The Victoria Beckham Controversy

Cling To Me Like Ivy is inspired by a chance remark by Victoria Beckham in 2004 which sparked a controversy about the wearing of wigs by married Orthodox Jewish women. During a TV interview Victoria Beckham was asked whether she felt guilty wearing a wig using hair probably derived from a prisoner in a Russian jail. She replied that she did not care, but in response her publicists later revealed that the hair might have come from a Hindu temple in India, where the people offer up their hair to an idol.

In the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh there is a town called Tirupati. Central to this town of about 100,000 residents is the Sri Venkateswara Temple. With an average of 50,000 visitors each day this is India’s most visited shrine, recording more visitors than either Mecca or St. Peter’s Basilica. It is dedicated to the four-armed Hidu God Venkateswara, who is supposed to be a reincarnation of Lord Vishnu, the consort of Goddess Lakshmi. It reigns undisputed as the richest temple in India due to its export of one commodity: human hair. Every day a percentage of the pilgrims who visit the site offer what the people there call “the most beautiful part of the human body” as a sacrifice to God. The temple’s leader calls it “a surrendering of ego to God”. To those practising the Jewish faith this makes the hair Takroives Avoide Zore (an offering to an idol) and it is forbidden to derive any use from it.

There is some dispute over whether Hindus do actually worship idols. Take this statement:

“Hindus with a proper understanding of their religion do not think that the idol alone is God. The idol is meant for the worshipper to offer one-pointed devotion and he adores it with the conviction that the Lord who is present everywhere is present in it also.”
Shri Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham official website.

Most of the hair is gathered up and sold by the temple to companies who use it in a variety of ways, like extracting amino acids from it that could end up in foodstuffs or in shampoos. The very long hair, shorn from a woman who has never cut it before (as is often the custom there) will be carefully tied together before removal and will eventually be sold as human hair. Tirupati hair is highly valued by African-American women, who use it to make hair extensions, because the Hindu women who donate it have often never washed it with shampoo or worn it loose. It is most often worn braided at all times and lovingly massaged with coconut oil to keep it shiny.

The temple is said to earn between $2 and $4 million a year from the proceeds of the 25,000 heads that are shaved every day and the 450 tons of hair sold each year.

After this disclosure it was decided by certain Rabbis that wigs using hair of Indian origin would have to be destroyed.