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Rich and bald or handsome and poor? Survey asks Japanese women who’d they’d rather marry

Casey Baseel Mar 15, 2019
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Does a thick wad of bills make up for a thin head of hair?

While a number of the SoraNews24 staff are happily married or in committed romantic relationships, our Japanese-language reporter Yuichiro is going through a bout of extended bachelorhood. However, he’s not just troubled by his sparse dating calendar, but also by his increasingly sparse head of hair, and he’s sort of worried that maybe the two are connected.

▼ Yuichiro 10 years ago (left) and today (right)

So when Japanese Internet portal Fusamen, which bills itself as a resource for information on hair restoration treatments and techniques, conducted a survey about how Japanese women feel about guys with thinning hair, or no hair at all, it piqued his interest, and their response to the first question knocked his pride down a peg.

Fusamen surveyed 500 single women (18 younger than 20, 198 in their 20s, 202 in their 30s, and 82 in their 40s), and the questionnaire started off with “Do you like men who have thinning hair/are bald?” The vast majority, 90 percent, said they did not.

However, things started looking a little better with question 2, which asked “Could you fall in love with a man who has thinning hair or is bald?” 54 percent of the women said they could, implying that even if scarce hair isn’t their preferred look for a guy, it isn’t an instant deal breaker. The picture for got even rosier when Fusamen inquired “Could you marry a man who has thinning hair/is bald?”, as 61 percent said yes, they could tie the knot with a guy as head as smooth as the wedding bells that would ring for them.

You might have noticed something a little strange about those numbers, though: only 54 percent of the women said they could fall in love with a thin-haired guy, but more of them, 61 percent, said they could marry one. Maybe that discrepancy coms from respondents interpreting the question “Could you marry a man who has thinning hair/is bald?” as meaning that they’re already in love with this hypothetical man, and answering whether or not his lack of hair would be a deal-breaker, in and of itself, that would prevent them from marrying him.

Or maybe the gap is because for the survey participants, love isn’t the only part of the equation when calculating if they want to get married. For its fourth question, Fusamen asked “Would you rather marry a rich, bald man, or a handsome (ostensibly thick-haired), poor man?”, and the women had a pretty clear preference.

● Bald and rich: 76 percent
● Handsome and poor: 24 percent

▼ “Why hello there, (76 percent of) ladies.”

Those number align almost perfectly with a separate survey from a Japanese women’s magazine a while back, in which 75.5 percent of the respondents said they’d rather date a rich, ugly man than a handsome, unemployed dude.

Of course, neither choice in the bald/rich and handsome/poor scenario mentions anything about personality. To get a closer look at the women’s marriage criteria, the survey also asked “What kind of thin-haired/bald man would you be willing to marry?”, with the responses being:

● Rich: 35 percent
● Kind: 29 percent
● Cheerful/funny: 9 percent
● Cool: 9 percent
● Dependable/helpful: 6 percent
● Fun 4 percent
● Other: 8 percent

▼ The results don’t specify what proportion, if any, of the “Other” responses translate to “Wears a toupee.”

So in other words, while most of the Japanese women who were surveyed may not prefer a guy to be thin-haired or bald, those aren’t insurmountable traits, and so you don’t need to feel like you absolutely have to go through gruesome-looking hair replacement surgery or eat tons of roasted soybean powder. Because what really counts is what’s on the inside (of either your heart, your wallet, or some combination of the two).

Source: Fusamen
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert images: SoraNews24, Pakutaso (1, 2)
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[ Read in Japanese ]