For as long as singer and songwriter Ne-Yo has been on the scene, how many times have you seen him without a hat on? Not many times, correct? Well, it’s time for you to get used to seeing the 37-year-old’s bald head, because he says that he’s done hiding it.
When speaking to Today this week, the World of Dance judge said that he’d been self-conscious about his receding hairline for a really long time. He started losing his hair at a young age. In fact, it’s something he got picked on pretty badly about in school. With that struggle in mind, he started wearing a hat, and as he made a name for himself, his hat collection grew into the thousands.
“My hat has been my crutch for a long time. My hair started thinning…when I was 11, 12, 13, and you know how mean school kids can be, so I was allowed to wear my cap in school because I got picked on so much.”
He continued, “So after a while, it just kinda became part of my face, to where I felt naked without it.”
And even just a few years ago, Ne-Yo was still being picked on about his hairline. He admitted that while working on George Lucas’s Red Tails (2012), it was something his co-stars playfully mocked him about.
But with time, maturity, fatherhood and marriage, he decided to give his crutch a break. With the new year, he wanted to have a new outlook on things, including the way he looked at himself. Ne-Yo decided to start doing the work to practice self-love, which is what he wasn’t giving himself in the past.
“I told myself 2017, it’s about self-love, it’s about confidence,” he said, “it’s about just living in who you are (sic) and loving it.”
And while this is a simple post about hair (or a lack thereof), I could respect that Ne-Yo’s decision to embrace it came from a conscious decision to practice self-love. That’s not something you hear a lot of men talk about or do, and it’s more necessary than we realize.
There’s a difference between a man practicing self-love and being self-absorbed. The latter can lead to cockiness, where one, dealing with feelings of inferiority, can lash out at others when they don’t get their way and make whatever they’re going through and dealing with the end all, be all. But when you genuinely have love for yourself, when you’re confident in yourself, it’s easier to love others and treat others well. It’s easier to be empathetic, caring and supportive of others. You can deal with rejection better (because you’re amazing, their loss!), you can show more affection, and when people talk about you, whether in jest or in spite, it can roll off of you better.
As Jackson Bliss of The Good Men Project put it brilliantly, “Promoting self-love in all people creates a positive ricochet of self-esteem, self-forgiveness, emotional communication, generosity and affection.” Basically, practicing self-love is good for not only ourselves, but everyone. And in Ne-Yo’s case, by practicing self-love, he could forgo the crutch he’d been attached to for years due to a fear of what other people thought. Whether we like him with or without a hat on, at this point, no longer matters to him. Such strides in the way we see ourselves in the context of how other people see us are worth celebrating. With self-love came a new sense of freedom and confidence for the singer, and it’s a reminder that it’s something we could all use more of.
Image via WENN
