern baldness at the same rates that men do. Being bald almost signals to others that you are a man with DHT, the testosterone derivative that causes head hair to miniaturise. But if you don't have the powerful jaw, the brow ridge, the facial hair to match, all the other masculine facial signals, then it just appears incongruent. You have the masculinity in the hair, or the lack of hair, not anywhere else. And in that case, the lack of hair could appear to be due to any number of reasons like alopecia areata which is an autoimmune disease. And so very simply to answer the question, in Jason's case his masculine facial proportions and features correspond well to his lack of hair. If you were to take any hyper-masculine man and make them bald, then generally there would be a degree of harmony that works with the hairstyle. So naturally, we now have to ask what makes Jason's face masculine. The first and most obvious masculinising feature is Jason's dense facial hair. He has no patchiness to the beard, which increases the perceived attractiveness and masculinity in line with the studies from Dixon and Rentala. He also has a prominent brow ridge, which is among the most identifiably masculine facial features, along with his jaw size and the robustness of his mid-face according to Li et al. Similarly, his chin is more projected than average in the front view and his chin is both tall and horizontally wide, two features that are also, again, masculinising according to Thornhill and Gangster. In fact, Jason seems to hit all of the markers of a face that is developed with a high ratio of testosterone to estrogen and he even has thin lips and narrow eyes on top of the masculinising features we just mentioned. Here's the prototypical masculinised face, which is why he's one of the few faces that can really pull off the look. Jason Statham's face doesn't really fit into all of the proportional ideals that are laid out in scientific literature. That really isn't the strong point of the face, however, that doesn't mean he has a face with all proportions. Instead of only focusing on the pleasant, let's briefly touch on what proportions give Jason a unique look that goes away from the average. Most of his unique features has to do with exaggerated jaw size and the forehead height. Overall, we can see that Jason's lower third occupies a large portion of his face. Interestingly, it actually seems to help create balance in his face due to his high hairline. If his jaw was shorter, perhaps his hairline recession would look relatively worse because now the balance would be lost. Still, that's not to say that Jason's increased lower third height is conventionally attractive. A paper in the European Journal of Orthodontics by R. Koubertou showed that class 1 normal teeth alignment male profiles with normal lower facial height were the most attractive. The profiles were less attractive with increased lower third height in class 2 or class 3 occlusions, which are basically underbites and overbites. So basically, more or less, in Jason's case, the increased lower third height wouldn't typically do him any benefit if the situation was different. Other research also agrees that a normal jaw height is the most attractive in a male face. In Mr Statham's case, we cannot say for sure if he has a jaw misalignment without seeing an x-ray. Though his soft tissue profile is virtually completely flat, indicated by the 180 degrees of facial convexity, most of his other lateral facial assessments also show some kind of disharmony between his lower jaw, the upper jaw, the nose and the glabella protrusion, which is the base of the forehead. If that sounds confusing, basically Jason doesn't fit the conventional mould of perfect dentofacial structure like an orthodontist would define it. And that would be comparing Jason to someone like Henry Cavill, who has much better orthodontic structure. We could attribute some of that to his prominent chin and the brow ridge. Reducing the chin and brow ridge protrusion slightly in photoshop changes nothing regarding his teeth alignment, but it does give him a profile that fits more of the convex or the slightly rounded ideal we see in most humans. So Jason probably doesn't have a severe underbite or anything like that, and in that sense he does fit universal standards of beauty with a healthy and functional jaw. The only notably negative thing a dentist or clinician might point out is that his increased jaw height adds a level of disproportion to the face, but that is just one feature and if anything it actually balances out lack of hair. And so with that example, hopefully you can appreciate that there is no such thing as a good or bad facial feature, they're just facial features, but there is such thing as good and bad harmony, which is the relationship of facial features. And so per some of the proportions that Lauetel uses in their study, we can form an ideal CGI female face, and then we can compare the vertical height of his jaw to things like his nose height and other facial thirds to get a better idea of just how tall his jaw is. The height of his nose is only 61% of his total anterior lower third height, and that is almost half the height of his jaw. Visually we can see how short his nose is, but for curiosity's sake, let's compare his ratio with male model Sean O'Pry as an example of a face with more balance, his ratio is about 0.8, meaning his nose is not nearly as short. Similarly we can compare the relative heights of Jason's facial thirds, being bald exacerbates the appearance of a tall upper third, especially if you already have a longer shaped face like Jason. Like we mentioned, his lower third height seems to balance with his upper third, but his middle third and his nasal regions are disproportionately compact. This detracts from facial averageness or normality, but it does give him an incredibly masculinised and dimorphic appearance. Let's also touch on some of the positives in terms of Jason's facial harmony. Jason has a favourable gonial angle, or the jaw angle of 115 degrees, which gives him a more masculine, robust appearance, but nothing overly squared or rounded. Depending on the paper, some researchers note that there is no significant difference in while others point to a more acute and squared jaw angle being the preferred masculine ideal. Without getting too pedantic about numbers or specific angles, we know that facial averageness or normality is what makes a face look attractive. As long as Jason's jaw is not too round or resembling a Minecraft face, it will look attractive and the same goes for most of you. Safe to say Jason is right in that harmonious middle ground. His nose also does not appear too upturned or droopy, with a pleasant nasolabial angle of 109 degrees according to the ranges set out in one paper by Goumeras et al. In the front, his nose has some ruggedness around the dorsum, but the same comment about his nose not being too upturned or droopy still applies. Another prominent facial feature is Jason's high cheekbones. You could clearly identify the protrusion of the OG curve near his eyes. The OG curve is this imaginary line we draw that shows the shape of the cheekbone in the three-quarter profile and it's very apparent from this view. To sum up, Jason is a