Baldness Mockery

"If you don't get your hand off me, I'll be pocketing you, Stripes."

Mindy: Might I remind you of your... special problem? (takes off Neptune's Brown Bag Mask)
SpongeBob: Bald! Bald! Bald!
Bikini Bottomites: Bald! Bald! Bald! Bald!
Fish: MY EEEEEYES!!!

— The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie

Going bald, depending on how you look at it, can be an unfortunate way of life. Many try to do something to either combat, slow down, or even hide this process, such as wearing toupees or hairpieces or a nice hat or two. Others may embrace their baldness and wear it as a badge of toughness and/or leadership.

Unfortunately, some people take this as an opportunity to insult someone for having little to no hair. It could be a rival or theirs, someone in the heat of the moment, or it could be a gadfly/Troll who does it for their own amusement. Reactions to bald insults may vary. The person on the receiving end could either ignore the insulter or roll with the punches (as long as the comment isn't too personal), they could snark back with their own insult, or they could take it to heart, getting defensive, or resort to violence, especially when it's Played for Drama because the baldness stems from an illness like alopecia or chemotherapy for cancer or they just went bald at a young age.

Super-Trope to Baldness Angst, where the person themselves bemoans their lack of hair. Can be viewed as a type of Hairstyle Malfunction and the person in question may also have this trope combined with a Forehead of Doom, making things worse. See also You Are Fat, Stink Snub, and Height Insult for other appearance-related insults. A Butt-Monkey is quite prone to this kind of insult. Expect Hypocritical Humor to come into play if someone who is also bald or in the process of doing so teases someone else for being bald.

This trope is typically (but not exclusively) Always Male because insulting a woman over her baldness is considered unacceptable by audiences. Considering the potentially cruel and insulting remarks that could come from this, real-life examples should be exempt.

---

Examples:

Advertising

• In a Popsicle by Good Humor commercial for the Fantastic Fruity flavor, a kid licks a tall rainbow-colored ice pop (which magically transports onto his head) until both he and the stick are bare. As the kid freaks out over the discovery, his dog in the background yells, "Hey, baldy! Baldy!"

Anime & Manga

• Dragon Ball:
  • For all the depth of his conflict with Master Roshi, Master Shen, Roshi's Evil Counterpart, is not above teasing the "300-year-old pervert with a head that is bald and shiny".
  • Krillin sometimes suffers from such treatment. For example, Chiaotzu before his Heel–Face Turn teased Krillin for his baldness. When Krillin pointed out that Chiaotzu was also bald, Chiaotzu took off his hat and showed that he had one hair on his head.

Comic Books

• In Super Sons, Damian mocks Lex Luthor for being unable to cure his "rampant alopecia" despite his vast resources when the CEO confronts him on the side of the LexCorp building.

Comedy

• At the start of Harry Hill's stand-up tour, "Hooves", he starts making fun of a bald man with glasses in the audience, going, "Hey-hey! Baldy! Hmmm? Baldy, four-eyes, baldy... Dull, lifeless hair. Unnecessary frizz! Unnecessary frizz. What do you need on that? Little bit of Frizz-Ease. (mimes spraying Frizz-Ease onto the man's head) Bit of Frizz-Ease on that, sort that out." (For reference, Harry Hill himself is a bald man with glasses.)

Comic Strips

• Foxtrot: Roger is very sensitive about his thinning hair, and so is overjoyed when Peter loses a bet and has to shave his head. Peter gets back at him by repeatedly and loudly commenting on how fast it's growing back all on its own.

Fan Works

• Trolling the Toad: Invoked in Chapter 10, as an unknown, unidentified prankster casts a spell so that Umbridge's hair starts falling out when she enters the Great Hall for dinner.

Film — Animated

• The Spongebob Squarepants Movie: King Neptune is shown to be very insecure about the bald spot on his head, to the point of threatening to imprison or even kill people who tamper with the crown he uses to cover it up. Indeed, his issues are not exactly unfounded, as when he shows his bald spot in public while confronting Mr. Krabs, everyone in the room freaks out and chants "Bald!" at him, with one bystander's eyes burning from the glare coming off it.
• Tarzan: A less comical example happens when Tarzan leaves the jungle on the Porters' boat. Terk is furious and devastated that she missed her chance to bid him a proper farewell and throws a tantrum, calling him a "bald ingrate". It should be noted that he's not actually bald, he's just not covered in fur, unlike the rest of the gorillas.

