Emma Tarlo

The blurbs on this book try to convince you it's not all about wigs, but it's all about wigs. To be fair, it's a really interesting book about wigs. I had no idea how extensive the human hair trade was, from hair ritually shorn to wads of hair pulled from combs and painstakingly hand-separated and sorted by length. I think it's interesting how most hair comes from India, China, and parts of Southeast Asia, and yet lighter colors are so prized. In my own country, blond hair is fairly common, and yet it's hard enough to get people to take your hair as a donation, much less for sale. I look at the hair clogging up the combs of my long-haired friends and boggle at the amount of money they could make if they lived in a place the hair buyers visit. From the inner workings of the hair trade, I also learned about the end product. It's not all fashion and chemotherapy patients. There are cultural norms (especially among African-American communities), religious uses (I did not know, for example, that some Orthodox Jewish women wear wigs that look like their real hair), and even a quick stop by a hair transplant clinic. If you like biographies of things, this is worth a read.… (mehr)

Emma Tarlo's book on hair is certainly interesting, and at times captivating. However, I found myself initially confused about the purpose of the book. I knew it was about hair, but at no point did the author mention what he wanted this book to be about, which is usually pretty common for non-fiction, and helpful for anthropological texts. I initially was uncertain if the book would be about hairstyles throughout the ages, or attitudes about hair through history. It wasn't until I reached the section on "black hair" that I realized the book was really about the uses of hair in hair products such as wigs, weaves, sheitels, toupees, etc. As I came to understand the purpose of the book, I became more absorbed in what the author was trying to convey.

As a piece of work, I find it to be fascinating, and I definitely know more and think more about hair now than I did before. I appreciate the author's discussion of the cultural importance of various cultures' hair practices. However, the writing style was a bit off putting as she often rambled a bit without making it clear what point she was trying to make, and she included a lot of exclamation marks, where I did not think they were needed. I'm being a bit nitpicky here, but both of these things led me to believe this was her first book, which to my surprise, it was not.

Given the coverage the author includes, I would recommend this book to anyone seeking to understand the artificial hair industry, but I would also recommend back-up texts too, because her writing is hard to get though at times. I enjoyed this book, but I didn't love it.

Full disclosure: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.… (mehr)