Comrades, I have a couple of intertwined problems. The first is that I'm a 23-year-old guy with advanced male pattern baldness, and the second is that I've always had a fear of being thought "that creepy dude" by women and men alike. This fear has intensified by orders of magnitude since I had to start shaving my head.

Since elementary school, every one of my social interactions with attractive women has been tainted by a little voice in my head going "don't be creepy, don't be creepy, ...". I know, this is utterly insane. Its roots lie in me being wrongfully accused to sexual harassment (I was bullied by everyone in my cohort, including the girls), and almost getting expelled as a result. I've been tiptoeing around women ever since.

Any attempt to approach classmate cold was thwarted by the voice saying, "no, you idiot, that's creepy as hell". Same with coffee shops. Crazier still, I have absolutely no difficulty approaching women at bars, clubs, parties, and other events where flirting is definitely acceptable (expected, even), but I'm paralyzed by fear in other situations.

I'm still contending with this problem, albeit in a more powerful form. The feedback I've gotten from guys and gals confirms that I look way older than 23, even when I take a razor to my scalp. It doesn't help that I've been turned down immediately at clubs - I'm talking not a second's pause between me completing "how's it going, I'm MirthAndWater?", and them saying "sorry" - for unmistakable AFCs who had neither the sartorial sense nor the confidence that I did. None of the 13 approaches I've made at clubs and parties have gone past 5 minutes, and 8 of them were obviously because she thought I'm closer to 37 years old.

I don't want to be that dirty old man hitting on college girls. I've seen dirty old men do this at coffee shops, and it's never a pretty sight.

Do any of you have experiences with this sort of thing? How have you overcome it?