Film — Live-Action

• In the Austin Powers films, Austin regularly insults Dr. Evil over his baldness, at one point calling him "slaphead".
• In Black Panther: Wakanda Forever M'Baku calls Okoye a "bald-headed demon". A downplayed version, since her baldness is merely a job requirement (all Dora Milaje sport bald heads) and not the result of an illness or nature.
• Deadpool 2: Deadpool calls Professor Xavier a "creepy old bald Heaven's Gate-looking motherfucker".
• The Death of Stalin:
  • Not long after the eponymous death, the heavily balding Nikita Khrushchev pays Molotov a visit in an attempt to get him on his side for the imminent power struggle, only to find that the elevator's out of order and Molotov's apartment is at the top of the building. By the time he's made it up all the flights of stairs, Khrushchev is forced to put the conversation on hold so he can puke into a toilet; as he does so, Molotov playfully asks, "would you like me to hold your hair back?"
  • While Stalin's body is still lying in state, Khrushchev makes an alliance with Field Marshal Zhukov to stage a coup against Beria, though Zhukov insists that it has to be done during the funeral tomorrow, while the Red Army are in Moscow and able to counter Beria's NKVD. Khrushchev is startled by the timing, prompting a snarky remark of "sorry, you busy washing your hair or what?" from Zhukov.
• In the Loop, the ambassador Sir John Tutt is the target of baldness-related jibes by Malcolm Tucker, who snarkily refers to him as "Baldemort" and later drags him away from a conversation while loudly remarking, "Mr Ambassador with your big badly head, you are spoiling us!"
• The Peanut Butter Solution: During Michael's soccer game, his wig gets ripped off by one of the boys and every kid there (except for Connie) chases Michael and makes fun of him being bald as he runs away.
• Space Jam: The Monstars visit Schlesinger's Gym to get a look at Michael Jordan, and size him up as an opponent. At one point, Bang remarks to Jordan, "You're all washed up, Baldy." Jordan does not take the term "Baldy" well, but the Monstars continue to be belittling and dismissive.
• In Why Did I Get Married?, Angela and Mike trade barbs throughout the film and when the former says that the latter shouldn't badmouth his wife and her close friend Shelia's weight because of his own baldness, he counters that he's bald because of her line of hair care products.

Jokes

• There's a tale of an American tourist that happened upon former Prime Minister William Gladstone, and ran his hand over the man's bare scalp, commenting "That there's as smooth as my wife's ass." Gladstone ran his own hand over his scalp, then replied, "You're right, it is."

Literature

• The Bible: A passage in 2 Kings, chapter 2 recounts an incident where the prophet Elisha was taunted by a group of young men for being bald:
  23 Then he went up from there to Bethel; and as he was going up by the way, young lads came out from the city and mocked him and said to him, 'Go up, you baldhead; go up, you baldhead!' 24 When he looked behind him and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the LORD. Then two female bears came out of the woods and tore up forty-two lads of their number.
• Protector of the Small: This is the polite part of Kel’s response to yet more Slut-Shaming, after she invites the mockery of the camp’s other women for the played-out nature of the insult and pretends to reject an impotence joke as “so serious an insult… far more serious, of course, than your hint that I am a whore.”

