Solving balding will open the door to solving many genetic problems, deepening our understanding of our cells, hormones, etc.
Because demand for popular things can drive research into important things.
Because there's no reason not to.
It was strange, every so often I would have a day where people were noticeably warmer on average. They would laugh at my jokes, they would help carry a conversation, they would let me have the stage in a group discussion without pushing in -- it was amazing. This only happened every so often, and I chalked it up to luck and chance and some days just being better than others. On one of these good days, I was busy regaling my enraptured audience with a tale about a covey of quail we were raising when I got an itch on my head. I lifted my hat to scratch and a wave of revulsion washed over people's faces. Instantly, they lost interest, glanced away, and looked generally uncomfortable. Someone even coughed. I stumbled but kept going, however it was clear that the story was now unwelcome so I abortively wrapped it up. I made a few attempts to restart conversation but got the "good day" responses were gone, I got only the typical lukewarm responses. I went to the restroom to look for something on my head that might have caused the reaction, but it took me some time staring in the mirror and searching until I found the culprit.
Peoples' enthusiasm didn't return until the next day, when I ran the test again, this time intentionally, but with the same result. It was reproducible. "Good days" happened when I covered my thinning hairline. To be clear, these people included both men and women and they had known me for years. On a conscious level, they knew exactly what I looked like and that I was balding. On a subconscious level, though, they treated me very differently depending on whether or not they had recently seen my hairline at its worst. Once I started paying attention, I realized that this behavior was universal, and a bit of introspection revealed that the exact same instincts were active in my own mind.
Appearances matter! Incidentally, I've found that women tend to be much more understanding as they often have had similar A/B experiences with makeup, while men will often just chalk my observations up to confidence, reversing cause and effect.
Wigs boost me into a tier of attractiveness far beyond what I was able to achieve with a hat coverup and, later, with shaving. On one hand wigs yield far better results than people realize, but on the other they demand upkeep, disclosure, and the social stigma is severe if you "get caught." I don't use them because hair systems (wig + glue -- the good ones) get nasty quickly from my workout routine, so I prefer to just go shaved. When you start losing hair, all of your compensating options have steep tradeoffs.
From then on Jeff experiences loss of a client, being ignored by wait staff, and is made to experience the status Larry tried to tell him about.
I think there are a lot of physical things that people judge us over: body type, height, weird quirks like an eye problem or a big mole. Attractiveness of the face is very important in how we're treated.
I feel like we'll hyper focus on whatever our weakness is compared to the norm, and it turns into the center of the world for us. The most important is the attitude and vibe you put on. There are inspirational figures in government, industry and entertainment that buck the trend and use whatever personality traits to overcome the physical. I can point to any number of ugly people who are treated as if they weren't.