Prince Harry is taking a serious bruising in the British press right now for a newly-published photo that doesn’t seem to match his current appearance. According to a report by Entertainment Tonight, the prince just recently updated his headshot on the website for the tech start-up BetterUp. The photo shows Prince Harry with a full head of hair that doesn’t seem to match his recent appearances in public.
The 38-year-old prince joined BetterUp as its “Chief Impact Officer” in 2021 and is listed among the other executives on its website. His new professional photo seems to be a little outdated, and shows him with much thicker, darker hair than he sports now. Some even wondered if the picture was Photoshopped. Critics put it side-by-side candid pictures from recent public events, such as a polo match in Singapore that he attended last week.
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The prince has addressed his hair loss before – notably in his memoir Spare where he wrote that his older brother’s hair loss was “alarming” and “more advanced than mine.” Prince William has joked about baldness as well – in a video last month he described his EarthShot Prize initiative by saying: “It’s about four years in the making. I had hair when it started.”
The Daily Mail consulted with a doctor about this story. Dr. Asim Shahmalak speculated that “The baldness gene is not as strong in Harry [as in William] but he is still losing his hair quickly. At present most of Harry’s hair loss is around the crown area. He has a growing bald patch right across his crown and you can also see that his hair is also thinning out towards the front.”
“Without treatment, the acceleration we have seen over the last 15 months will only increase over the next year,” Shahlak went on. “Harry may never be as bald as his brother William. William has been more affected than any of the royal men.”
While the doctor may recommend treatment, some commenters online argue that the prince should just accept his new look gracefully. They believe that fighting the baldness is more embarrassing than wearing it for all the world to see. There’s no telling which approach the prince will take in the years to come, but it’s clear that his critics won’t let his old headshots go by unremarked.
