Perhaps the quotation at the top reflects one common perception about what hair loss and baldness does to your appearance and self-image. And it is perhaps because of this psychological pressure that people are constantly trying to at least retain their last few strands of hair, if they're unable to actually grow back what they've already lost.

The pharmaceutical industry has built a worldwide empire based on the desire of people to be able to style their own natural hair, or, failing that, at least cover their heads with it. Billions of dollars are poured into research and development every year for developing the panacea that can guarantee that hair loss will be prevented, or even better, hair will grow back on bald scalps.

Yet this is not the universal perception. There have been famous people in history and even in our own age who have not minded their baldness. Some of them have even celebrated their lack of hair. In their public images, they have always had hairless heads, but that has never affected their career in any adverse way.

The British prime minister Winston Churchill had a head as bald as an eggshell. But that didn't stop him from winning the general elections twice, and winning the second world war at the same time. He was a large man, but carried himself very well. The photographs and celluloid footages that we have of him all show him to be supremely confident of himself. He had such an attitude, and was so completely at ease with his appearance, that neither his great bulk nor his bald head made any dent in his personality. Indeed, his face and his trademark cigar became national icons of England for a few decades.

Speaking of British prime ministers, we shouldn't forget William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli, two of the greatest statesmen and politicians that England has ever had. Both had hair loss problems, but that didn't stop either of them from becoming prime minister more than once. Disraeli was elected prime minister twice, and Gladstone became PM an astounding four times!

In addition to that, both of them were very charismatic parliamentary leaders and masterful public speakers, and their debates were famous for their depth of political understanding and their remarkable wit. For example, Gladstone once remarked that Disraeli would surely die either by hanging or of some sexually transmitted disease. Disraeli famously replied that it would depend on whether he embraced Gladstone's principles or his mistress!

Among more recent examples, there is Yul Brynner, the famous Hollywood actor. Brynner had an obsession that he would never appear in public, let alone on screen, without his head completely shaved. No one really knows why he did this, but it is assumed that he had some sort of hair loss problem which he wanted to conceal by shaving off all hair completely.

Born in Russia, brought up in France and finally a citizen of the USA, Brynner starred in no less than 43 Hollywood movies, several of them super hits. He also appeared seven times on Broadway. In spite of his completely bare head, or perhaps because of it, he had several affairs with beautiful women, who never seemed to get enough of him. Among the famous women with whom he is reputed to have had affairs is Marlene Dietrich, the actress. And it appears that the women were serious about their passion too, because no less than four of them married Brynner!

And what would you make of the great Andre Agassi, one of the all-time great tennis players of the world? Initially in his career he used to wear his hair long, but soon he followed Brynner in shaving it off completely, and that's the way he's kept it ever since. Whether he did it as a fashion statement or whether he has been taking care of a hair loss problem, we shall probably never know. But what we know is that his shaven head certainly didn't interfere with his performance on the field. He has won grand slam titles no less than eight times, and is one of the only five players ever to have won all four grand slam events. There should be no question about his sex appeal either, because first he married Brooke Shields, the beautiful and famous actress best known for her role in Blue Lagoon, and then he married Steffi Graf, the very beautiful German tennis player with whom he now has two children!

And should we be forgetting the great Popeye, whose bald head has never stopped Olive Oyl from being madly in love with him all the time while rejecting Bluto the hairy hunk? And can we be sure that he owes his superhuman strength to the famous cans of spinach, and not to his smooth top?