Do men lose whatever X factor they may have had when they start losing their hair?

If the outcome of past surveys are at all reliable, balding bachelors have nothing to worry about when it comes to matters of love and romance.

According to Gersh Kuntzman, author of Hair! Mankind's Historic Quest to End Baldness, 70% of women found bald men attractive. Kuntzman says, "Only 30% of women who responded to the poll thought of bald men as old or unattractive, while a whopping 69% of male respondents described bald men with the same unflattering terms."

In other words, men are much more inclined to think of bald men - and therefore themselves - as less sexy.

"Actually, it's not an automatic turn-off," says Linda Tee, 29, wealth management consultant. "I'd still be attracted to him if he had a great personality. But no man should ever, under any circumstances, attempt the two-strand comb-over, even if Homer Simpson popularised that look."

The ghastly comb-over has also inspired other women, like Monica Fay, to leave a snarky comment on the discussion forum of an online support group for balding men.

"Let me let you in on a little secret: we as women aren't interested in seeing your ghostly haunts of hair coverage past," she wrote.

"We don't care that you could braid your sideburns down to your nipples at one point in your hair career. So now is not the time to grow the random patches inappropriately long like a dying, untended garden. All we care about is if you are embarrassing us by trying to conjure up the illusion that the flimsy follicles you pull over that scalp or try to tease up to all oblivion are actually a full head of hair. Nobody wants a delusional mate."

Delusional or not, living with a balding man can be tough. Just ask media buyer Juliana Fauzi, 35. She used to date someone who paid more attention to his hair than his girlfriend.

"He thought he was thinning on top so he went nuts with the homemade remedies," remembers Juliana. "He would crush some paracetamol and mix it with brandy and castor oil before massaging this strange concoction onto his scalp.

"It smelled bad but nothing I could say or do would stop him from doing this every single night. On the weekends, he'd go the extra mile and slather egg white on his head. He spends more time in the bathroom than I do!"

This constant paranoia also affected other aspects of their life.

"He picks his seats very carefully whenever we go out for a dinner, show or whatever," she said. "He will never sit at a place where the whole world can see his bald spot, like in the middle of a theatre, for instance. We'd always end up getting the last seat in the last row. We would argue about it at times, but I usually let him have his way," she recalls.

Juliana's ex seemed to be worrying for nothing. In psychologist Dr Goh Chee Leong's opinion, society is opening up to different models of attractiveness these days, making it easy for balding blokes to blend in, compared to, say, several years ago.

"Actors like Michael Cera and Seth Rogen show that, if you're a funny, talented man, you don't have to be conventionally good-looking to win the public's affections," he argues.

The general consensus when it comes to balding men, then, is to shave it all off - hair and insecurities.

"Get brave," wrote Fay. "Take out the razor, lather up those hands really good with some shaving cream, maybe some gasoline if you're feeling really gritty, and get in there with that blade."

And if you find the total shave à la Yul Brynner tidy but uninspiring, just go the way of balding bloke Philip Levine.

Levine, a 28-year-old Londoner, has made headlines for using his "lengthening forehead" as a canvas.

An article in The Star, Canada's largest online news site, stated that Levine had in 2006 found an artist - his current collaborator, body painter Kat Sinclair - who agreed to airbrush murals on to his head in 2006. Many of those designs, ranging from his 1,000-Swarovski crystal headpiece, to homages to artists such as Roy Lichtenstein and Hokusai, are featured on his website, philsays.com.

His art-head is now a fixture in London clubs and an underground phenomenon. Finally, here's a balding man who makes the news for all the right reasons.