Live-Action TV

• Babes in the Wood: Charlie is losing hair, so he has seen himself occasionally being the butt of balding jokes by the girls.
  Charles: The legendary black book contains all the names and numbers of literally hundreds of—
  Leigh: Wig shops?
• On Benson, the title character is running for Lieutenant Governor against Senator Tyler. During a debate, Tyler accuses Benson of playing the race card as he is the black candidate. Benson counters that Tyler is the bald candidate and asks if he's trying to do the same with bald voters.
• The Community episode "Accounting For Lawyers" introduces Alan from Jeff's old law firm. While the study group gets to know him, Pierce reveals his ability to "reach into a man's soul and unravel it with one tug". Alan asks for a demonstration and Pierce points out that he's bald. Alan counters that Pierce is bald too and Pierce angrily lunges at him.
• In the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode "Trick or Treat", Larry refuses to give Halloween candy to two teenage girls because they aren't wearing a costume. They take revenge by toilet-papering the trees in his garden and spraypainting "BALD ASSHOLE" on his door. Larry calls the police and claims that he's a victim of a hate crime.
• The Dick Van Dyke Show: Though Buddy will insult the producer/Alan's brother-in-law Mel using just about anything, one of his favorite categories involves Mel's balding head. In at least one case, Mel attempted to get a toupee, but usually he just takes it with stoic irritation.
• A Family Matters episode had Harriette, Laura, Estelle, and Rachel end up flimflammed into using a hair product that made each of their hair fall out. When Rachel reads the shifty product's tagline boasted "You'll Love The Way Your Hair Comes Out", while Little Richie states "At least you can't sue them for false advertising!", Eddie then quips how he suddenly feels like having melon for breakfast, leading to the angry women giving him chase.
• On The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Will consistently insults Uncle Phil over his bald head (if not his weight.)
• Full House: In "Those Better Not Be The Days", Danny, Jesse, and Joey all fantasize about what life would be like to still take care of the girls when they reach adulthood. When Danny calls out Jesse for his embarrassing behavior and attire and he snarks back about still having his hair, Danny uses a Dustbuster to suck Jesse's toupee off of his head, to both his and Joey's amusement.
• Dorothy's ex-husband, Stan, on The Golden Girls, is frequently insulted over his baldness and his affinity for wearing a Dodgy Toupee, namely by Sophia. One of Rose's St. Olaf stories had her talk about a girl she went to high school with whose life was eerily similar to Dorothy's, right down to getting pregnant as a teen by a bald guy named "Yutz".
• Impractical Jokers: Already enough of a Butt-Monkey as is, Murr's bald spot often gets ridicule from the other Jokers.
• An In Living Color! sketch involved a "Reality Check" for a man who was bald and trying to deny this by sporting a combover. Whilst the narrator/host kept comparing his baldness to another man with a full head of hair, eventually he shows up at a bar with a hair dryer which blows his combover away, causes the patrons to laugh at him and he runs away in embarrassment.
• Married... with Children:
  • Al Bundy is repeatedly insulted over his thinning hair and bald spot by both Peg and Marcy. One episode even has the former woman quipping when Al is trying to look for a hobby for Bud to do instead of annoying Kelly, "You can't teach balding, he already knows how to use the bathroom, and he's too young to drink!"
  • Steve Rhoades is a downplayed version. He also has thinning hair, but this isn't nearly as brought up as Al's baldness.
• A Running Gag in Martin (1992) has Martin repeatedly insulting best friend Tommy over his bald head. Some of the more colorful comments made by him include "Domer Simpson", "Heady Murphy", "Dome Ranger", and "Kareem Abdul Jabald".
• A Running Gag on Mock the Week was the panelists making jokes about host Dara O'Briain's baldness. Andy Parsons, who's even more bald than Dara, would become the target of such jokes on rare occasions.
• Mork from Ork on Mork & Mindy aims a lot of mockery at the bald pate of his eventual father-in-law Fred McConnell, although it mostly seems pretty good-natured.
• In the first episode of Phoenix Nights, Max and Paddy are putting up lights outside the Phoenix Club, and Max starts making fun of Paddy by claiming that his hair looks thin (or, "I don't know about fine. It's fookin' anorexic!") and then starts repeatedly calling him "Baldy" and variations thereof. Paddy does not take this well.
  Max: Baldy, Baldy, Baldy.
  Paddy: Leave it...
  Max: Baldy, Baldy, Baldy, Baldy, Baldy...
  Paddy: LEAVE IT!
  (he starts shaking the ladder Max is standing on, until he loses his balance and falls forwards through the front window)
• Red Dwarf: In "Out of Time", the Dwarfers encounter their future selves. Lister wastes no time in pointing out that the Cat's future self is "bald as a plucked chicken".
• Saved by the Bell: Several characters, including Zack and teacher Mr. Tuttle, have insulted Principal Belding over his balding. Oddly enough, none of them are punished or disciplined over it minus a snide response from him.
• On Sex and the City, Charlotte attempts to pair-up her two gay friends Stanford and Anthony, with her describing the former as having an Ed Harris-like look to the latter. However, when he first meets him, he rebuffs him, snarking, "Ed Harris? Ed Harris?! More like "Ed-I-Have-No-Harris!" Oddly enough, they did end up getting together, and by Sex and the City 2, they were married.
• The Sooty Show: In one episode, Sooty calls Matthew "Baldy" because she's mad at him for saying that men are better at driving than women.
• In The Thick of It, Julius Nicholson is infrequently insulted for being bald on top of being a compulsive blue-sky thinker: Malcolm Tucker calls him "Nosferatu", Jamie calls him a "baldie pussy" who "looks like a giant sex toy," and even the media gets in on the fun with a headline demanding that he "give us the bald facts."
• Tiger King: After a nasty fall-out between the two, Joe Exotic makes a point of mentioning that his former business associate Jeff Lowe is bald during an interview from prison. Since Jeff is Never Bareheaded, it would seem he feels embarrassed about his baldness.
• In The Two Ronnies, Ronnie Corbett plays a man at a party called Mr. Goldie, who is clearly bald, and Ronnie Barker plays another guest who interacts with him but is specifically instructed not to mention baldness in front of him. Naturally, Barker can't go more than a few sentences without mentioning things connected to baldness, until Goldie gets fed up and tells him to come to the point, though Barker is at least cautious enough to feel guilty after he finally makes a direct joke about Mr. Goldie's baldness. And then the next guest Barker goes on to speak to has a big nose...
• Whose Line Is It Anyway?: A Running Gag on the show would be the other members of the cast making jokes about Colin Mochrie's lack of hair. Oftentimes Colin himself would make the jokes.
• Will & Grace: A Running Gag is Jack frequently mocking Will for the latter's losing his hair. The twist is that Will actually isn't suffering any hair loss; Jack admits in "It's a Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad World" that he only makes fun of Will's hair and weight to mask his own insecurities.

