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In Courtship, a short story by Aaron Gwyn, Jansen, a bartender secretly in love with his best friend,Wisnat, a barber, agrees to help Wisnat seduce a woman by drugging her drinks, but the act brings with it unexpected consequences.

The ‘open’ ending of the Metamorphoses has left a number of scholars unsatisfied. This together with arguments from palaeography and transmission has led to the idea of a missing final part, which has gained momentum in recent years. This chapter argues for the completeness of the transmitted text (which also fits in with other points made in this book) and accounts for Apuleius’ final sentence with the literary playfulness characterisic of his style. It first reviews the evidence from palaeography. After that, it considers the length of the potentially lost parts and refutes the hypothesis of a long missing ending. But even a short missing ending is unlikely given that the very last word of the transmitted text, obibam, forms an excellent parting shot and perhaps evokes the final word of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (vivam). Lucius’ baldness in the last sentence of the Metamorphoses may figuratively allude to the final ‘polishing’ of the book.

This chapter argues that the male face and body and the relationship between personal appearance and notions of selfhood played a central role in the consumer culture of Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Examining beauty manuals and fashion magazines, advertising techniques, and marketing gimmicks, this chapter focuses especially on the male face, while also paying attention to matters of health and notions of racial soundness. Central to it are ideas about the male face and body as spectacle and the link, established over the course of the nineteenth century, between a pleasing physical appearance and professional and economic success. Beauty manuals intended for men and women alike placed a strong emphasis on the cultivation of attractiveness, prescribing cures for baldness, positive mental habits, and good digestion. Beauty entrepreneurs feature prominently in this chapter as seen in the work of hairdressers Henry Paul Truefitt and Frederick Browne and the perfumer Alexander Ross, all of whom employed a range of provocative advertising and sales techniques that focused on the importance of physical transformation. The late nineteenth-century emphasis on the clean-shaven aesthetic and the importance of shaving rituals to men are also important topics in this chapter.

Tracking down the metabolic basis of a remarkable human single-gene genetic disease provided the insight required to discover drugs to prevent prostate gland growth in aging men (benign prostatic hyperplasia, BPH) and prevent hair loss in men (male pattern baldness). Victims of this genetic disease are born with the appearance of females and are recognized as such. However, at puberty, they undergo a transformation and develop the characteristics of males. The underlying genetic defect is a mutation in the gene that codes for the enzyme 5-alpha reductase (5AR), which promotes conversion of testosterone (T) into the more potent male sex hormone dihydrotestosterone (DHT). Lack of sufficient DHT in utero prevents the full expression of male anatomy at birth, an issue that is corrected at the time of puberty when a surge of male sex hormones occurs. These men have a very small prostate gland that never grows, do not lose their hair, and do not get acne. This strongly suggests that DHT is the causative agent of BPH, male pattern baldness, and acne. An inhibitor of 5AR would create the functional equivalent of the genetic defect and would be expected to be effective in shrinking an enlarged prostate gland and slowing or preventing hair loss and acne in men. Finasteride is such an inhibitor and has met expectations. It is marketed as Proscar for BPH and Propecia for male pattern baldness. Finasteride is a teratogen (can cause birth defects) and has not been developed for acne for that reason.

This chapter introduces the role of hair, both in our health and in society, before providing an overview of the conditions in which hair growth can be affected. These include hirsutism—excessive hair growth—and a condition known as alopecia, characterized by the absence of hair from places it would normally grow. The various possible underlying causes for alopecia are covered, but with the disclaimer that we often never know why a person develops alopecia to begin with. Possible treatments for the condition are also discussed, with a focus on techniques to manage alopecia that may not necessarily involve medication.