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Women spend a thousand dollars to wear other people’s hair on their heads! Why? For the same price, they could buy a scarf and a 3d printer, a scarf and a good sofa, a hat and 50 ice cream sandwich makers, a hat, a scarf, and a couple of scooters, or a hat and a couple glockenspiels or a xylophone.
To quote Mrs CTL…..
You can wear Polyester and schvitz or natural fibers and be cool.
If you want a wig, you want the comfort of Human hair.
A stay at home housefrau might wear a scarf on her head, but women who also have a profession outside the immediate frum neighborhood are not going to walk around with a rag on their heads. The few times Mrs CTL wore a scarf (granted it was an expensive one), she could hear colleagues whispering and questioning whether she was undergoing chemo and had cancer.
To attract men.
Because a scooter or a 3d printer would look really strange on their heads.
CTLawyer – per your description it sounds like your wife does not share your social tact. That attitude is highly insulting.
(unless that last paragraph was no longer a quote from her and was your words)
Syag………
The last paragraph contained an opinion (Hausfrau) of my late mother who was a very proper German-Jewish-American lady, always wearing hat and gloves when she left the house.
The observation about hearing Chemo comments when wearing a headscarf was related to me by my wife.
it wasn’t the word housefrau or the chemo comment, it was everything in between…
With you, Syag.
It’s a highly personal choice. Some women wear sheitels for professional reasons, others because they don’t like how they look in scarves and hats, others because their mothers always wore sheitels and it never occurred to them to wear anything else…etc etc.
Real human hair sheitels are of course going to be expensive (and synthetic ones do NOT look good or wear well). You can get one for under a thousand dollars, especially if you buy secondhand. But if you want a more expensive one and you have the money, I don’t see anything wrong with it.
As a non-sheitel hair covering woman, I’ve wondered the question of the opening poster many times. Basically, I think most frum people do most things just because that’s the way their community does it. It is hard to be different. That said, I personally would rather spend our family’s money (what little there is of it) on other things. I have heard many times over the years that imitating hair, looking to score a ten with men other than your husband, and trying to fit into a goyishe appearance are each negative in their own way. The only support I have heard for the sheitel that makes any sense to me is that good soldiers in ths army wear the uniform. Even then many good soldiers opt for a quite modest, less attractive, synthetic and shorter sheitel (priced closer to filling the tank of their 15-seater than a new refrigerator).
Pretty dumb question in my opinion! Women look very pretty and super attractive in stunnning Sheitlech!!! Whether it’s tzniusidig is a different conversation, but that’s not what you asked.
Syag….from Hausfrau to rag on head were the sentiments of my late mother, who disapproved of such in public. Not the German way
RebYidd23…………
Mrs. CTL has one sheitel that was made from our 28 year old daughter’s hair when she cut off 30″ of growth.
All it cost to be made into a wig by a local stylist was a couple of hundred dollars.
Our daughters all wore long straight hair that reached below their waists when they were single. When they would get summer cuts of 10-12″ of yearly growth it would be donated to Lock for Love (for cancer victims). When the 28 year old decided she was too old for this look (about 5 years ago when she finished grad school and was to be married) she presented her mother with the cut hair as a loving gift.
CT – maybe you are missing the point. That’s very nice that your mother felt a need to wear gloves when leaving the house, calling it a rag is rude, to put it nicely. too nicely.
Although I find you do emphasize your economic status quite frequently in your comments, I have never found any of them insulting as this one was.
Maybe a better way to express it would have been, “…and as my late mother rudely phrased it…”
Why is it any different than asking why people drive a $75,000 mercedes when they can get around town just as efficiently in a $20,000 chevy. the answers to the sheitel question are probably just as varied as the answer to the car question.
Syag……….I would never violate the commandment of honoring a mother by saying she was rude. I would be amenable to calling it blunt.
Joseph: Are you saying attractive sheitels are inconsistent with tznius? I think you are right.
non attractive does not mean ugly. there is an in between something that does not attract yet is nice and decent.
“women who also have a profession outside the immediate frum neighborhood are not going to walk around with a rag on their heads”
My wife does.
Why do men wear expensive Borsalinos and Shtreimels ? For much less they can wear a cap or a cheap straw hat. They actually would not look as strange as a women with a scooter and a printer on their heads
Scarves can be beautiful and elegant, while sheitels of any length can be perfectly tzanua (and not “gross” in any way).
I find the judgmental comments from (mostly male) posters to be way out of line.
Rebyid, Google has other definitions for the word attractive, but I believe the more accurate description
Would be provocative.
No one is saying women should dress ugly, only normal. Of course everyone’s normal is different, but provocative looking sheitls are a problem.
CTL-I would never expect or desire you to be disrespectful. But no, blunt would give the comment validity, which would be wrong.
Just accept that you will never understand women.
Rebyidd: What do dragons wear?
I think the answer is very obvious:
Women like to look good, and they are allowed to look good, al pi Torah.
That being said, however, there is a fine line between “good” and “not tznuisdig.”
The yetzor hara is so strong in our generation! But the truth is, even a scarf wearing woman can look inappropriate at times, while even a woman wearing a custom-made $10,000 sheitel can wear it in an appropriate cut and style. I don’t think there can be a blanket statement made about headcoverings. Each person has to evaluate their own self, community, and goals. And of course, follow their Rav.
As for me, I don’t understand the human hair thing for many reasons… But most people don’t have my sensitivity in this area.
I can’t imagine why someone would want to wear hair that was cut off of dead body! (Most sheitelech come from cadavers.)
And then, that begs the question: Doesn’t cadaver hair cause a problem for Kohanim???
Women Kohanim?
Kohanim in the same room as women. *gasp* It actually does happen, believe it or not…
because they need to cover their hair so they want to do it in a way that they can look nice at the same time.
Most sheitelach come from cadavers? Sorry, I find this hard to believe. It’s obviously a one-shot deal, while a living human can produce hair year after year. I’m guessing that in most cultures, cutting off the hair of a dead person in order to sell it would be taboo.
CM: your assertion that most human hair for wigs comes from cadavers is dead wrong, pardon the pun.
The mechaber rules like the Rashba that hair is considered part of the body regarding the issur of having hanaa from a corpse (the rambam rules it is not but the sa follows the strict opinion of rashba). Based on this psak in shulchan aruch I highly doubt frum sheitel machers would use hair from cadavers (hopefully someone has asked after all these years!!!). It is true though that cadavers are used to produce wigs in the non jewish world.
I saw a Jewish woman today come into a Yiddish Grocery store looking like one of Bob Barker’s show prize girls from the old Game show “The price is right”. Long blonde hair, and the most highest platform high heels you can get.
I wanted so much to walk up to her and ask her “when you got dressed this morning, and thought to put these on….what were you thinking…I mean WHY? “. You look terrible i wanted to tell her.
But i didnt.
Good thing you didn’t.
You should have spoken up, arwsf.
If you don’t know somebody it is probably not a good idea to go over to them and reprimand them regarding their method of hair covering.
Tochacha is an obligation.
not your kind – not that kind
arwsf’s kind.
Call her rebbetzin. Telling someone “you look terrible” is not tochacha. It might be onaas devarim. Call her Rebbetzin, let her deal with it.
Maybe she spent an hour debating between eating out at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse or cooking pork. So you shouldn’t provide tochacha when you see her dining at Ruth’s since she could of done worse.
Maybe she spent an hour debating between bateling on a moderated website or bateling on a non moderated one. So you shouldn’t provide tochacha when you see her bateling on a moderated site since she could’ve done worse.
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