_____DATA ANALYSIS
Sexiest Bald Man
Uncover the sexiest bald men among actors, athletes, musicians, and even royalty, with Reboot’s scientific research.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right? One person’s tick, is another person’s ick — whether it’s height, eye colour, or even hair (or lack thereof).
That being said, bald men have stolen the hearts of millions of people around the world, from Stanley Tucci to Zinedine Zidane to John Travolta. So, for the third consecutive year, we’ve conducted scientific research and crunched the numbers to officially crown the Sexiest Bald Man for 2024.
Top 20 breakdown
Top 20 breakdown
The sexiest bald men rankings for 2024
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The top 5 sexiest bald men in 2024
Prince William, 9.86 out of 10
Taking the 2024 crown for the Sexiest Bald Man is Prince William, with an almost-perfect sexy score of 9.86 out of 10.
The heir apparent to the British throne was considered a heartthrob in his younger years, but if our study is anything to go by, he still has sex appeal today. With 16,800 annual searches for “Prince William” followed by ‘shirtless’ or ‘naked’ on Google, it’s clear the public agrees.
The Prince of Wales’s smooth, shiny scalp earns him 74% for luminance, while his face also scores an equally impressive 72% on the golden ratio. Let’s not forget his vocal charm, scoring 9.91 out of 10 for vocal attractiveness — just shy of the top spot, which is held by none other than Shaquille O’Neal (9.95 out of 10).
Dwayne Johnson, 8.88 out of 10
In second place is the American actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, with an impressive 8.88 out of 10 — a mere 0.98 fewer points than Prince William in first.
As a wrestler, The Rock knows how to turn heads, receiving an impressive number of ‘shirtless’ and ‘naked’ image searches in a year — 34,200 in total, and double that of Prince William. His media perception score is also among the highest, narrowly missing out on a top 10 spot, with 61.96% of articles with a positive sentiment rating, beaten by the likes of Olympian Mo Farah.
If there’s one thing Dwayne doesn’t have to worry about, it’s his height. He’s the fourth tallest celebrity in our study at 1.96m (6 foot, 4 inches), adding some serious stature to his already impressive sexy score.
Shaquille O’Neal, 8.84 out of 10
Former basketball player Shaquille O’Neal, or "Shaq" as he's universally known, slam-dunks his way into third place in this year’s Sexiest Bald Man study, with a score of 8.84 out of 10.
Shaq claims the crown for two of our factors: vocal attractiveness, where he scores a near-perfect 9.95, and height, towering over our contenders at a staggering 2.16m (7 foot, 1 inch). Clearly, his deep voice and commanding presence are as big as his stature.
The former athlete also scores well for media perception, with 61.19% news articles casting him in a positive light. Out of 10, this scores a respectable 7.8 — just behind The Rock.
Kelly Slater, 8.67 out of 10
Surf’s up for Kelly Slater, who rides the wave to fourth place with a sexy score of 8.67 out of 10.
Despite being one of the shortest celebrities in our study measuring 1.75m (5 foot, 7 inches), Kelly still stands tall in our rankings, proving size isn’t always everything.
Kelly shines across most factors, especially for the golden ratio score of 71.06% — narrowly behind Prince William — and luminance score of 72.07%, giving his face and scalp undeniable appeal. He also earns an impressive 8.55 out of 10 for vocal attractiveness, proving the allure of a “surfer dude” is still sexy in 2024.
Terry Crews, 8.62 out of 10
Rounding out our top five is the always-charismatic Terry Crews, scoring a solid 8.62 out of 10 in our Sexiest Bald Man index.
Known for his high-energy persona and impressive physique, Crews’ fans can't get enough of him, with 9,480 monthly searches for “shirtless” and “naked” photos. This ranks Terry comfortably in the top 15 for this factor. Standing tall at 1.88m (6 foot, 2 inches), his athletic build only adds to his appeal.
With a shine factor of 71.59%, Terry’s smooth scalp catches the light just right, placing him mid-tier among our bald contenders. And while he lands in 23rd place for the golden ratio (68.32%), his smile is where he truly shines, beaming a solid 54% smile-to-face size ratio that helps him land in the top 20.
