The Secret Lives of Hair

Chemo, wigs, trade and other entanglements

Dear Global Jigsaw,

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And on to today’s post on the tongues that hair speaks:

My oncologist looked momentarily crestfallen when telling me that my cancer was more advanced than initial biopsies had suggested. That I would need months of post-surgery chemotherapy as part of the treatment plan. But as I floundered to formulate a response, she suddenly brightened visibly and held up a preemptive palm, secure in her ability to allay the fear she assumed was foremost in my mind. “Your hair,” she said with the triumphant showmanship of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, “will grow back.”

What is it about hair that we invest so much of our selves in it? Locks of hair as keepsakes. Shaving hair as atonement. Covering hair out of shame. Taming it to look professional. Letting it down to party. It is polyphonic, this hair.

Later, the oncology nurse handed me the phone number of someone she promised was very discreet. And so, a few days on, I walked into a small room on the ground floor of a nondescript building. There was no signage outside. Inside, I detected the whiff of something antiseptic. My interlocuter was a man dressed like a lab technician, but who spoke in the soothing tones of a practiced undertaker.

I was at a store that specialized in high-end, hair systems. These are custom made wigs secured to the scalp with tape and glue that are worn day and night, removed only once a fortnight to be washed. I was told that if I so wished I could return to the “clinic” and wait in a mirrorless room while the “prosthesis” was washed, so that I would never have to see myself without hair, until my own had grown back. No one, the man said in his soft voice, would have to “suspect” anything.

And so it was that I lost my virginity in the world of shame and deception that hair loss can entail.

All of which is by way of introduction to a book on “the secret lives of hair,” Entanglement, by the anthropologist Emma Tarlo, that I have just finished reading. It is full of eye-popping facts like bagels getting their elasticity from a protein derivative called L-cysteine, which until recently was commonly collected from human hair.

 But it is her exploration of the global trade in hair for wigs, extensions, and other tress-enhancing products that is truly revelatory, because, as she drives home, the gathering of human hair for sale has always been a backstage business. Even those in the trade know little about the complex global processes behind the wigs that line their shops.

Trade in hair is not something new. Wigs were worn in ancient Egypt. The earliest specimen was found in a burial site at Hierakonpolis dating to about 3400 BC. Wigs served a dual purpose in ancient Egyptian society, symbolic and practical, signaling high rank, while helping to protect shaven scalps (a sign of nobility) from the sun. They also aided hygiene by reducing the incidence of head lice.

In more modern times, the 17^th and 18^th centuries saw an explosion of gravity defying wiggery in the courts of Europe: think Marie Antoinette. Constructed over architectural frames and embellished with horse or goat hair, these wigs were held in place by a concoction of flour, gum, starch and a tolerance for neck pain.

But behind the finery and fashion, the dirty secret of the wig trade has always been that it relies on a gap in wealth and opportunities between those willing to sell their locks and those buying it. As Tarlow points out, it is no coincidence that the overwhelming majority of the hair on the market today, is black in colour, originating from Asian countries, notably China, India, Indonesia, Cambodia, Mongolia and Myanmar.

In India and China, most hair collectors are men on bicycles who ride around poorer neighbourhoods crying out their presence, although jugaadu loudspeakers are increasingly common. For women, selling their hair can allow for the payment of debts, medical expenses, school fees or just extra food on the table.  

But as these nations grow richer, the need to sell hair to meet basic needs is declining. And so, it is the temples of India, especially in the South, that have emerged as the most fertile grounds to harvest hair. For Hindus, shaving or tonsure is an important ritual of purification and renunciation. People shave their hair to mark their mourning upon losing loved ones. Others shear it as a gift to God in exchange for wish fulfilment.

Reading Tarlow’s book, I am struck by just how global the trade in hair is. She visits a high-end wig shop in Chennai, the capital of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where the stylist has recently returned from training in hair extensions with Balmain Hair in Paris. The stylist sells products that are marketed as exotic French ones for elite Indian clients. But the hair in these has in all probability been sourced from India itself, been processed in China and then travelled back to its point of origin via France, a layover that bestows on it an haute couture benediction.

Over 70% of the hair collected in India, from both temples and the discarded combings of ordinary folk (humans lose between 50 and 100 strands of hair daily), ends up being converted into hair products in Chinese factories. China is the biggest exporter of both human hair and synthetic hair products, with 88% of the world’s share in human hair goods and nearly 40% in the synthetic equivalents.

The United States is the largest importer of hair. China is the global mastermind of wig production. But the distribution of this hirsute market is more entangled. Jewish traders dominate in Europe and Israel. The billion dollar African-American market in the US is firmly in the hands of Korean traders, while the same segment in Britain is controlled by Pakistanis.

The story of hair is thus rife with geopolitical rivalries. India begrudges the fact that the bulk of her comb waste hair is purchased by Chinese hair companies who reap the value add of wig manufacture. The Chinese, in their turn resent the Korean-American dominance of the lucrative distribution networks in the United States. And Korean-American companies see the Chinese as rivals in both the global procurement of hair and the manufacture of hair products. Adding an ingredient to this competitive congee are some African-American activists who believe it is their community that should reap the benefits of the hair extension industry in the US, that is instead feeding the coffers of Koreans, Indians and Chinese.

Tarlow also explores some of the moral panics that have historically waxed and waned around the provenance of hair. Declarations about seemingly “innocent” hair in fact being sourced from cadavers, or lice-ridden heads, or even idol-worshipping heathens (aka Hindus), regularly erupt over the ages, upending global trade for periods of time.

The authenticity of hair is a preoccupation for many, given the smoke and mirrors around wiggery. The hair in a wig is easily other than what it purports. Just because the hair you see is blonde and purchased in Russia, for example, does not mean that this is its natural colour, or that it ever grew on a Russian head. It may have started out black, been bleached somewhere in Asia, and made its way to Europe via South Africa, before entering the market as “European hair.”

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As for me, I declined the hair system, opting instead for a cheapish synthetic wig that I wore less than a handful of times during my cancer treatments. But in the days leading up to the chemotherapy, wig shopping provided some succor, a sense of control, a dash of silliness. The feminine pleasure of retail therapy proved resilient, even in the face of cancer.

As I tried, and discarded, style after style, I became fascinated by the transformative power of wigs. Inside all this matter that was out of place, other people’s hair, lurked unspoken possibilities of seduction, cosplay, naughtiness, glamour. The ability to look into the mirror and become mysterious to myself. It was armour to rival lipstick.

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Until next week,

Pallavi