Disturbing: Daily Mail Article Shows the Inhumane Ways Human Hair is Collected for Wigs and Weaves

Perhaps you’ve seen dozens of Instagram pop-up shops promising the best virgin hair that your money can buy. Or maybe you’ve admired a celebrity’s ever changing mane and wished you could afford to change up your look with premium Brazilian or Indian Remy hair weaves. Most black women know that hair that luxurious doesn’t come cheap. In fact, some of the most believable human hair wigs can run you thousands of dollars. However, most don’t know that there’s an even bigger price to pay when you choose to wear the best of the best on your head. You may have to live with the fact that you helped exploit a poor Indian woman or child for vanity.

In an article written for the Daily Mail, we learned that the women whose hair you’re wearing, don’t always give it up so freely and most are treated unfairly when they try to make a living by selling their hair. The women who sacrifice their hair for religious reasons have never colored or even blow dried their hair. This virgin hair is prized by barbers who are eager to take a steel blade to the heads of women and young girls who have grown hair well past their waists. The woman in the photo below, Lavanya Kakala, insists on getting nothing in return for sacrificing her hair.

“ I did this because I wanted to say thank you to my God, Kakala said. I’m not bothered what happens to my hair afterwards. If women with bad hair want to use my old hair to look better, it’s better than it going in the bin.”

Over 20 million dollars is made at the Tirumala Temple in southern India. Yet the money, which is supposed to help build new schools and hospitals, isn’t traceable.
If women don’t sacrifice their hair, men have other ways of getting the liquid gold. Children are tricked into shaving their heads in exchange for toys and women are forced by their husbands to sell their hair.

“I was held down by a gang of men who hacked at my hair,’ one girl said. ‘I know of other women who have been blackmailed and threatened.” said one woman. – Daily Mail.co.uk

Cutting fairs are held in parts of Siberia and Ukraine. Those regions are known for their soft and naturally blonde hair. With extremely low prices (25 inch-long dark brown hair sells for 38 euro), it’s no wonder hair retailers are able to buy so much premium human hair and sell it to the gullible at ridiculous prices.

Think you’re getting what’s labeled on the package? Think again. Brazilian and Peruvian hair is prized for its thickness and is the most valuable hair. However, Chinese hair is the least desirable hair because it’s coarse and straight, yet it’s often labeled as Indian or Peruvian hair to make it more valuable.

If the way the hair is collected doesn’t make your stomach churn, then the process of sorting through the hair surely will. After the hair is gathered, someone has to sort through it and make it pretty right? That’s were female Asian women come in to play. After hair is swept and rolled up into bales like hay, a female Asian worker spends a whole day untangling just 150 grams of hair. The process is hard on the eyes and painstakingly slow, yet most of this hair sold for 5 euro or less.

Even though hair distributors only pay a small amount of money for the hair that’s collected and packaged, hair salons charge clients thousands of dollars for the extensions.

Hair is sold by the kilogram to wholesalers, many in the U.S., where it’s packed, labelled and stored ready for distribution. This is where the real money is: the Asian factories are paid a fraction of what the wholesalers make from British salons. Gloria King, a wholesaler running a company called Egovan, says she has enough hair in stock to ship 10kg to Britain at any time. – DailyMail.co.uk

“These are very poor people,’ she says of her suppliers. ‘With the $45 we pay them, they can feed their family for three weeks.” –  DailyMail.co.uk

Despite these facts, some hair re-sellers and hair stylists insist that their hair comes from Indian women who willingly give up their hair. One client of a British hair stylist stated that she gets her extensions put in every 3 to 4 months.

“I do think about where they come from, but I trust my hairdresser that they’ve been ethically and willingly sourced.”

If only she knew.