one could assume the hairs in these desert patches were shorn for some reason , conceivably out of faith to some religion , allegiance to some criminal syndicate , or loyalty to some arcane fashion trend of prior decades that had now fallen out of favor with the general public , but that still resonated with certain throwback pariahs ; however , it appeared that there was no stubble in these smooth , barren fields , conceivably no roots had formed ; and although one might be tempted to attribute this phenomenon to cessation at the follicle , this was most likely not the case as noted medical experts had asserted publicly time-and-time-again with unquestionable certainty that there had been no documented cases of any sort of condition in which the subject in question had been consciously able to prevent hair growth in certain regions while allowing fertile growth in others ; nay , this strange pattern of chest baldness may conceivably have arisen by way of some fungal invasion somewhere either in the dermis or in the subcutaneous layers of his skin .