Woman Who Coined Phrase "Bald is Beautiful" Retracts Her Statement

New York NY (Nutbar Alley) – Speaking with the aid of an oxygen tank, in a hospice care room at Mount Sinai Hopsital, Elouise Marsden seems like the last person likely to call a press conference. Her prognosis is grim. After a lifetime of smoking her lungs are riddled with cancer. She is repentant, but not for smoking.


In 1948 Elouise coined the phrase “Bald is Beautiful.” The phrase was carried in the New York Times as part of a quote about her husband Eric Marsden who had just been awarded the outstanding service award for his work with Boy Scouts. Since then it has become a catchphrase for bald men, and a point of shame for Elouise.

“My husband was a kind and gentle man,” she explains, speaking slowly through her oxygen mask. “but he was hideous after he lost his hair. It’s not the sort of thing you can admit though when you have a newspaper taking notes in front of you and asking questions.”

She paused, clearly uncomfortable. Her doctors had given her less than three weeks left to live.

“He had a lovely comb-over for many years. One day he comes home from the barber and it’s gone. All of it. Shaved the whole bloody lot off. He didn’t even ask my opinion before he did it. He said he did it ‘on a whim’ as if that explained it all. Well there was nothing that could be done about it, and there was no reasoning with him. He was stubborn as a mule that man.”

In the days that followed Mrs. Marsden tried everything to convince her husband to cover up. She purchased numerous hats, toupees, hair tonics, but her husband adamantly refused them all.

“Even when I threatened to leave him he refused. That was an eye opener. I was bluffing, he knew that, but it was my last card to play. After that I shut up about it and lived with it.”

Then in June of 1948 Eric was awarded the Outstanding Service Award and there was a period of brief, but intense publicity. The Marsden household was swamped first with local, then national media including newspapers, radio and television.

“They asked all kinds of questions about us, our home, our children, our work, everything went fine until this one young fool from the New York Times asked what I thought of his haircut. Eric looked horrified, and I knew I couldn’t rain on his parade, so I forced a smile onto my face, sucked it up and said, ‘Bald is beautiful!’”

She pauses as if hit by a wave of pain, but it’s unclear if it’s physical or emotional.

“I never expected it to take off like it did. The next thing I know it’s being quoted everywhere. Worse still men are taking it as approval for baldness.”

It is clear now that the phrase helped foster a new openness for bald men. Where once they hid their scalp under strategic comb-overs, toupees, hats and even coloured scalp sprays it suddenly became acceptable to leave their shining scalps out in the open.

“Then came that Kojak on television. I think that was the worst.” She continued. “The man looked like a walking penis. How could anyone find that attractive?”

She also took umbrage with hairless animals.

“Now people are seeking out bald cats and dogs as pets. They look disgusting. In my day they would have been drown.”

She called her press conference to ensure that she retracted her statement before she passed on. Her husband died from complications of heart disease in 2008 and she felt that his passing allowed her a new opportunity to right a wrong without hurting his feelings.

“There’s no telling the damage I’ve done. Perhaps it’s too late, but I want to be clear. Bald is not beautiful. There’s no need for it anymore either with medical technology. Men should go out, get Rogaine, or transplants or whatever else it takes to get hair up there. Hair is beautiful.”

She pointed her finger at the press clustered around her hospital bed.

“Now go put that on T-shirts!”