Gimme a head with hair, long beautiful hair
Shining, gleaming, steaming, flaxen, waxen
Give me down to there, hair!
Shoulder length, longer (hair!)
Here baby, there mama, Everywhere daddy daddy
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Abhi at age 3: Nice hair runs in our Indian family. |
-Lyrics from the musical Hair
You know what I love me most about South Asian women? Long, beautiful, black hair. Yep, I’m a hair man. Last Friday Brian (followed by a few others) tipped us off that NPR’s Day to Day ran a story about the hottest beauty trend to hit Los Angeles. “Indian Temple Hair.” As everyone knows, L.A. sets the trends for the rest of the nation to follow. Look out middle-America:
In most big American cities, almost any luxury item can be had for a price — real champagne from France, truffles from Italy, and in Los Angeles, human hair from India. Whether it’s individual clumps or full wefts, true human hair is available in beauty salons across the city, and selling very well.Take, for example, Vared Valensi. The walls of her salon on a busy corner of Melrose Avenue are plastered with pictures of Valensi with some of her celebrity clients, including Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, Tara Reid and a nest of Playboy bunnies. Each one is cute, skinny and has someone else’s hair attached to her head. Valensi put it there.
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p>This story is absolutely ridic. The interview they do with the woman from the temple in India (where they import this hair from) had me speechless.
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…so-called “temple hair” comes from India. It is a byproduct of a religious practice many faithful Hindu women have observed for generations. Pilgrims cut off their hair as an offering to the gods. The hair is then cleaned, processed and exported.Tiripati temple is where most of the Hindu offerings take place. The hair trade is a boon for the temple, now commonly known as the richest temple in India. Much of that money is coming from places like Los Angeles, where advertisements for Indian hair dot utility poles and storefront windows across the city. With demand for Indian hair growing, more and more Indian companies are advertising to Americans directly, hoping to cash in on the trend.
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p>Ummm. I’m not sure…but isn’t it kind of blasphemous to take hair offered to the Gods…and then turn around and sell it to Tara Reid?
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For two months, Pushpa’s husband was ill with a high fever. When he finally recovered, she traveled 10 hours by bus to a temple here in southern India to thank Lord Vishnu in the best way she knew: by shaving her head.
Pushpa, who declined to give her last name, had her 32-inch locks cut off by a temple barber, a gesture intended to thank the deity for good fortune. The hair itself headed in a more secular direction: to an auction where hair brokers bid for it. Some strands bought at auction are made into hair extensions, which are sold to Western women for as much as $3,000 for a full head of hair. [Link]
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p>Damn. That’s pretty cold. Talk about profiting off the most unfortunate. SM commenter Taz, who lives here in L.A., has noticed this new fashion trend also:
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Abhi’s mom in her early 30s. Where Abhi inherits his beautiful hair from (although his dad’s hair is pretty nice also). |
Every time I drive down La Brea here in LA, I always do a double take when I cross Pico. There is this huge red sign in front of a store in a strip mall that says, “100% Indian Hair.” As a South Asian woman, I find this sign ridiculously strange and wonder just what exactly would happen if I walked into the store. Would they turn me away? Would they kidnap me into the back room for a hair hijacking? Should I start collecting the hair out of my drain and bring it in for some extra money to pay for grad school? What is it about my kind of hair that makes beauty shops so excited about advertising that they have “100% Indian Hair?”…Why Indian hair? Because our hair is the best. No for real, that’s what the research shows. Indian hair is thicker than European hair and thinner than Chinese hair. Once treated, it is less prone to breaking. The best kind of hair is long and untreated with all the cuticles in the same direction. It is collected in plaits… [Link]
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There is even a website called MyIndianHair.com!
Do you have big plans for Superbowl Sunday? Do you need to look your absolute best? Well, let MIH help. for a limit time we’re offering a complete Make-over for $1000. This special price includes Hair (including a style of your choice), Make-up application, pedicure, manicure, eyelashes and a start up kit to keep yourself looking beautiful way after Superbowl Sunday is over. Call for an appointment today.
You have to listen to the whole NPR story. It contains a few rather humorous gems that I am not mentioning in this post as incentive for you to listen to the whole thing.
1] abhi you cutie patoodie! that’s the most adorable picture ever! i’m a big fan of the huge collar and the vest! woohoo!
