370 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



WILL THE COMING WOMAN LOSE HER HAIR? 



By Miss E. F. ANDEEWS. 



I BELIEVE biologists are pretty well agreed that, if the pres- 

 ent course of human evolution continues unchecked, the com- 

 ing man is in serious danger of evolving into a bald-headed ani- 

 mal. What is to be the fate of the coming woman in this respect 

 no one, as yet, has been bold enough to prophesy, though I think 

 it may be safely assumed, for reasons presently to be given, that 

 unless the aesthetic instincts of man should undergo a radical 

 change, she will not only retain her " crowning " beauty unim- 

 paired, but in augmented abundance and splendor. 



Notwithstanding the gloomy predictions as to the " bald-headed 

 and toothless future" (see Popular Science Monthly, October, 1886) 

 in store for the human race, I have been more and more impressed, 

 as the result of my own observations, with the almost complete 

 immunity of my own sex from the results of those influences 

 which are said to be operating so disastrously upon the personal 

 attractiveness of the other. I have never seen a case of complete 

 baldness among women of any age ; partial baldness is rare, even 

 among sexagenarians, while the large proportion of luxuriant 

 suits of hair to be found among young women and girls would 

 seem to indicate pretty clearly that, if baldness is to be a charac- 

 teristic of the coming man, it will be one of those sexually lim- 

 ited variations, like hairy chins and guttural voices, that will not 

 apply to the other sex. 



It may be argued that the superior advantages possessed by 

 women for concealing defects of this kind will prevent reliable ob- 

 servations being made in their case ; but there are few women who 

 do not know false hair from genuine when they see it, no matter 

 how artistically arranged, and if any woman under sixty is afflict- 

 ed with baldness it is pretty safe to assume that the other women 

 of her acquaintance will know it. At all events, there are none 

 of us, probably, who do not know the truth so far as our own 

 mothers and grandmothers are concerned, and a simple compari- 

 son of their soft and often abundant gray tresses with the shiny 

 pates of their spouses will be sufficient to convince most people 

 that men, as a rule, have a practical monopoly of baldness. 



And yet, most of the causes commonly assigned as conducive 

 to this defect are as active among women as among men. They 

 torture their hair with curling-irons and papers and hairpins to a 

 degree that no man would tolerate for an instant ; they deaden 

 and discolor it with all kinds of injurious washes ; they rear upon 

 the top of their heads structures as heating and uncomfortable as 

 a stovepipe hat, or hang upon the back of them appendages of such 



