Be honest with me, I would look like a gang banger huh (see details)

While not unusual, I think you would face some negative vibes from the skinhead look. If you were in your fourties I would say go for it but at twenty-five, you might want to consider some less drastic options. Go with the short and neat.

I agree with @rojo – only older men can really get away with that look, without appearing to be thugs. I can just do it, and I’m in my mid forties. I think you should play it safe – you have a lot to lose if someone misinterprets your appearance.

You had me confused with the term gang-banger. I thought it was NSFW.

Anyways… the hair is only part of the look. Bald with suit and shirt or wide woolen pink sweater is different from wife-beater shirt with Lonsdale jacket.

Consider the whole look and be whoever you want to be.

I vote with short and neat. That cut look can’t be misinterpreted.
Hopefully you don’t have a neck or face tattoos. They only add to the GB look.

I know a couple of young guys (including my step-son) who shaved their heads rather than deal with a prematurely receding hairline. None of them look like skin heads, they just look bald. Damn attractive, too!

Looking like a gang banger or a skin head is only marginally related to your hair style. More important to how you are perceived: the kind of clothes you wear, how you carry yourself, your manner of speaking and how you live your life. Homemade tattoos or neck/face/hand tats say something, too.

I mean, no one is going to mistake this guy for these guys.

I’m really not a fan of the “shave it off when you start to bald” thing. The lack of hair really doesn’t bother me, but I prefer it short and neat to completely shaved off.

Sometimes the advice suggested on these pages is so far off track it’s buried in a ditch.
Go for what you feel most comfortable with, don’t give a shit what any narrow minded strangers may think, you know you & that’s all that matters.
It’s not like you wear swastika tattoos & attend neo-nazi rallies…i’m hoping ;-}

My nephew shaved bald when he was eighteen and prematurely balding. He’s a gym rat who’s in ridiculous shape. He dresses nice, and has one tattoo on his upper arm.

He’s thirty now, still bald, an never been mistaken for a skinhead.

He has, however, regularly been mistaken for Vin Diesel or Chris Daughtry

Both of which have been a boon to his love life.

I wouldn’t think you were a skinhead or in a gang as long as you were dressed nicely and didn’t walk or carry yourself like a thug. I’ll assume you don’t have a huge muscular body either, which can create a thug look just because of how men who have huge shoulders and biceps can look thuggy because their arms don’t fall to their side well and an overfocus on the physical. Also, if you smile a lot typically you would not give off a gang look or vibe.

There is an ex-con, Jeff Henderson, who became a well respected chef in Las Vegas. Black guy, head shaven bald. When he left prison he purposely stopped working out as much, changed his posture, and I think he even started wearing glasses, because he knew how he presented himself in prison would not go over well on the outside in upscale restaurants.

@whitenoise I think originally you were thinking of when a girl is gang raped? Which is not what the OP is talking about. I see you figured it out. Easily understood why that might be the case.

I vote for short and neat.

@JLeslie I didn’t think of rape, actually. I thought of a party. The way the term in such contact is used, to me never came across as rape. In all honesty though, I have no experience with either.

Rape…. that’s not just NSFW, that would be NS, period.

Lol my mind was with @whitenoise when I first read this question.I always find it a bit funny when people refer to people in gangs as gang-bangers. I just imagine giant orgies :P

Oh. I was totally off base.

I haven’t heard the term gang banger since I was living in Chicago 9 years ago. What we have here in South Carolina hardly counts as a gang.

Is caution you to steer clear of the skinhead look.

For me a short buzz cut is more threatening than completely shaven.

As the others have said, it has more to do with your selection of clothing and how you carry yourself (your posture and your gait) and whether you have a nice smile, or an intimidating scowl.

Here are some looks that I like:

Short and Neat #1

Short and Neat #2

Short and Neat #3

Short and Neat #4 (Course I got a mad crush on David Visentin from Love it or List it)

Short and Neat #5 (Also crush-worthy)

Short and Neat #6

Totally Bald #1

Totally Bald #2

Totally Bald #3

Totally Bald #4

Totally Bald #5 (Also crush-worthy, Duff Goldman the baker)

Totally Bald #6 (Here’s an example of a bald man who used to look totally thuggy when he was mostly known as a rap singer, but now that he’s on TV wearing this cute shirt, he’s a total teddy bear).

Try to avoid the following looks:

Thuggy #1

Thuggy #2

Thuggy #3

Thuggy #4 (Actually this guy is pretty cute, but he has a menacing look on his face. This same guy with a sweet smile, and a crisp white chef’s jacket would be very charming)

Thuggy #5 (This guy always looks thuggy, not because of his hair cut, but because of his snarling, pissed off look. He looks mean and he looks like he has no sense of humor)

Thuggy #6 (Scary!)

@Kardamom Notice how most of the totally bald, non-thuggy guys are either black or older men. It’s hard for a black dude to look like a skinhead – much easier for a white dude, especially a young one.

I think it’s hard for a young guy to pull off the bald look. My husband says he’s going to shave his head when his hair starts to go. I sure hope not, because he would look like a skinhead – and the Southern accent wouldn’t help matters.

I must say, I don’t think Chris Daughtry looks thuggish in pic #4 at all. And Eminem is a thug, so his hair and facial expression have little to do with it. Additionally, thug #6 is no thug; he’s just creepy looking.

@livelaughlove21 I think you’re possibly correct. When I was doing searches, I actually had to type in attractive bald white guys (as opposed to just attractive bald guys) to get any young-ish bald white guys to come up. Most of the white guys were older and I had to resist the urge to post a picture of Patrick Stewart, because the OP said he wanted to know how young guys might be perceived.

I wanted to present a whole selection of different races of cute bald guys, but I had a hard time with my search, although clearly I did find a lot of short and neat white guys as well as black and Latino guys. There were lots of cute totally bald black fellows, but I couldn’t find any Asian guys with either short and neat or totally bald (they kept showing Asian guys with lots of hair). I kept changing the wording of my searches, because I wanted to showcase multiple examples of cute guys of multiple races both in the short and neat and bald categories.

I guess the bottom line is that either totally bald, or short and neat are both fine, as long as he wears non-threatening looking clothes (chef’s whites are super-sexy by the way) and has a cheery disposition and refrains from scowling or snarling or frowning.

@livelaughlove21 Interesting observation. You have me thinking about this more. I happen to personally know two white guys who are bald, they also are pretty broad in the shoulder, and low body fat. For the record, one guy is Jewish and the other is English/Welsh, both American. I used to see lots of men very muscle-y, some bald, on South Beach on Miami Beach, pretty much all gay. All far from being skin heads. LOL. That goes against what I said earlier about the whole big muscle stocky guy thing. There is a certain look about skin heads, hard to pinpoint what exactly it is, you just know it when you see it. And, I don’t think all thugs are skinheads that’s for sure.

I think it depends where one lives. In south FL I would think one thing, in the middle of the country I would think another, maybe about the same guy.

PS: This is my stepson in my kitchen. He’s going to kill me for posting a pic of him with food hanging out of his mouth.

@augustlan Hee Hee, how can you have a stepson that age??? He kind of looks like Steve Wilkos, the fellow who used to be the bouncer on the Jerry Springer show. He now has his own show.

@Kardamom My husband is 9 years older than I am, and started young. ;)

@augustlan Well now, that explains it : )

@Kardamom I think your “Thuggy#3” guy is totally cute.

@downtide Really? He makes me shudder with fear. I know he’s just a singer, but…

I think he’s cute, too.

haha. Billy Corgan thuggy? He’s anything but thuggy. So cute!