Weird question to ask: whose hair is on your head? Not what grows out of your skull, but what is sometimes attached to it by extra locks and strands. Hair extensions. Loose hair pieces that are glued or sewn into your own hair, making the hairstyle longer and fuller and appearing purely natural. The more expensive extensions are made from human hair. How many women wear other people’s hair – no idea, but apparently there are more than expected.
Susan van der Horst put her human hair extensions in an envelope and sent it to the editors of the Valuation service with the question: whose hair was this? I vaguely had the notion that there was such a thing as Asian hair – thick and firm – and European hair – fine, smooth and much more expensive if you want to have it made into a wig. At first I assumed it would be donated hair, something about charities and young girls voluntarily cutting their ponytails. Had I really focused on it for a moment, and realized that the trade in hair is of course much more than wigs for sick people, then I should have thought for myself that there was something else behind it. A story of poverty, inequality and exploitation.
Sylvia Bruens, the largest hair importer in the Netherlands, is honest with the Keuringsdienst. Her storage is a mecca with a million hair extensions sorted by color and length. Everything coming from the heads of women who make some money by selling their hair. So think for yourself where those hairs can come from. Wherever there is poverty. Parts of China, India, Vietnam and Indonesia. Also, but much less, from Peru, Brazil or Kazakhstan.
Bruens himself also has extensions. Long and full hair is, she says, “your femininity,” the “crown of your face.” And, “yes, help, yes” it is probably also for the women who donate it. To make matters worse: “The donor, who has walked around with it the longest, gets the least for it.”
The Inspection Service visits hair factory AZ Hair in Vietnam, where local hair is collected, packaged and sold. New hair has just been brought in by intermediary Ersin, her carrier filled with thick black tails tied together. We also see how she drives through villages on her moped in search of women with long hair. She doesn’t cut Tvan Thi Lay’s head with scissors, she cuts strands with a knife. This woman wants to buy chicks with the 30 euros she gets for it. Tong Thi Nga’s 14-year-old daughter’s hair is harvested every two years. She receives 40 euros, hair of teenage girls is in demand, because strong and shiny.
Processed with chemicals
In the factory, women check hair by hair, dirt and lice are filtered out. One woman (out of fifty employees) spends a day putting together one bundle of hair from the hair of seven to ten women, intended for one Western woman. But not before the jet-black strand has been processed by hand with chemicals into hair in all the shades of color that exist in Europe.
Reporter Marijn Frank seized the opportunity to have extensions sewn on for 689 euros. Looked great on her, yes. Extensions are addictive, said the hair stylist. “Now you can never do without it.” But, she cheered her up: “You give a number of women a better life with it.” Hair extensions as development aid, that’s how you can look at it.
Coincidentally, the Flemish writer Herman Brusselmans (65) cut off his long hair yesterday after 37 years. It was forty centimeters long, enough for a good, gray extension. But he donated it to the Belgian foundation Think Pink, which makes wigs for breast cancer patients. From free hair.