unique case of facial features. While he may not possess the most researched ideals in facial proportions and angles, they work for his specific face because what he lacks in one field, he makes up for being extreme in another. His large jaw helps create balance with his high hairline, allowing him to pull off being bald. His prominent chin, while mathematically too prominent, does add a lot of sexual dimorphism to his face. And to put it simply, his face sacrifices facial averageness to exaggerate masculine facial features like his chin size. But here's the real million-dollar question, does Jason look better with or without hair? In the past, we've looked at a paper by Thomas Cash and they noted how male pattern baldness generally causes less favourable initial impressions, including lower ratings of physical attractiveness, judgements of less desirable personal and interpersonal characteristics, and misperceptions of age. Though the strength of the baldness stereotype was reduced when we controlled for facial attractiveness. And simply put, if you put an attractive bald man like Jason next to an average man with hair, the social judgements would probably favour Jason. The reason Jason can pull off being bald without the negative social judgements is unsurprisingly because he is conventionally attractive. If we make his face less attractive in photoshop, then all of a sudden that same hairline is perceived differently. It fits most of the standards that beauty researchers like Rhodes, Niney and others have repeatedly discussed, facial averageness, dimorphism, proportions and symmetry and he was even a catalogue model in the 90s. He's not a top male model, but he does fit a lot of universal and also western specific beauty standards for men. And it's reasonable to assume that Jason would have looked better with hair, but he still pulls off the bald look well because of the factors we mentioned. His face isn't attractive primarily due to his hair, instead his facial structure, low body fat and facial angularity which gives him a dimorphic and attractive appearance even as he gets older. We can see that at a higher body fat percentage, Jason loses some of that facial robusticity, the sharpness of his face, the masculinity and the general attractiveness. He would suffer more negative perceptions related to his hair loss and instead of being a ripped A-list actor, he looks like a typical buff dad at the beach. Take a look at these photos of Jason with different hairstyles. Not every hairstyle suits his face, but the ones that do arguably make him look more youthful and attractive. Longer, more boyish hairstyles don't appear to harmonise with his harsher, more masculine features such as the tall chin, the low brow. The Johnny Depp example is one such face that can pull off those hairstyles even into his 50s that Jason probably wouldn't be able to. It's also arguably the case that Jason tends to look better if his hair is less grown out and this lessens the blatant appearance of the hairline recession. Ultimately, men and women alike prefer different hairstyles and different faces, so there is no definitive answer whether Jason looks better bald or with hair. It's perfectly reasonable to argue that Jason looks more confident and commanding without the hair, but the bald look gives him an air of authority and makes him appear more dominant, which is perfect for his roles as an action hero. The bald look is also lighter and low maintenance, which is what you would expect from a military hardened character that Jason often plays. But you see, Jason was quite an interesting face to look at and there was a lot of disagreement as to what works and what doesn't work with his face, so we wanted to hear it from an expert in hair, Dr. Gary Linkov from City Facial Plastics. Thanks Coov Studio for having me on your channel. When I look at Jason Statham, he has clear signs of androgenetic alopecia, or what most people call male pattern baldness. At this point, it looks like he's a Norwood class 6 or 7. So he definitely is more advanced on the Norwood-Hamilton scale. Now before we jump into hair restoration options, it's important to discuss prevention. It's always better to prevent hair loss before it's too late, and the first line medical therapy that allows us to prevent hair loss in men is finasteride. Finasteride reduces DHT levels and that slows down the miniaturization process that leads to hair loss. Now as far as treating the hair loss, the medical therapy that I like to add to finasteride is minoxidil in its oral form. That helps with increasing the antigen or the growth phase of the hair cycle and creates fuller and longer hair follicles. And that increases the diameter and the length of the hair shafts. It's easy to obtain both oral minoxidil and oral finasteride at feelconfident.com. Other medical therapy options that I consider secondary would be PRP or platelet-rich plasma, low-level laser light therapy, and microneedling. As far as treatment goes, even though this is not a surgical or medical therapy, I think it's a good option for some patients. It's called scalp micropigmentation. Scalp micropigmentation involves laying down ink in little dots that then mimics the appearance of hair. Some people choose to do micropigmentation on a bald scalp while others do it in an area where there already is hair but where the density isn't as great as they would like. And lastly, of course, there's the potential for a hair transplant procedure. Now if Jason was interested in a hair transplant surgery, the option that I would go with as far as harvesting the hair would be FUE or follicular unit extraction. And that's because of how short he wears his hair. We want to avoid a linear scar on the back of his head, which is what FUT would provide. As far as graft count, I would go with an initial surgery of about 2,500 grafts. And I would implant these grafts into the frontal scalp. Sometimes we talk about improving the temples as well and rebuilding the hairline to include the temples and the frontal temporal area into the central hairline. However, the temples can consume a large number of grafts. When those grafts are needed at the frontal scalp, mid scalp, or crown, we'll usually avoid implanting grafts into the temples. So this is true when there's a large recipient area and a limited donor area. Then let's say Jason Statham has a nice result from the initial surgery. Then we would consider a secondary surgery that would bring, say, another 2,500 grafts to then the mid scalp and potentially the crown as well. And that would give him overall nice coverage to the areas that have lost hair. Now, of course, the donor area will be more depleted, but it should still look presentable. For actors especially, it's important to stay conservative with surgical procedures to limit the obvious change that occurs with surgery. It's also important to not be overly aggressive with repositioning the hairline and dropping it too low. Because if you have thinning behind that hairline, it's going to look artificial. But undergoing hair restoration is very much a personal choice. And some people would rather be bald. And Jason looks great with his short hairstyle. That's over at the QOVES website. And I'll catch you all in the next one.