For Russia’s Poor, Blond Hair Is Snippet of Gold

[Joanne98]

By ANDREW E. KRAMER
MOSALSK, Russia — The road into town is a potholed track, passing villages of log cabins and fallow fields that speak to the poverty that has gripped this part of central Russia for as long as anyone can remember.

But on a lane where geese waddle through muddy puddles, a brick building holds crate upon crate of this region’s one precious harvestable commodity: human hair, much of it naturally blond.

For the global beauty industry, this is golden treasure.

“Nobody else has this, nobody in the world,” said Aleksei N. Kuznetsov, the building’s owner. “Russian hair is the best in the world.”

Buyers of human hair, most of them small-scale Russian and Ukrainian itinerant operators who sell to hair processors like Mr. Kuznetsov, flock to poor regions like this. Cash in hand, they pay small sums for a head’s worth of tresses sheared from women who often have few economic alternatives.

Long sought for wigs and toupees, human hair is now in particularly high demand for hair extension procedures in more affluent countries. Dark hair from India and China is more plentiful, but blond and other light shades are valued for their relative scarcity and because they are easier to dye to match almost any woman’s natural color.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/22/business/global/22blond.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=business

[Blue_Tires]

1. this just creeps the hell out of me...

[Igel]

2. Don't know why.

My wife used to regularly let her hair grow and then have it cut pretty short, but always insisted on going to a place participating in the program with a Web presence here -- http://www.locksoflove.org/ .

She may not have been light blonde, more of a honey blonde, but her hair was more usable than black hair.

[Demeter]

3. My Platinum blonde daughter does that too

She needs to save some for her rapidly balding mother....

[kas125]

4. When my mom was dying of cancer, I considered doing that, too.

I changed my mind and donated my two and a half feet of hair to Wigs For Kids www.wigsforkids.org instead after learning that Locks of Love only gives wigs to people who have alopecia - permanent hair loss. I've had many friends who believed that Locks of Love gives wigs to kids who have cancer, but they don't.

[Alcibiades]

5. This is our future