Fun with Wigs: Or, Playing Dress-Up with My Head

I have short hair. I have had this short hair for about five years now. I like it. It's easy, it's cute, and I feel like it fits my personality. But sometimes I want to do something different. What's a girl to do?


One answer: wigs.

I have long wished for wigs that I could wear, just for a change, and recently I've bought a few. I didn't buy any for years after I decided I wanted to because it's a real attention-getter to show up one day and look completely different than you did the day before. I mean, show up in different clothes, even dramatically different clothes, and people will probably notice but not be confused by it. Show up in different hair and people are genuinely confused. Hair, unlike clothes, is an identifier, a way to tell people apart quickly.

As an example, one of my close friends has had blonde, sort of naturally wavy hair for a while now, but she recently got a new style, a straight, dark brown bob. She describes it to me before I saw it by saying, "Think Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction," which is a pretty accurate description. It looks really great, but it's quite a change. It's so drastic a change, in fact, that when she showed up to teach her class of college students, several did not recognize her and thought she was a substitute. Keep in mind that this is more than halfway through the semester. Furthermore, one of the graduate professors, one of the graduate professors who is on her committee, whom she has known for years, sat right next to her in a meeting and never seemed to realize who she was in her new hairstyle. These people have had a chance to see her often and to see more than just her blonde hair, but they were easily fooled by a new cut and color.

So I'm wary of the response I'll get if I put on new hair. But I finally decided to go for it. I've been getting braver in my clothing choices, so I should be braver in my hair choices, too. Oddly, despite my trepidation, I decided to start with something wild. My first wig was a blue bob. I wore it to a concert and I really liked the way it looked. I wound up having to take it off halfway through because the wig cap was too tight and my head was killing me, but I liked the wig itself.



Since then, I've also acquired a dark brown bob wig and a black, wavy shoulder-length wig. I haven't worn the dark brown one out yet, but I wore the black one out a few nights ago. It got a pretty good reception. My friend was surprised (I hadn't warned her I would look different and I see her on a regular basis), but others who see me less frequently seemed to think it looked natural. My friend's mother said, upon first seeing me that evening, "Gosh, Christy, doesn't your hair grow fast!" and her brother asked if I had straightened my hair. I hastily assured them that it was not my real hair. To have not done so would've felt like lying. But their responses were interesting. Apparently, to people who don't see me very often, it is more logical to assume that I've just styled it differently or that my hair grows really fast than to assume that I'm wearing a wig.





My night out with a friend a few days ago and my concertgoing in a wig represent first steps in making wigs part of my fashion repertoire. I don't want to wear them too terribly often, but I do want to wear them more than once every four or five months. And I want to be more confident in my choice to wear a wig, less worried about others' reactions.

Eventually, maybe I'll even work up the courage to wear a wig to school.