When the coronavirus pandemic broke out, Trad Amr and Abdelaziz Qudah concluded that shaving their heads was the best option in the face of the closure of hairdressing salons. The initiative started as a joke on social media, but was so successful that it led to the birth of Jordan’s first “Bald Club”.
“The creation of the Bald Club started as a joke, but when we saw that it became popular we gave it a noble goal,” Amr tells EFE, who explains that the first mission of this association was to provide psychological help and offer a safe space to those affected by the crisis, as long as they were bald.
As of today, the club already has more than 8,000 bald members on Facebook and several thousand more hairy supporters, according to the founder, who indicated that to obtain a membership it is necessary to send a photograph to check the level of hair depopulation of the interested party.
A SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT
According to Amr, the club received a great deal of “support from friends and acquaintances” who also decided to shave their heads in solidarity with all those affected by baldness, and with the idea that members would “meet and exchange experiences” and help each other.
The network of connections that was created helped more than 50 bald people find jobs after they became unemployed due to the pandemic, a feat that inspired the founders to give the club “deeper” goals.
Now, the association is focused on supporting cancer patients and “encouraging them psychologically during their treatment.”
The club’s Facebook page, filled with photos of Jordanians sporting their glowing heads, wants to send a message: “You are not alone, you are beautiful,” according to Amr.
Also, the club is in the process of opening a “Calvos Coffee Shop.” The idea is to sell coffee for one Jordanian dinar (about $1.40), with 80% of the transaction going to help cancer patients in the Arab country.
THE FERVOR OF THE BALD
In early August, nearly a hundred members of the club saw their hair for the first time near Amman, in what was considered the first “Bald Club meeting”, to which they all came wearing white shirts “so they could recognize each other”.
The event had great repercussions at the local and regional level, something that Amr says he did not expect and that, at the same time, filled him with pride.
The first meeting served to discuss the club’s next steps: obtaining a license, renting a clubhouse, organizing solidarity projects and “fostering communication between bald people in the provinces (of Jordan) through apps or physical meetings”.
The club is so successful that many members have already started making T-shirts, stickers for their cars and even flags with the association’s logo, which is nothing less than a bald man.
According to Amr, the club’s “most important future plan” is to open different branches in Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine and other countries in the region, at the request of a large number of netizens, and thus unite bald people in the Middle East.