The secret world of hair

BBC Radio 4 - Thinking Allowed, The secret world of hair

"‘In South India, there are various temples where one can go and sort of make a vow to the god or goddess that that if something good happens, then you will come to the temple and you will offer your hair. So whole families will sort of pledge their hair, and then they'll go en masse to particular places. So the biggest temple is, and the most famous one is Tirumala, in Andhra Pradesh where there's actually 650 full time barbers.. the barbers are all sitting around on the floor, and the pilgrims will come and sit directly opposite them. So you walk into this space, you leave your shoes outside and the floor is wet, and it's covered actually in other people's hair, because there's always that sort of feeling of, of slipping on the hair...

They sell hair. So the hair gets then sorted out into different lengths and the longest length which is over 30 inches, sells for about 230 pounds a kilo. much shorter lengths will sell for much less then. The very short hair clippings will be 40 p… 20 million pounds a year [for that particular temple]... wherever I traveled, whether it was in Chinese factories or these hair sorting workshops or these temples there was this fear that people might be taking hair and sort of stuff it, particularly that women were stuffing it into their bras. This was the, and when we left the temple complex, you know, our bags were searched and even my purse was searched just in case I'd put a few strands’…

‘The most popular hair. Because you were saying before that I mean wigs and hair extensions, the majority are manufactured in China, when people are purchasing it, they don't necessarily purchase it as, it isn’t labeled as Chinese hair. Because although Chinese hair as I understand it is perhaps the ,best people don't think it is.’

‘Well, Chinese hair is thick and strong, and therefore it's very resilient to things like bleaching and dying. But the Association of Made in China is quite a negative association in the market. So Chinese traders know that they can't really sell it as Chinese and companies will not market it as Chinese. So you've got a lot of sort of fictional-... the provenance of hair is just a sort of mythological fantasy cooked up by several people along the way as the hair sort of moves out of, into China and is then somehow turns into European hair. So you have this odd, odd Chinese hair dyed blonde that becomes that really really prestigious item, European hair’...

‘You had a woman or maybe a couple of women who almost talked about the fact that their loss of hair was something rather more severe than the loss of a breast.’

‘Yeah, that's right. So those who did lose the hair found it really distressing, particularly the speed at which it happened. And it had come out in great clumps. One woman said that she'd been more affected by the hair loss than, than the loss of a breast because it was so visible. And it's so rapid after the surgery as well. And there was a woman who hadn't lost her hair, who said that she considered herself to have got off lightly.’...

‘Before it all happened, I went out, I bought my wig, the sexiest wig I could possibly find. I wasn't going to look like me. I was going to look like somebody else. Had got this rock chick hair. I decided I was going to have about seven. I was going to have red ones and green ones. I don’t know, just do the things that you'd never normally do. It's not forever. It doesn't matter.’

‘That that was not a very typical response. I mean, you know… like when I suggested to my partner, my wife, sort of go blonde and look like Marilyn, that was not, that was not on. So this was not a very common response.’

‘It wasn't. She was the only one that said that. She was also the only one that felt that losing her hair was was a good thing because it meant that the chemotherapy was working. But yeah, she chose to treat her hair loss as an opportunity to experiment with her identity. And she saw it  as a temporary thing, and I thought it was interesting that she chose a rock chick, like a stereotypical strong female character and perhaps somebody that she could personify’...

‘Cancer patients have been a double bind because when they experienced stigma whether or not they lose their hair’...

‘[She] still does work in a library, and because she had mistakes and she wasn't able to do the lifting and carrying part of the duties, but she said that she actually got bullied by her colleagues who felt she wasn't pulling her weight. And I thought that was really interesting because she wasn't conforming with the stereotypical cancer patient so therefore she missed out on benefits’...

‘Amongst some orthodox women, they consider that it's necessary to cover your hair, because hair, once you're married, because hair is sexually alluring. And, and they would also consider that it's a mitzvah, it's a sort of commandment that one should follow. And, but what has happened over the years is that women began to cover their hair, not just with headscarves, but with wigs, so effectively using hair to cover hair. And, and this has led to all sorts of sort of debates about you know, how human can your hair look, how glamorous can it be?… it's usually after the first night spent with the husband that the wig will be-… what's happened as sort of wig technology has increased and there's more and more possibilities for glamorous wigs. Then women tend to, I mean many of the women I spoke to said, you know, that they found covering their hair one of the most difficult religious sort of requirements that they followed, and therefore if they were going to do it, they wanted to take this as an opportunity to get better hair. So they were investing an enormous amount of time and energy and attention in getting very beautiful, very naturalistic wigs, sometimes with baby hairs inserted in the front to make it look like you know, the hairs growing from the head…

2004, known as Sheitelgate was the moment when a rabbi in the Orthodox Jewish community. In fact, he was based in Israel, but he became very concerned about the origins, you know, where is this hair coming from that Jewish women are wearing to cover their hair? And he sent some rabbis to go from Stamford Hill in London, to India, to inspect Tirumala, the very temple that we were talking about earlier, to look at, you know, what is the status of this hair that's being given to the gods and of course, they came across very contradictory responses. The pilgrims saw their hair as an offering, the most wonderful offering they could give, the Brahmins was saying no, no, it's a waste product. It's an act of purification. So yes, of course you can use it. And the barbers were saying this is a religious duty, and so on. And so basically they banned, the rabbi in the end decided to ban the use of Indian hair on the grounds of it's a sort of idolatrous association… he called on people to burn their wigs, because he felt that, you know, if you gave it to a charity shop, then it could be bought by another Jewish woman. And then this was also an abomination and therefore better to burn the things. But of course, this was not very popular amongst Jewish wig traders.’…

‘In Stamford Hill and Brooklyn and across the world, women were going out from the streets burning their wigs and covering themselves with bathing caps and bath towels, crying as they did. It was like it was throwing their Pekingnese dogs off into a bonfire… a wig can often cost 1000 pounds, 2000 pounds, I mean and upwards if it's a human hair sort of handmade wig’"