The Pitbull effect: bald guy summer is here – and it’s sexy, single and ready to mingle

Name: The Pitbull effect.

Age: Five years old.

Appearance: When viewed from above, an ocean of baked beans.

Pitbull, the rapper from the 2010s? Yes, Pitbull, who has become the gleaming face (and scalp) of bald acceptance.

Is Pitbull bald, then? Listen, baldness is Pitbull’s defining quality. Pitbull is so bald that, for the cover of his 2014 album Globalization, he used his head as a literal globe of the actual world.

So the Pitbull effect is just one guy being bald? Not at all. The Pitbull effect is everyone seeing Pitbull’s bulletproof confidence as a bald man and embracing baldness themselves.

That can’t be true. It is. As early as 2019, Pitbull inspired John Travolta to shave his head, and he never looked better.

Well, good for him. And Travolta is one of many. Baldness – and supportiveness within the bald community – has been growing for a few years. Now it is paying off. According to Metro, a recent Tinder survey of 2,000 singles revealed that 42% of respondents think that a shaved or bald head makes a man sexier.

Seriously? If it’s any help, that still leaves 58% who think that a bald head is ugly and unsightly.

Smooth operators … the committed crowd at Pitbull’s Hyde Park show. Photograph: Carlos Jasso/AFP/Getty Images

Let’s not dwell on that. No, let’s not. The distinction here is the shaved head. Someone who shaves their head projects absolute confidence into the world. By making a feature of their baldness, rather than hiding it behind wigs and comb-overs, they are showing that they are fine with how they look. Nothing is sexier than confidence.

Nothing apart from conventional attractiveness. Shush, you.

Fine. Hooray for body positivity. Exactly, especially when the global hair loss industry makes about £3.8bn annually from preying on male insecurity. Imagine the liberation that comes from shaving your head.

So what’s the moral here? It is that going bald is horrible, because you’re enduring a permanent change to your appearance. But if you can comfortably embrace baldness, 42% of the world’s single people are on your side.

I don’t think Pitbull invented baldness, you know. Well, in that case, let’s use the other term for it: baldmaxxing.

Please stop maxxing everything. The Pitbull effect is fine. Exactly. And that’s why, last week, 22,141 Pitbull fans broke the world record for the most people wearing bald caps simultaneously.

Eh? Pitbull did a concert in London, and most of the crowd turned up in bald caps.

Because he’s bald? Yes! The Pitbull effect is here in full effect!

Just a hunch, but I’d imagine every bald man alive hates this. Really, why?

Because they struggled through their own baldness, and now people are pretending to be bald for lols. Oh, I hadn’t thought of that. Let’s ban the cultural appropriation of baldness!

Do say: “They’ve broken the bald cap world record.”

Don’t say: “Nothing says allyship like a novelty prosthetic.”