The top 10 sexiest bald men in 2024
Our methodology in full
Search marketing agency Reboot Online performed a multivariate study to identify the sexiest bald man from a seed list of 69 bald celebs. The study is an index comprised of seven main variables:
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Height
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Shine factor
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Golden ratio facial proximity
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Smile analysis
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Media perception (news article tone of reporting on a given celebrity)
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Vocal attractiveness
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Search interest for “shirtless” / “naked”.
The golden ratio method:
An anthropometric analysis using computer vision algorithms was carried out to calculate the geometric golden ratio proximity for each celebrity’s face. In mathematics, two quantities are in the golden ratio if their ratio is equal to the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities. In simple terms, consider a line and divide it into two parts of unequal lengths; the entire length of the line divided by the longer part is equal to the longer part divided by the shorter part. That ratio is approximated to be 1.618 and is seen frequently in nature, art, architecture, etc. Studies of facial symmetry have shown that faces are deemed more attractive when their proportions approach this Golden Ratio.
The computer vision algorithm identifies facial landmarks of prominent facial features and calculates the ratios between the computed landmarks for each image.
To mitigate face variability from a multitude of confounding factors, including varying expressions, illuminations and poses, two images were selected per person, and any outliers were either removed or replaced with a more suitable image before averaging the golden ratio proximity % across all images to find an overall score per person.
Vocal attractiveness method:
Voice analysis was performed using the Praat software, a computer software package for speech analysis in phonetics.
Four different sound clips were collected from YouTube for each celebrity speaking in interviews/podcasts. These were then fed into the Praat software, which identifies glottal pulses to determine the overall fundamental frequency (F0) of each audio extract.
Research by Saxton et al. published in Behavioural Ecology (Behavioral Ecology (2016), 27(2), 512–519. doi:10.1093/beheco/arv178)* found that “male vocal attractiveness peaked at around 96Hz"". This was used as our peak attractiveness benchmark. An overall “vocal attractiveness” score was calculated as the percentage difference from this frequency for each fundamental frequency analysed for each celebrity.
Shine factor method:
To supplement the study, cranium luminance was computed following the methodology described on Wikipedia: relative luminance. The methodology was applied specifically to a cropped image of the celebrity’s head. A computer vision algorithm identified facial landmarks and then created a mask layer for the head and the face. From there, the images were converted to grayscale and cropped. Each pixel was then converted to RGB values, and a formula for relative luminance was applied: L = 0.2126 * R [Red] + 0.7152 * G [Green] + 0.0722 * B [Blue].
The head luminance is given in cd/m2 and further calculated as a % of a 60W 800 lumen light bulb.
Smile analysis method:
The smile analysis was undertaken using the computer algorithm which uses OpenCV to detect and analyse smiles in real-time from static images. The smile percentage was used in the study which displays the percentage width of the smile relative to the face. It was assumed that a bigger smile is associated with bigger attractiveness.
Media perception method:
Media perception analysis was done using GDELT data, the Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone. The Global News Coverage database allows to gather data on the Tone of reporting in the global news coverage throughout the years. The data on the tone of reporting in the last two years was gathered and the percentage of the news articles with a positive tone was calculated. The tone of reporting is a good indicator of sentiment that a public eye has for a given celebrity. It is assumed that the public has a bigger sentiment towards more attractive celebrities.
For the following celebrities the average of news articles with positive tone was taken due to the GDELT Summary tool not allowing the use of short keywords or keywords having additional meaning which is making the results not accurate: Pitbull, Common, Seal, Moby.
Search interest method:
The SEO tool ahrefs was used to find past year's monthly search volumes for [name] + “shirtless” and [name] + “naked”. The search volumes were used as a quantifier of desire and popularity of a given celebrity.
Sources used:
https://academic.oup.com/beheco/article/27/2/512/2196612https://api.gdeltproject.org/api/v2/summary/summary?d=web
https://github.com/Aksoylu/GoldenFace
https://github.com/JONY192/Smileanalyzer
https://praat.en.softonic.com/