While experienced financial analysts predict the likelihood of a recession, my husband tells me off the top of his head that it has already started. When I look in the sink and see an increasing number of black hairs day after day, I think he might be right. The official definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative growth in the GDP – the Gradually Depleting Plumage. The front two consecutive quarters of my husband’s hairline have been growing negatively for quite some time, and now the middle section is gradually being spent.

And so the Great Depression has now gripped our household, rather appropriately coinciding with Men’s Health Week. Male pattern baldness is hereditary and affects most men at some stage of their lives. But while you’d think that inevitability makes the condition acceptable, believe me, it does not. As I listened to my husband mourning the loss of yet another hair, I looked over to his follicly challenged father and wondered at what point this became such a shock.

In order to feign some degree of sympathy I began to research cures for hair loss, knowing full well I’d have more chance of paying off the national debt. There are the usual lotions, potions and tablets that have varying degrees of success in slowing down hair loss but don’t necessarily promote fresh growth. Then there are the more radical procedures such as transplanting hair from the back of the head to the top, or surgically removing the bald spot and sewing the scalp back together.

The only other ‘cures’ are cosmetic: shaving it off, wearing a wig or growing a comb-over. I put these solutions to my husband, each one of which was picked off and discarded without consideration, although the shaving option was shelved as a necessary and last resort (and the comb-over was contemplated on its comedic merits). It was at that point I began to feel sorry for my husband, and for men folk in general.

While I can buy a whole range of products to mask my imperfections, the only thing available to men that doesn’t come with a free bottle of shame is a razor. Us women folk can legitimately trowel on the creams and make-up, stick on the false nails and eyelashes, slip into the wonderbra and stick on the wig without fear of anyone casting aspersions. The poor blokes, on the other hand, either have to furtively seek out a wig maker undercover of darkness or wear a hat – which they are duly asked to remove when entering certain establishments. Can you imagine a bouncer asking female clientel to remove their chicken fillets and high heels before entering? They’d be taken to the European Court of Human Rights quicker than you could say “Get your hands off me baldy!”

So while us gals are born with a licence to fake, men are consigned to a lifetime of transparency. The irony is that womankind causes this follicle depletion in the first place – not through all the nagging, although I’m sure it’s a contributing factor – but actually through the undisputed truth of science. According to a group of researchers at the University of Bonn in Germany, it is highly likely that the old ‘passing on of the bald gene through the mother’ wives’ tale, is not such a fallacy after all. Through their studies of several hundred bald and hirsute men, they found that:

“The X-chromosomal location of AR [androgen receptor gene] stresses the importance of the maternal line in the inheritance of AGA [Androgenetic Alopecia].

Roughly translated, this means that the major determinant of male pattern baldness is the X chromosome that a man inherits from his mother. It was acknowledged that the father’s genes are not insignificant but, as I always suspected, it’s the mum who wears the ‘genes’.

The ultimate revenge for several millennia of inequality perhaps? Or maybe an inbuilt anti-adultery device to make them less attractive to members of the opposite sex once the aforementioned GDP sets in. Granted, there will always be those who’s bald patches act as the solar panel for the proverbial sex machine, and luckily for those poor sods who start thinning at puberty, there will always be a woman partial to a slaphead.

But regardless of why and when, some degree of alopecia is inevitable for most fellas.  Rather than taking it like a man or risking a Kevin Keegan c.1980s, the balding ones find other ‘wigs’ behind which to hide: cars, gadgets, technology and perhaps even a model railway in the garage. And why not? Without hair extensions, Manolo Blahnik and Touche Eclat , we probably wouldn’t have evolved into the confident, ball-breaking, career-climbing species us gals have become.

So while I was restocking my samsonite in John Lewis, hubby was choosing the chrome finish on his brand new chopper. It hasn’t stopped the recession, but at least the depression has lifted.