Neal Lester comments on hair theft

Hair.

Some people have too much, and some have too little.

It can incite passion, or compassion: a lover’s touch, a gift to a cancer victim who has lost her tresses.

It’s swept up and thrown away at the beauty shop – or, recently, stolen.

Recent news stories have recounted the theft of thousands of dollars worth of human hair from beauty salons and beauty-supply stores all across the United States. Robbers even killed one supply-store owner in Michigan to get to his stock of hair. A salon owner in Houston said she lost $150,000 in human hair in one robbery.

When hair becomes a hot topic, that means just one thing for Neal Lester, dean of humanities in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences: His phone will start ringing and his e-mail inbox will be crammed with urgent invitations. Reporters want to talk to Lester about hair.

So far, he has talked the theft of human hair, in the context of his research specialty – the race and gender politics of hair – with CBC Radio in Canada, the BBC, New York Times, Washington Post, SLToday out of St. Louis, and Phoenix’s Fox 10 News.

Lester told the New York Times that “the growing demand for human hair extensions and the high prices had made thefts inevitable. “It’s sort of a sign of the times. Folks are being entrepreneurial, and weaves and hair extensions are expensive, so it’s not surprising that people sell hair the way they sell things on Canal Street, like knock-off purses.”

The current popularity of hair extensions, according to various Web sites, is largely due to Victoria Beckham, who seemingly coaxed her hair to great lengths in mere months. Ezine Articles notes that when the former Spice Girl “first got together with her now husband David Beckham it was a time when public interest in the couple was at a all time high and they were both photographed all the time and would be found on the cover or most newspapers and magazines.

“With this sort of publicity everything about the couple was scrutinised. At that time pictures of Victoria were on the front of every paper or magazine with many different hair styles on view. Some days she had short hair, the next she had long and it was obviously these styles were created thanks to hair extensions. She even spoke about them and explained they were created with natural human hair which caused slight controversy as to where the hair came from.”

Lester said that the new attitude about hair treatments such as extensions is that “you don’t have to convince someone that it’s real” – the fact that you have the extensions is enough.

urmotiloo: Victoria Beckham Long Hairstyles

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