2] i find the entire idea of wearing someone else’s hair on your head when you have perfectly normal and healthy hair to be disturbing and gross. i dont care how clean they say it is… it’s gross. NOTE: i have an exception for people who wear toupes and wigs. although i think toupes are funny–in concept and just b/c the word is funny.
3]
ummm… yes?
4] who gets the cash from the sale? the woman? the temple? some scheming priest? the barber? sorry i’m cynical about temple–i won’t go b/c i think they’re corrupt [but hey that’s me]!
oh wait… and… 5] am i the only person who thought of The Gift of the Magi?
GAH. I was rendered speechless until I realised that I should stop with the hating and start growing my hair and pay off some bills. Although by the time my hair grows anywhere past my neck I’m sure the L.A. trend setters would have moved onto something else just as mystical and vile like Sacred Yogic Barber’s Toe Clipping Jewellery. Ooh! Maybe a New-Moon Cremation Ground’s exclusive line of secret-ash makeup or some Disgarded Coconut Husk clutch purses! I have to call my agent.
Oh and P.S. why do we get truffles from Italy and champagne de France but human HAIR from India? Now, that’s not a parallel example at all. I mean at least if we were talking buttery Italian leather wallets and authentic Midwestern farm-grown mink coats or something…
a strand?!
I knew this was an expensive racket, but I didn’t realize it was a 30cent – $1.50 before salon markup for each strand racket.
wow. Next time Mr. cicatrix grumbles about my hair clogging up the bathtub….
Anyway, myindianhair.com was just sort of sad. Great to find a solution, however superficial, for alopecia. Less great that african american women are still held to beauty ideals that compell them to shell out that much money because “nappy” hair is still considered “bad.”
It was kind of sad wasn’t it – I visited MyIndianHair.com right after I posted my snarky comment and was all “Aww man… alopecia! That sucks.” But, narrowed eyes, anyone without hair loss problems buying Indian temple hair is still totally whack.
Yeah. But I guess it would be like ‘prasaadi’ hair, right? I mean, someone offered it to God, and your devotion has to be pretty strong to do something like that, I would think, especially if you’re a woman. So, maybe you could accrue some spiritual merit by wearing it, too. Or maybe not.
Great picture Abhi. We want the rest of the mutineers!
As someone who had to be very, very slowly introduced to layers by the gentlest of stylists, and still shudders at the suggestion of getting a pixie cut, I understand the horror at chopping off one’s hair. But I think perhaps it could be just little patronizing to be so horrified on a consenting adult volunteering devotee’s behalf. No one chops off their hair at Tirupati thinking it will be offered directly to the Deity. I mean, one just doesn’t offer hair–or any other body part–to a Deity like that. It’s quite OBVIOUS it’s a fundraising scheme. So if that’s what Pushpa et al want to do, more power to them—it’s not really any different from any other fundraiser. And having decided that it is a fundraiser, I say, get all the money from Tara Reid you can.
I remember this story came up some time ago when there was a problem with Jewish women wearing Indian wigs. I guess some Orthodox Jewish women don’t show their own hair after marriage, and so some opt to wear wigs instead. However, since these Indian wigs had been made from hair cut during a religious service, which service belonged to an idolotrous pagan religion, an Israeli rabbi issued an order saying that all Indian wigs were to be burned.
I was very curious at the time to know what happened to that hair market after a huge blow to demand like that. And now the answer: LA. Go figure.
After the Birmingham riots last year in the UK (where the media claimed tensions between blacks and browns were exacerbated by the fact that brown people own all the beauty supply stores in black neighborhoods, much like Koreans in the U.S.), a brown friend of mine snarked “It’s not OUR fault that they covet the straight black hair of my people!” Hmmm. So it’s interesting to learn that the same hair can be blonded up for Hollywood tarts as well.
A friend of mine in SF used to make real human-hair wigs for an opera company, and then on her own. She said it was an extremely expensive habit, and that her best wigs were worth thousands.
First- Abhi, your mom is a film-star; she’s gorgeous!
I’ve never sold a braid, but I have donated some sizeable cuttings to Locks of Love. As for hoity-toity LA trendsetters and socialites taking up desi hair, instead of some kitchen-ass weave, at $3000 a shot… well I’d better start cleaning my hairbrushes and digging in the shower drain. Ka-ching!
so-called “temple hair” comes from India. It is a byproduct of a religious practice many faithful Hindu women have observed for generations. Pilgrims cut off their hair as an offering to the gods. The hair is then cleaned, processed and exported.
Wait till Pat Robertson finds out about this.
