Thanks to two LEONARD NIMOY movies that came out in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s, I developed a terrible phobia of bald women. Most memorable was SEIZURE: THE STORY OF KATHY MORRIS, which told the story of a young woman who undergoes brain surgery. Mr. NIMOY plays her doctor. I vaguely remember a traumatizing scene where her baldness is revealed and how it horrified me. I mean, to my five year old mind, a woman was NOT supposed to be bald. Also, I probably associated the sick protagonist with my mother who had M.S.

There was also Lt. Ilia in the first STAR TREK movie who was totally, slickly, shiny bald. She was more terrifying to me than any creature that the crew of the Enterprise was ever to encounter.

And, as a NAME THAT TRAUMA, there was a movie that came out around 1983 that involved a group of bald children aliens that were traveling with a human couple. This movie traumatized me even more than the previous two, and it aired a lot on HBO. I was always afraid to turn the T.V. to that channel.

As a young adult in the mid-’90s, I thought I was over this phobia. There was even a bald super-model with a dragon tattoo on her head that I loved. Then one night I was watching MELROSE PLACE. Dr. Kimberly Shaw had been the victim of some kind of accident, but she seemed to be doing alright. In a cliff-hanging scene, after having made love to her boyfriend, Dr. Shaw goes into the bathroom and looks at herself in the mirror. Then she rips off her wig and has this choppy Joan of Arc haircut and a huge scar. I inhaled so sharply I probably sucked all the oxygen out of my room, thus proving trauma does not stop after childhood.