feeling better about my hairline

I've always known I have a big forehead, but how big really? Not big at all, it turns out.

If I went bald someday and went to get hair-replacement surgery from one of the world's foremost—or at least busiest—hair replacers, he would put my new, man-made hairline smack where my current one is, according to Burkhard Bilger's New Yorker story, "The Power of Hair" (January 9, 2006). The surgeon profiled in the story uses this rule of thumb: to keep the face symmetrical, the distance from the tip of the chin to the tip of the nose, from the tip of the nose to the eyebrows, and from the eyebrows to the hairline should be all roughly the same.

By that measure, my hairline is in just the right spot. I'll tell my family this next time they bring it up. (Yes, at Christmas, my sister actually asked my mom—in front of me—whether she thought my hair is receding. My mom, gracefully, said she couldn't be sure.)

You can see for yourself: here's pictures of me with my current forehead-hiding do, and then with my forehead brashly exposed.