There is no blasphemy in Hinduism. But you already knew that.
M. Nam
Once Whitey gets a clue that Vatika hair oil (and it’s counterparts) is responsible for these fabulous locks, Tirupati’s goin’ DOWN! (All Mixed Up, I’m so with you on point #4. By the way, don’t know if the NPR piece covered it but Tirupati is apparently the second wealthiest religious institution in the world after the Vatican)
Coconut oil seems to show up in a lot of the higher priced hair conditioners – Body Shop has a line, Kiehls makes a very good one – but Americans don’t know that you have to leave it on longer than 30 seconds to get the full effect. One of us needs to start adding some lavender (or whatever else will mask the potent essence de coconut) and bottling that sh*t. Package it nicely, of course. Peruse the aisles of Sephora for ideas.
Takers? Anyone?
on the other hand, the ancient sages of hinduism didn’t account for tara reid.
So you don’t think Persis Kambhatta was hot? You of all people! Say it ain’t so! Actually, if I’m going to be cheeky, are you saying you don’t love South Asian women with short hair? What about Falgani Pathak, she’s so steamy.
Missing ‘y’?
Abhi: Nice strategy !! First you cut me, your cute litle brother and yourself in a “Bow Tie” off from the picture, leaving just your Mom, and then you try to butter me up saying ‘Oh, by the way Dad has great hair too”. I believe the picture is from Circa 1978 – suburban Chicago area. I may not show this to your mom – just so that her Ego is not flared up again – By the way “they” tell me that girls from South India have the “longest and darkest” hair. Rather too late for me – but you keep that in mind!!… Love…….Dad
Wouldn’t the hair get damaged pretty seriously when it’s dyed? Dying jet black hair is usually a pretty onerous task. On a tangential note, who do so many desi chicks insist on dying their hair various fugly shades of brown? It usually makes them look washed-out and lifeless.
Yo Dad, That was hilarious! Where can we get more of you?
And “They” are right. Again, the coconut oil, the coconut oil!
How come the article is in first person but the picture legends are in the third? Who wrote them? A mystery picture caption-writer. My money’s on Yo Dad having read the ‘although his dadÂ’s hair is pretty nice also’ line…
hmm.. interesting article..and great blackmail pics abhi… now want a pic of your dad circa 1970’s.. come on.. we know you have one..
don’t know about selling hair to tara reid..but rather.. i know there is an organization in the states called locks of love (yeah DesiDancer, you ROCK and have become a star in my eyes!) where you can donate your hair to make wigs for people who are bald secondary to cancer chemotherapy/treatments, etc… a friend of mine cut off 12 inches of her hair for that cause… worthy and just selfless…
don’t agree on giving hair to the LA fashionistas from heads of women who have shaved their head for religious purposes.. don’t agree..
chola, locks of love is a GREAT organization. I chopped my hip-length hair to my shoulders and I hope a few kids got to reap the benefits. I sleep a lot better at night knowing it went to a good cause and not out to Marquis with drunk Tara Reid. 😉
One woman’s trash is another woman’s treasure?
Nope, me too…though it was a close second to Jo March sacrificing her ‘one beauty’ in Little Women – got $40 for it, too (and that was going rate, state-side, during the Civil War era). I’m pretty sure, in reading the text, that it was to be made into a wig.
Long hair was at a premium during WWII – didn’t it get used to transmit coded messages, somehow? My history’s fuzzy.
Still…I wonder what’s supposed to be done with the hair offerings. Is it like prasad, or coins offered – a commodity to benefit the temple, and perhaps the indigent who live in and around the temple?
Wow…this is definitely eye opening. My mom cut her tresses off right after I was born but had them made into a plait for my granny whose hair was beginning to thin. I would use the plait in my own shoulder length hair during Navratri and the like. That trustworthy plait is now duly vatikaaed and conditioned to help my ‘Baa’ have a fuller bun. Okay..that sounds wrong but you guys get the jist of it.
I sent in some 6 inches of untreated and healthy hair to locks of love as well. Boy am I glad that it didn’t end up as a once a dail accessory for a drunk bimbette!
Abhi, I love the page boy haircut. I had my ‘boycut’ when I was young too. My dad calls this style the ‘sufuria cut’, sufuria is swahili for a small pan. He’d say that you wear a pan on your head like a helmet and you chop off everything that remains exposed.
