4

If You Donate Your Hair To A Charity, They're Probably Tossing It In The Trash

IPGGutenbergUKLtd/iStock

For people who aren't desperate but just feel like getting a haircut for a cause, nonprofit organizations who make free or cheap wigs for cancer patients are somewhat more popular than that lady hovering around the red-light district in Les Miserables. However, the odds of your hair actually becoming a wig that actually gets put on a sick person's head are pretty slim.

MrKornFlakes/iStock

This is because this kind of charity is often very inefficient. It's great that they're doing it for free, but the side effect is that they'll never have the resources (or financial incentive) to make sure their precious collected hair gets into the hands of a person who needs it. A private business charges for the wigs but also lives and dies on their ability to get hair into the hands of a happy customer.

Take Locks Of Love for example -- the most well-known of these charities. It receives more than 104,000 donations a year ... and tosses out about 80 percent of them. Some of the rest gets sold to cover administrative costs. So it's great that they're able to serve people who can't normally afford wigs, but the fact that people donate instead of sell actually makes the human hair shortage even worse.

Tsyhun/iStock

3

You Need Pristine Hair To Turn A Profit

MilaSemenova/iStock

One of the biggest challenges in this industry is finding hair that hasn't been changed, the "virgin hair" I mentioned above. There just isn't much of it out there; many people perm, dye, or bleach their hair, and it isn't always on purpose. I've had to turn away women whose hair was bleached by the sun.

There's a reason for this, and it's not just because there's not a lot of demand for the Jersey look. Damaged natural hair wigs go for way less -- usually around $100. If hair's dyed, it can become discolored over time, and the resulting wig can become a two-tone rat's nest of shame. Straightened or permed hair becomes weak and can break -- remember, the goal is for this to last years without it turning into a "Nick Nolte mugshot" situation.

Even regular styling can be a problem. If you blow-dry or straighten your hair constantly, we always know. Burning your hair makes it turn an entirely different color, usually too brown.

Valentin Casarsa/iStock

Burnt hair is also too brittle and in general just looks terrible. We even know when sellers don't eat meat, because of how much less hair they have. Whenever a younger woman tries to sell her hair in person and it has a lot less thickness and shine, we know she's a vegan who's not taking her vitamins.

2

It's A Pretty Racist Business (Thanks To Supply And Demand)

AND-ONE/iStock

Technically speaking, there's a demand for every color. But the most-requested color -- black -- is also the cheapest. There are so many people selling their dark locks in Brazil, China, and India that it's devalued the hair. High-quality wigs can go for thousands of dollars, but a shorter one of the same quality made of Brazilian black hair can be yours for $26. Even for virgin black hair, the profit margins are so low we only ever break even. Unless someone is offering us Remy black hair ("Remy" is the highest quality and generally means that all the hair was collected from the same donor at the same length) that is more than 18 inches long or a special type that happens to be in demand, we pass.

Nizas/iStock

Purely from a demand perspective, hair from a white person is better in almost every way. There's a lot more color, it's usually straighter, and compared to overseas hair, it's much stronger. Is that racist? Yes, it is, and I have plenty of black and Hispanic would-be sellers who will tell you so, loudly. I generally don't get the chance to sit them down and explain the weird nuances of the global human-hair market.

1

People Try To Sell Us Their Pubes

Chris Bernard/iStock

Like everything in life that involves the exchange of money, the human-hair industry has its share of scammers. And even though our contracts stipulate that nobody gets paid a dime until we've received and examined the hair, people think they can hit-and-run us for money. For instance, one woman sent in a picture and a sample of really luscious, corn-silk hair. We agreed on a price, but when we got her box, all she'd sent us was a roll of hastily dyed animal hair (we think it was dog hair, but no one here could tell for certain). To be fair, the film industry does use animal hair for some of its crazier wigs, and judges' wigs in Britain and other Commonwealth countries are made with horsehair, but we only buy human (if I can stop just one person from needlessly shaving their pet or farm animals, this whole article will have been worth it).

GaryRadler/iStock

We also buy only female hair. There's no real difference in quality, but some of our clients have told us they wouldn't feel right knowing their wig came from a dude, and men tend to be harder to work with, too. The kinds of men who grow their hair long enough to sell it also tend to think way too highly of it. The few guys who have tried to sell to us over the years have balked at the prices we offered. Sorry, guys, but no one's going to pay you a month's rent in exchange for your Sammy Hagar mane.

I mentioned earlier that it's OK if the hair isn't particularly, well, clean. But there is a limit -- many people inexplicably assume that in order to fetch the price for virgin hair, you need to stop washing it. I've never bought hair with any bugs in it (indeed, I am sure that few have), but that doesn't stop people from coming in and trying to sell grimy locks teeming with scalp infestations. Public health concerns aside, it's just bad business -- we need to produce wigs in a quick turnaround, and it would take too damn long to kill whatever is living in that hair to make it worth buying.

Tivoly/iStock

Also, we can only use hair that comes from the head. So you can imagine how tiring it is to get emails from women trying to sell me their pubic hair. Except for the rare publicity sale, no one buys this. There are several reasons for that -- chiefly because you cannot make a wig from it -- but that doesn't deter some people. I field at least two emails a week from women trying to peddle their bush. One woman who I bought some hair from also included her pubic hair, tied up like her regular hair. There was a note inside the box that said, "Can you buy these for a fair price?" I sent them back with no note. I hope she got the message.

Evan V. Symon is a writer, interviewer, and interview finder guy for the PE team at Cracked. Have an awesome job/experience you would like to tell us about? Then hit us up at tips@cracked.com!

For more insider perspectives, check out 5 Awful Realities Of Transporting Human Corpses For A Job and 5 Horrific Things You Learn Preserving Brains For A Living.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out Stuff That Must've Happened: The Last Guy To Wear A Hitler 'Stache In America, and other videos you won't see on the site!

Also, follow us on Facebook, and we'll follow you everywhere.