Newspaper Comics

• Pugad Baboy has the patriarch Dagul being the butt of the jokes by his maid Brosia for his baldness.

Video Games

• Lobotomy Corporation has a joke Abnormality called "You're Bald...", and all it does is turn any agent assigned to it bald. And that's it.
• Persona 5: If you can read Japanese, you'll see that Shujin Academy's students engage in a bit of this towards the recently-revealed leader of The Conspiracy Masayoshi Shido on the classroom's blackboard.
• The Secret of Monkey Island: Guybrush can mock Meathook's lack of hair repeatedly, which will eventually cause him to angrily chase Guybrush out of the room.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom: At the start of Jellyfish Fields, due to SpongeBob Comically Missing the Point of Squidward's sarcasm when trying to explain his predicament, it results in this humorous exchange between the two where SpongeBob points out the blatantly-obvious fact that Squidward is bald.
  SpongeBob: Squidward, are you okay?
  Squidward: No, I'm not okay, you barnacle head! Does it look like I'm okay?
  SpongeBob: Well, your nose does look pretty big, I mean bigger than usual because it's usually pretty big, and you look clammy, and oh my gosh! You're bald!
  Squidward: I've always been bald, but now, I'm stung all over!

Web Animation

• Elliot Goes To School: In one episode, Mr. Higglesworth insults Brandon by calling him bald, but Brandon points out Mr. Higglesworth is also bald. Mr. Higglesworth angrily points out that he does have hair, but Elliot says he's technically balding. Parodied when Elmer, who is actually bald, insults Elliot for being bald when he's clearly not.
• Happy Tree Friends: In the episode "Easy Comb, Easy Go", Disco Bear gets laughed at by Giggles, Petunia, and Mime after being cut bald by the Mole.
• Refreshing Stories:
  • "I thought my wife was addicted to social media, but she was sending secret messages to her lover": One of Ami's tweets to her lover spelled out "BALD HUSBAND" referring to Hiroshi. Upon reading it out loud, Hiroshi takes offense at this while he's briefly depicted as bald.
    Hiroshi: Who do you calling bald? [sic]
  • "My wife was having an affair with my boss, so I called his father to the scene to get revenge!": While having her affair with Mr. Nagai, Alice calls her own father a "bald-headed bastard" because he engaged her to Hiroshi. However, Hiroshi retaliates by locking the lovebirds in the room and calling the CEO on them. When the man came over, Hiroshi exposed the insult to him.
  • "My wife recorded herself cheating by mistake because she didn't leave the online meeting…": As Nao forgot to leave the online meeting with her boss and Hiroshi, both men watched and heard her actions afterward, especially her insulting the boss' toupee by insinuating he slapped a piece of seaweed on his head. The boss is understandably not amused, and so is Hiroshi when she calls Mr. Nakagawa over to have an affair with him.