I think DesiDancer gets the prize for being the all-round nicest person on SM today 😉
Hmmm, so its catching up in LA. I had almost forgotten about this hair export thing when I read this today. Way back in 1995, with still a year to go before I could get out of high school, I found myself at the front door of this home-converted-into-an-office building. I was there to get some support for a “Keep the street clean” campaign and kick start a community cleaning program that us, high school kids were proposing. Waiting for the head honcho, I found myself reading company literature. The company was this! My memory is clouded at this point, but I think I came out of my meeting with a substantial contribution to start our program. Btw, the “Our Products” page makes an interesting read. And oh, one of the “horror” stories that my grandmom used to relate to my female cousins (we guys would just laugh it off), was this one about a young village belle who wakes up at the morning of her wedding to find her long tresses completely chewed off by a rat!
Okay..I have issues with that company you linked aNTI. First, none of the models are brown. Then the products are just flat out gross. The non remy version really gave me the creeps. Yuck..
This isn’t a new trend at all. In fact in one life time when I was struggling with college expenses I sold hair on a couple of occassions to a Jamaican salon in Queens NYC! In NYC anytime a desi chick goes to a black hair dresser she will be asked if she wants to sell her hair, without fail. Now I rather just give to Locks of Love.
Nice locks btw Abhi. You could start a whole side business with that family hair.
aw shucks, Jai 🙂
I’m pretty psyched that Msichana has revealed the universal and international phenomenon of The Bowl Cut. Here I thought it was just my dad being kanjus 😉
Cary Grant voice Always a pleasure, DD 😉
Hands up everyone who’s got (or has seen) typical “1970s desi dad” photos of their father: Huge sideburns, brown tweed jacket with leather elbow-patches. Admit it ! Standard 70s male NRI uniform !
Unless, of course, you happen to be an ex-Nairobi/Mombasa/Kampala family, in which case you’ll probably have pics of your father suavely posing in Roger Moore-style safari suits in various “tasteful” colours like khaki/beige and pastel blue…..
Jai…I have those! My dad still sported huge sideburns and muscle tees back in the seventies in a living room with orange and purple couches. In one, he even has a stylish beret! As for the suits, you prolly mean the infamous ‘kaunda suits’.
Finally! My long black Sikh hair is “in” =)
You forgot the wiiiiiiiiide collared polyblend shirts with shiny pearly snaps in lovely prints (which seem to be coming back in style right now, hmmm) and the stock-issued 70s FOB dad eyeglass frames 🙂 My dad was P-Desi of the 70’s.
Jai, spot on about the safari suit pic! ha ha ha My mum always had short hair, so she made me grow mine, and therefore I was NEVER trendy! Plaits and ribbons!!! Ofcourse come my 18th birthday, snip snip…. I wish I had kept the shorn locks now! ThatÂ’s $3000 easy! I could be sitting on the beach in Seychelles right now instead of freezing DC. My goodness the way Indian hair grows, we would all be sitting ‘pretty’
who gets the cash from the sale? the woman? the temple? some scheming priest? the barber?
One of the biggest scandals in India, imo, is that temple funds are managed by the state. Meanwhile most temples are falling to bits while the state uses the funds for “secular” purposes.
I’ve actually been to Tirupati back before there was a price for this hair. The women (or men) just do this as an act of sacrifice. The barber probably just makes a pittance.
What about the Member’s Only jacket? Unfortunately, my dad still wears them sometimes. He has like 4 of them, and he was especially proud of his black leather one. We have pictures of us at Disney World mid-July and my dad is wearing a Member’s Only jacket.
I have been to Tirupati a few times, and most recently last month. In fact during my first trip there when I was a kid, my mom made me offer my beautiful hair. Tirupati is quite an interesting place. The bald people, the line, the mad rush – people stand in line for hours for a 10 second glimpse of the deity. In fact the whole ‘temple’ and religious experience in India is quite fascinating. First time visitors to the temple scene (mostly NRIs) hoping to catch some spirituality are generally disappointed, mostly because of the chaos and pushing etc. – but thats a way of life there, that forces you to realize that this world just aint between you and the lord. For Tirupati, you actually need to buy tickets, and sometimes they are sold off months in advance – but if you are an NRI/PIO not to worry – you show them your airline tickets and they will accommodate you. I do think that most people realize that their hair offerings will be made into wigs etc – but little do they know that it goes for $3000. .
