Introduction
If I ask you to make a list of the top-ten highly lucrative business opportunities in Nigeria, I’m sure human hair would never cross your mind. And that’s what makes this edition of ‘investment tips’ quite revealing, though controversial; controversial in the sense that even though many people are making money out of it and many women are deriving pleasure from it, it is entirely a dangerous business, and definitely a dangerous practice for those who patronise it.
Yes, it is becoming the trend that a woman would be described as having ‘good’ hair because her hair is long and straight. Many people think that the natural hair is not luxurious, thick or sleek enough to meet the attraction of the modern time; reason why putting on hair extensions makes today’s woman feel extra confident like a man putting on a smart suit.
However, if only our women could pause for a minute to think of the origin of the hair extensions; if only artificial hair traders and stylists could ponder over the deadly implications of this soaring so-called ‘fashionable’ business, nobody would advise anybody to stop giving in to that trend and fashion or to stop patronising the trade. Those who have been interrogated are ashamed to admit that they never once stopped to consider where for instance, the human hair that they had pinned or sewn into their head had come from. Others are so ignorant that they couldn’t quite estimate how much the hair extensions were costing them every month or every year.
The Origin of Commercial Artificial Hair
The artificial hair is mainly derived from the shaved human or animal hair; and the shaving of large chunks of human hair for commercial purposes originated from a religious sacrifice inside a Hindu temple in Chennai, India, where young children, particularly girls with long dark tresses, who are possessed of evil spirits, are taken to for healing. As it were, the foremost act in the healing process is the shaving of the hair of the sick person. In similar circumstances, women also go to the Hindu temple to have their hair shaved, either as a way of showing gratitude for a child’s recovery from an unusual illness, or as a way of fasting in order to save a household from demonic attack or repossession. Some have prayed for a child, others for a sick relative or a good harvest, and for their prayers to be answered, they had to offer up their hair. Each of this is a religious sacrifice: the shaving essentially represents a last-ditch plea to a higher power (God) to save the person or home under siege from spiritual destruction.
In ancient times, the hair was to be cast away or buried but in modern commercial times, for the reason that it finds market somewhere, the braids and plaits would be neatly collected in bins and later shipped to salons in Russia, Western Europe, and Nigeria. For the reason that the chopped-off hair is fetching a lot of money, factories are springing up every day to buy up and process the hair for the increasing number of users who in the name of fashion want to look more fanciful. Even though the sources are mainly India, the dealers brand them ‘Brazilian’, ‘Peruvian’, ‘Malyasian’ etc.
Do you know that the hair used in the extensions is at times taken from corpses? This is horrifying! If you’re a lady, you would least imagine that you were wearing a dead person’s hair, in the name of artificial long hair. Tufia-kwa! It is true that something is so deeply personal about a woman’s hair: it should be every woman’s pride and joy but must it be acquired artificially at all cost?
Some hair extensions come from European prisoners. Warders were forcibly shaving and selling the hair of prisoners, which means that the ultimate user of this hair would be wearing prisoners’ hair on her head.
The Market and Moral Implications of the Artificial Hair Trade
The biggest market in the world where artificial hair is procured from is Chennai, one of the biggest cities in India. From India, the hair is transported to the factories in Russia and Great Britain, and distributed to other commercial cities across the world. All over Russia and Britain, girls, especially music stars and social celebrities from the Black race, are clipping, gluing and sewing other people’s hair into their heads.
It is unbelievable that there is a staggering profit to be made from this trade. If you go into the heart of rural India and Russia and from there to London’s most upmarket hair salons, you would discover this shocking reality. In the UK, a full head of luxurious hair that would have cost just £20 before now is today sold for as much as £100. From the UK, a full head of extensions of the best quality ‘European hair’ is imported into Nigeria at £2,000. Recent figures show that British women spend a staggering £65 million a year on hair extensions. Today, hair is more than just a symbol: it is big business. From India to Peru, the human hair trade has spread across the globe, and it has the UK emphatically in its grasp. Last year, the UK Customs recorded more than £38m worth of hair (human, with some mixed human and animal) entering the country, making the UK the third biggest importer of human hair in the world.
Ironically, Nigeria is crazily, gradually overtaking Britain as a leader in global artificial hair trade. Studies reveal that black women, mostly from Nigeria, are now willing to spend at least double an amount on hair and beauty products than white women. According to estimates, Africa’s dry hair market — that is, the market for weaves, wigs and hair extensions — is currently worth over $6 billion a year and growing quite rapidly. Nigeria, South Africa and Cameroun command a sizeable amount of this value.
The widely advertised salons are reckoned as high-brow ‘beauty centres’, known for providing top-quality soft and fine hair. And women flock to such places in droves. Everybody is flocking into this flourishing business. But no one is asking questions.
