This is fascinating to me, because I have very long hair and always get asked if my hair is real. Then when people are skeptical when I say yes, I ask WHERE can you buy real, long, afro-textured human hair?? I have yet to see real hair my actual hair type being sold, because black women with natural hair who grow their hair long typically, like me, keep their hair, not sell it. Not to mention many black women don’t know how to care for their hair to retain enough length to sell. My hair is dreadlocked but you can still clearly see it’s texture is afro. It’s not straight, it’s obviously black people hair of the thickest and curliest type, so I wonder why people act so confused that it’s real.

Another thing that fascinates me about the human hair trade market is that overwhelmingly this hair comes from Indian and Asian women. Out of the worlds 7 billion, the majority of people come from these populations (over 4 billion people are Asian or Indian) From a reproductive perspective they have been the most successful. So at the heart of it, is this simply a case of other women buying all this hair an attempt to mimic women who’ve had so much reproductive success? While conversely with men of other races, instead of mimicking the appearance of Indian and Asian men, attack them by positing them to their women as less masculine or less appealing or whatever. This is a common trope, especially in western cultures, that many people actually believe, despite the fact of billions and billions of Asian/Indian men having massive reproductive success. Very interesting!