I learned way to much about hair extensions from this site– but basically, “The Indian hair fiber is small in diameter compared to Chinese hair and after chemical processing can feel and look just like European hair. Finally, a great attribute of Indian hair is that it comes in a full range of textures and body.”
Gift of the Magi? Little Women? What about Mistry’s A Fine Balance where that guy goes around stealing hair to sell on the streets of Bombay and eventually kills a woman because she had perfect hair that would bring in a lot of money?
My looks never helped with Gail in pre-school OR Kim in Kindergarten. Probably because I wet myself that one time.
Yep. 🙂 Only one problem. My mom will NEVER dance. NEVER. There is just no getting her on the floor, even for garba or raas.
Yes, thank you for pointing it out 🙂
Jai, you are totally stealing the thunder of my big surprise. A few weeks back I started planning something that I am going to announce with a blog post in June. Stay tuned, and no guessing please.
OMG! I can’t believe you started a topic I’ve practically dealt in for a few years. Yes hair from India is quite in demand. There are two types (1)Barber cut (2) Thukku. Thukku is the hair which has been shaved from the roots (eg. Tirupati). The cost of Thukku is much higher than that Barber cut. Thukku is primarily used for wigs etc. while Barber cut is used in making of amino acids / L-cystine (prob spelt wrong) etc. – which is later used in food products, I dare not tell which ones cause you most probably had one this morning. The rush to procure hair from India is quite high, but the demand for quality is equally pressing too. Quality? Yep. A typical Barber cut specs would look like 2% dust, x% moisture, 0% metal…and so on. Ten years ago I got together with this big hair exporter from India to build this machine which would “clean” the hair…sounds ridiculous but hey it was a lot of money and we were doing like 20 containers a month!
Thanks, taz. I immediately thought of “A Fine Balance” also. I remember thinking that it was pretty improbable and far-fetched when I read the book.
EWWWWWWWWW
Since Oz wouldn’t share- and I was seriously creeped out, I found this piece on how that L-Cystine is used in food in an article titled “Eating Human Hair by Another Name.” Gross, gross, gross…
Just because you’re paranoid about being veg doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you (from link above):
I think it was fastfood nation that made me realize a religious vegetarian is better off with all artifician flavors–natural could be anything.
Yup. I know two women who had their beautiful, long, healthy, Indian tresses sheared off without their knowledge on a public train in Bombay. This happened a few years ago, when apparently it was a real fear that if long hair was left hanging freely on a train/platform there was a good chance it would be missing by the end of your journey – of course the ones responsilble were illegal hair traders making many a buck off it. really traumatizing for a woman…sigh.
Its weird i was just telling somebody at work about the Tirupathi temple y’day.Not sure if somebody mentioned this but the Tirupathi temple makes $40M from the sale of the hair. The temple has around 50,000/day or 19 million visitor in a year more than the vatican. You can imagine the amount of hair they collect…
Msichana,
Your father sounds like quite a dude back in the day…..”Beret” eh ? wink…..Oh yeah, don’t forget the swirly wallpaper everwhere too…..
DesiDancer,
Those wide-lapelled dodgy shirts appear to be standard dudewear these days in many desi soaps too (“Hmmm”, as you said). Spot on about those classic 70s glasses frames too — and let’s not forget the tinted yellow lenses for maximum macho brown male poseability.
(I loved the P-Diddy pic — the caption was brilliant !)
Rupa Israeli-supermodel-type-person,
Sounds like your father wins the contest for ongoing coolness 😉
I think it’s pretty much an accepted fact that the average desi dad in his 70s heyday was an icon of “brown John Travolta” dandyishness. Now all that’s left is lots of uncles at that time with moustaches (and the occasional brave soul who went all-out and had a beard to complement his shaggy hair), and images of one’s father posing with a bright-red Datsun Sunny, Starsky-style……
Oh oh…I just remembered. My mom used to wear giant gold hoops and then would have a strand from either side of her head poke through it. This was also the time when they had major beehives and stretched eye liner.
Yet again another post from Daddyo to resurrect the ‘We want dad as guest blogger’ request. A tag team comedy monkey operation of sorts perhaps? Come on SM make it happen. If Abhi’s dad is half as cute as Abhi I say your hit count doubles when you bring him on!
I see JoaT’s buttering up the potential father-in-law 😉
In Anglophone West Africa, they call them “Politician Suits.” I could never imagine wearing them in the states though – they look too much like (sleeping) pajamas, but they look great in browner and blacker climes.
Sidd – what do they call them in Cd’I?