The Moral Questions to ask
In a continent where over 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, questions should be asked as to why the business of beauty, especially artificial hair products, should be experiencing unwarranted significant boom. Many women, a good number surprisingly responsible mature mothers, are emptying their bank accounts in order to purchase a pair of clip-in extensions to give the illusion that ‘my hair is still as thick and lengthy as it once was’. This is self-delusion induced by societal craze and deception. Moreover, as consumers, we need to make sure that the hair we use is ethical, and has been given to the new user with the consent of the original owner.
Furthermore, we need to be sure that the people it has come from had treated their hair fairly.
Far more importantly, we also have a spiritual responsibility to be conscious and avoid the hairs that have been cut off from women that are undergoing purification or who are making sacrifices. If a person does not display this obligation responsibly, the evil spirits that are shaved off together with the hair of the original owner will surely find home in the bodies and souls of the patronisers of the hair trade: sellers and buyers alike, especially the ultimate users. The hair business is dirty secret because underneath all that hair there’s the dreaded concoction of this real spiritual danger.
Again, the fake hair trade is exploitative. It takes undue advantage of those who are destitute. In the present times, much of the hair on sale comes from small agents who tour villages in India, China, and Eastern Europe, offering poverty-stricken women small payments to part with their hair. They are not doing it for fun. Usually only people who have temporary financial difficulties, in depressed regions, sell their hair. In India some husbands are reportedly forcing their wives into selling their hair, slum children were being tricked into having their heads shaved in exchange for toys, and in one case a gang stole a woman’s hair, holding her down and cutting it off.
Agents who deal in “temple hair”, are quick to point out defensively that the hair is donated willingly; that they have representatives based in India who buy it straight from the temple and ensure the money is funnelled directly back into the local community to fund “medical aid, educational systems and other crucial infrastructure projects”. This is mere fallacy. It’s all about making quick money smartly and unethically.
Again and again, wearing extension hair makes the fashion industry a glorification of artificiality. Fake complexion resulting from body bleaching, fake teeth, fake boobs and even fake nails, are all part of artificiality, which must be hidden, not celebrated. Fake hair goes with all that. The whole idea of beauty is now predicated on artificiality and getting rid of humanness – waxing every hair from your body but putting fake hair on your head. The practice is closely akin to using chalk to fake manufactured drugs, or wilfully selling expired drugs and sentencing innocent patients to untimely deaths.
Conclusion
As we’ve learned, even if you sell out for fancy and luxurious high-end hair, you could end up sharing your locks with a goat or a dead man or a mad man or spiritually possessed person. How does this sound? And if you join the bandwagon of the fake hair trade, you have become an accomplice, just as an innocent person who unknowingly acts as a custodian of a stolen chattel; and you would surely receive a full dose of the backlash that comes thereafter as temporal or spiritual punishment.
Recent reports have cast a lot of doubt on the hair extension industry. From country-wide hair extensions allegedly being made from goat hair to weaves that are harvested from corpses, serious ethical concerns have been raised about the industry. Long, luxurious locks are beautiful without a doubt, but now, experts in the beauty industry are asking: at what cost?
The problem with mixing animal, synthetic, and human hair is that it makes the extensions almost impossible to care for properly. Plastic hair, animal hair and human hair all react differently to heat styling, so you have no idea if your extensions will hold up or be able to withstand regular wear and tear. Also, it’s just weird to know that you might be wearing goat hair on your head.
If you did away with extensions, you would discover that you’re still the same person without them—even better if you count the amount of time and brain power you can now attribute to other things. We are already noticing a rise in salons catering exclusively to those black women who don’t relax, straighten or extend their Afro hair. “More people ought to be making a statement with natural hair, not fake ones; and more salons that preserve natural hair and originality should be opening up.
May be the hair has become stinking as it normally does if it stays a little longer than necessary, and someone who used to respect you draws close, and suddenly you just realised how desperately you needed to rush to the salon again to wash the hair. Moreover, what if something happens and the extensions fall out in the full glare of people around? Rather than the greedy compliments: “you look so splendid!” that you expected your friends to bestow, you get an embarrassment.
It turns out there’s almost no regulation in the hair extension industry, all this while. There should be. Religious and ethically-oriented NGOs should join the call for change for the restoration of natural life and dethronement of artificiality. As the Artificial Hair industry is not regulated, factory practices are unethical and are not regulated so when demand outstrips supply, factories end up cutting corners: mixing human hair with synthetic hair or corpse hair or animal hair.
Do not join them if you can’t beat them. From spiritual or moral considerations, natural beauty is the best, and self-discipline is often the best form of regulation. So, if you were either a user or trader of hair extensions, let it be your new-year (2020) resolution to quit the scene henceforth. Make a bold U-turn! Avoid ‘had-I-known’! Money is not everything and all that glitters is not gold!