Webcomics

• Saitama from One-Punch Man is a bald-headed young superhero who often gets teased and insulted for his baldness by enemies and even by his student Genos. One of the villains he encounters in the first episode threatens to "put a shine on that big headlight" of Saitama.
  Genos: You're bald despite being young.
  Saitama: So I'm bald, what's your problem?!

Web Video

• Critical Role: Campaign Two: Due to a wild magic surge, Fjord's hair begins rapidly falling out and Veth takes the opportunity to mess with him, whipping out her mage hand to make it go faster, much to Fjord's ire.
• DC Abridged Universe: Superman shoots Lex Luthor with "Your mother was bald!" Lex shrugs this off, so Superman adds "And poor!" which does get to him.
• SuperMarioLogan: Mario is bald underneath his hat (unlike in the games, where he has a head of spiky hair), and Peach finds this disgusting, so she breaks up with him, much to his dismay.

Western Animation

• The Amazing World of Gumball: "The Stars" has Gumball and Darwin hire Larry to build a website that lets them basically exploit his services with a Bad Review Threat after Larry confronted Richard about being bald. By the end of the episode, Larry threatens to make the Reality Warper website unstoppable with a 5-star review if Richard doesn't confess to his baldness.
  Larry: Bald! Bald! You. Are. A. BALD!
• American Dad!: In "Chimdale", Stan reveals to Steve that he's bald as a side effect of an experimental drug he took before going to college to get rid of all his acne. Steve agrees to continue wearing his scoliosis brace so long as Stan goes to work bald. The next day, Stan comes home crying, saying someone drew bowling ball holes on his scalp, which he shows off to Steve. However, the day after, Steve goes to visit Stan at work and discovers he lied about showing off his baldness.
• Courage the Cowardly Dog: In the episode "The Hunchback of Nowhere", Courage attempts to help the titular Hunchback, whom he has befriended, get back at Eustace's constant mockery of his appearance by writing out insults for him to say. All of them are different phrasings of "You are bald", which works wonders as that's one of Eustace's main Berserk Buttons.
• The Critic: Jay Sherman's baldness, in addition to his weight, is usually a source of derision from other characters. One episode even has his makeup lady, Doris, inconspicuously painting her name and phone number on the back of his head.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Pinkie Pie unintentionally does this to Cranky when she announces to the mass that Cranky is bald after accidentally ruining his toupee.
• Rugrats (1991): Being a one-year-old baby, Tommy only has a few hairs on his head, and is often teased by his three-year-old cousin Angelica for this. She often calls him "Baldy" as a malicious nickname. The plot of "Hair!" involves Angelica telling Tommy that he won't grow up because he doesn't have hair like his friends, so he tries to get some by using a wig that his grandfather Lou uses to one-up Roy Davis, an old friend of his who comes to visit. In the end, Tommy discovers that his father Stu and Uncle Drew were both bald as babies in an old photo, but grew hair when they grew up, meaning Angelica was wrong.
• The Simpsons:
  • Homer is regularly insulted for his bald head, namely by his work colleagues and his sisters-in-law. In "The Otto Show" when Homer, while sporting a fringe jacket he had from the '70s, leaves to drive Bart and Milhouse to a Spinal Tap concert, Patty snarks, "There goes Davy Crockett and his baldskin cap!"
  • Mr. Burns isn't immune to this either. In "And Maggie Makes Three" when Homer spectacularly quits after paying off his debts, he calls him "bongo head", proceeds to bang his head as such, and drives out of the Nuclear Plant still playing away for ultimately dumping him and burning a bridge.
  • In "Trash of the Titans", Homer is running for Trash Commissioner. When crashing a U2 concert and encountering the baldheaded (female) stage technician in charge of the show's graphics, he calls her Kojak and kicks her away after she protests him touching the switchboard.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: Squidward has been mocked for being bald on quite a few occasions. In "Club SpongeBob", he bemoans his general Butt-Monkey tendencies, and SpongeBob tells him it could be worse. Patrick then says, "Yeah, you could be bald and have a big nose." Keep in mind that Patrick himself is bald.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars: One of Ahsoka's nicknames for Ventress is calling her the "hairless harpy". What makes his ironic is that Ahsoka herself is naturally hairless while Ventress kept her hair shaved.
• Why, Charlie Brown, Why?: Played for Drama. Janice goes through chemotherapy due to her leukemia, which makes her lose her hair. A rude kid laughs at her for it, driving her to tears. Linus then sets the guy straight.

---