A post reading “A grown man still using GATSBY or Mandom hair wax lol” set off a sprawling hair-care discussion on the NanJ (Livejupiter-style) board. GATSBY and Mandom are long-running staple brands mostly associated with teens and twenty-somethings, and there’s a running joke about still using them in your 30s and 40s. While plenty of users reported switching products as they aged — “I ended up with hair oil,” “I use Yanagiya pomade” — opinions split sharply over whether hard-hold wax actually harms scalp circulation and clogs pores, and the thread devolved into a fight over who had any real evidence.
Best bang for your buck
You've got something on your chin 🥺🫵
So what ARE you supposed to use once you hit a certain age?
Even the ones with hair have a messy mop and never trim their eyebrows either
Can't help it once you go bald
but as I've gotten older my hair's gotten seriously stiff and won't cooperate at all
I'm guessing pomade's the answer — somebody tell me what a middle-aged guy is actually supposed to use
Trust me on this, drop the hard-hold wax
GATSBY's fine for an old guy like you
I hear that sometimes, but why?
Either you're confusing it with spray
or you're applying it wrong
Wait, spray is bad!?
I use it to lock in my style after setting it with wax…
I get why the stiffness makes it useless for styling,
but is there actually anything dangerous about it besides that?
You're locking it into an unnatural position, so of course scalp circulation gets worse
Locking hair in an unnatural position hurts scalp circulation????
What are you even talking about? There's no evidence for that
Does it actually affect your pores?
Even facial hair you don't touch gets stiffer with age too — isn't that just body type and aging?
Though I guess if it's weakening the hair, fine, that's different
That damage doesn't come back, so if you don't want to pile on more damage and go bald, quit the hair product
Don't put it on your scalp
Even short-term use will make you bald down the road
That way of using it is fine
It's guys like Re: #53 trying to do it with spray alone
who end up looking like they think they're in a band
That startled me
Thought I was gonna go bald down the line
Though with grandpa and dad both bald, guess it's only a matter of time anyway
Don't put it on your scalp????
What are you even talking about
Styling product on your scalp doesn't make you bald
Seriously, NanJ's nothing but old men these days
If you don't know, why act like you do?
Quit spouting half-baked nonsense
Listen
your scalp breathes
and you know what happens when you seal it up with styling product (oil), right?
That's exactly why bald guys' heads are so shiny
Which is basically the same as putting super glue on your scalp
And these days styling products use a liposome-like mechanism to set naturally, penetrating deep into the cells — you get what that means, right?
My dad used that green tonic in the square bottle — Yanagiya
You're a working adult, you're gonna use some kind of hair product
If there's damage involved, recommend me something with as little damage as possible
A heavier hair oil is good
Holds your style nicely and doesn't damage your hair
You're not getting a 1,000-yen cheap cut, are you? Just ask your stylist
I mean, they always walk you through styling methods during the consultation
For a grown man a proper cut runs about 7,000 yen — if you've only ever been to cheaper salons than that, hair product is the least of your problems, nothing's gonna help
This, exactly
'Sorry, I was using it wrong' would've settled it fine
but no, gotta keep making excuses lol
that's why you go bald
My hair's super thick and straight, so if I cut it too short it sticks up everywhere,
so I keep it as short as possible without it standing up — a safe 7:3 part with the bangs raised a bit
and lately GATSBY's stopped working for that
Mix Cool Grease with the purple GATSBY and work it in, that's the move
So it really is oil-based products then
I'll give that a try, thanks for the tip
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
The relationship between hair styling products and thinning hair comes up regularly even within the beauty industry, but there’s little medically established evidence that using wax or spray directly causes hair loss. The explanations flying around the thread — that “the scalp can’t breathe” or that products “penetrate via a liposome effect” — aren’t backed by rigorous cosmetic-science evidence either, and it’s worth noting the discussion proceeded with personal anecdotes and hearsay mixed in throughout. That said, stylists do point out that slathering product all the way down to the scalp, or failing to rinse it out thoroughly, can clog pores and worsen scalp conditions — so the “it’s a usage problem” point raised later in the thread was on the mark. Given that GATSBY and Mandom have long been marketed as brands for teens and twenty-somethings, the original poster’s underlying question — whether you should “graduate” from them as an adult — reflects the brands’ historical positioning.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5channel (NanJ / Livejupiter) thread “A grown man still using GATSBY or Mandom hair wax lol.”
