Bill Shatner on women's hair.

Bill Shatner, touped-up, in a 1959 magazine story.

Bob Schnakenberg's Encyclopedia Shatnerica (click here for more on this book) features an interesting quote from Bill Shatner in its "Women" sub-category. A 1968 interview with the magazine Photoplay is sourced, in which Bill Shatner discusses his taste in women. "I am definitely in favor of the long hair trend in women," he states, adding "One of the glories of being a woman is long, luxuriant hair, whether it is used to run barefoot through or tie in pigtails." Shats then turns to the subject of a woman's appearance: "A girl who is particularly well built should wear miniskirts, if she has the right legs. If not, she should consider getting clothes to overcome these defects, not show them off for all to see."


The first sentiment is fair enough - a personal preference for long-haired women (a touch of jealousy perhaps?). However, it's when Bill Shatner turns towards the overall subject of how women should look that he arguably goes off the rails a little. Some of our female readers will probably find the latter comments to be outrageously sexist - we don't disagree - the only possible caveat being that they were made in 1968, not 2009.

But far more interesting from our point-of-view is the unwitting approach to imperfection that Bill Shatner reveals in the miniskirts comment. A woman with less-than-perfect legs should, according to Bill Shatner, "consider getting clothes to overcome these defects, not show them off for all to see." The word "defect" is a particularly strong choice of words - yet that is likely how Bill Shatner viewed his own baldness too. And in Bill Shatner's view, such defects should be covered up at all costs, both to protect others from their hideousness, and also to presumably protect the deformed person from utter humiliation.

Repulsive reality?

This belies an apparently very strong emotional reaction by Bill Shatner to his own hair loss. We know that when he was young, Bill Shatner in effect betrayed his father by choosing acting over the family clothing business. Perhaps as Bill Shatner went bald, echoes of being like his bald father, having to return home a failure because of his "inherent flaws" created a particularly strong psychological complex in him. Baldness was Joseph the clothier, not Bill the leading man.

A young Bill Shatner (left) with his father (top right).

On an interesting side-note, when, following the death of Michael Jackson, his friend Uri Geller was asked about the subject of Jackson's plastic surgery, Geller noted that he had once asked the singer why he was altering his face - "I just don't want to look like my father" Jackson told him candidly. Now, obviously Jackson's reaction to his face was a myriad times stronger than Bill Shatner's ongoing hair complex. And it could just be that Bill Shatner is stuck in the 1940s in terms of how "the star" should protect his image. Yet, we don't think it entirely out of place to try to understand the possible psychology behind words such as "defect" or the motivations behind the shabby surely-baldness-would-be-better-than-this "lost years" toupees from the mid-seventies.

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UPDATE: A commenter asked how old Joseph Shatner was in the above picture. We understand that Joseph Shatner was born in Austria on 31st May 1898. He died in Florida 17th January 1967. Since Bill Shatner was born in 1931, and he is about five in the above family picture (which also features mother Anna Garmaise Shatner 1908-1992 and one of his sisters Joy or Farla) that would make Joseph approximately 39 years-old, which is roughly how old Bill Shatner was during the end of Star Trek's run.