Online and in boutiques, there are a lot of wigs on offer and a lot of suppliers. How do you find the one for you? Well, you start by knowing what to avoid. That’s what this article is about that. Now, you might not believe how many wigs I have that I simply don’t wear. Why? Because I ordered them online. With any online purchase, the similarity between what you order online and what’s in the box the courier gives you can be vague. With wigs, it is downright blurry. And so, I have a bunch of brand-new wigs that are just awful. I leave them in a box. I don’t want this to happen to you.
Even free, it’s overpriced
Wigs in general, like jewellery, form one of those odd classes of products where two items that seem identical can be priced orders of magnitude apart. Especially in its promo images, a gold-plated ring set with a hunk of quartz will appear to be identical to a solid-gold 1-carat diamond solitaire. If you just want “a nice ring”, you might order the quartz for $9.99. And then you get it, and then you look at it, and you realise the ring was overpriced by about 10 dollars. Ordering a wig online can be the same. Especially if it was $9.99. Even crazier is the top end of the market, where a wig won’t be $9.99 but $1,999.00! Of course, you and I want to avoid both scenarios. Here are a few things I’ve learned over the years.
Wig colour – earth tones always
Do not wear any colour that doesn’t grow naturally from the head of a human female. Assuming your goal is to look probable and passable, you must not wear: fire-engine red, Kermit green, Gatorade blue, ocean turquoise, hot pink, canary yellow, “Nier:Automata” white or blue-black. A wig in one of these colours that has streaks of another is even worse. I don’t give a fuck if you’re doing some kind of cosplay homage, are obsessed with a goth aesthetic or you just love the idea of having scarlet-fuschia hair, an unnatural hair colour makes you look less feminine. The lightest you should go is medium blonde. The darkest you should go is roughly the colour of high-quality dark chocolate – nearly black, but with a tint of brown. Also, avoid ginger unless ginger is your natural hair colour.
Cheap wigs – don’t have to be quite so nasty
Cheap wigs usually look fake as hell. Shiny. Plasticky. Obvious parting. Visible seams. And so on. Like Natalie Portman in Closer. There are various ways to make a cheap wig look better. To deal with plasticky shine, soak your wig in fabric softener for a few days. For obviously fake partings, go for a swept fringe (as often rocked by the gorgeous Emma Stone … and, uh, by me). For visible seams, adopt the millennia-old strategy of cis-women: a couple of hairpins can conceal many hair sins.
Wig styles for transgender women – avoid pageboy wigs
These dominate the online listings for inexpensive wigs. And they are legitimately cheap. They are also all rubbish. Why crossdressers and newly emerged transwomen are obsessed with pageboy styles is a mystery to me. I mean, virtually zero cis-women have pageboy haircuts, so where does the style inspo come from? Louise Brooks? Anyway, pageboy wigs are manufactured en masse as a disposable Halloween joke. Wear one and you’ll look like a disposable Halloween joke – all year! Simply remember that pageboy hairstyles don’t look flattering on anyone … except Louise Brooks 100 years ago or the occasional supermodel. You are not a supermodel or Louise Brooks.
Wig ads lie – don’t trust any of them
Let’s face it, when shopping for a transgender wig you’re probably going to be ordering online and buying from the lower end of the market. It’s not like there are many wig shops around and the prices for mid-range wigs are eye-watering. (And the prices at the top end are pure comedy – I’ve seen wigs for over seven thousand American dollars). Anyway, shopping online is okay so long as you realise that the listings are all lying. Listings for wigs usually show an attractive woman with gorgeous hair. Her hair is never what the wig looks like. If it looks too good to be true, it is. Only buy from listings that include an image of the actual wig displayed on a stand. And even then, be prepared for a 50 percent fail rate.
Curls and perms – forget it
Wigs with curls and perms are hopeless. They just tangle and get matted. Wavy and textured styles are okay, but the more structured the wig the shorter its lifespan. If it has plaits or braids or pigtails – run! If you can’t run a wide-tooth comb through it, it’s junk. One rule of thumb is that each dollar of price equals one wear of a wig, e.g. a $30 wig will be kaput after 30 wears. But this doesn’t hold for curly wigs. Some curly $30 wigs won’t even survive shipping.
Surprise factor – sometimes you get lucky
My best wig was the “get one free” component from a buy-one-get-one-free deal (of equal or lesser value). The one I paid full price for turned out to be awful (it lives in the box). An inconvenient fact is that my “surprise” wig actually breaks some of the rules above. It is a dusty pink bob. A bob is close to a pageboy style and pink is not a natural colour. And it was cheap. And yet, this one particular brand and style somehow works for me. I’ve bought it three times now. My point here is that sometimes you’ll be able to get away with taking a risk. However, you have to keep in mind that I did NOT set out to find a cheap pink wig. It was just a lucky accident after a lot of trial and error. If I HAD gone looking for a cheap pink wig, I’d have ended up … well, looking like Natalie Portman in Closer.
Transgender wigs – out of the box
All the tips above come from some hard-won experience. I shopped and shopped for transgender wigs that would allow me to look like a respectable woman. I went through many styles before eventually finding something that suits my face shape and my climate (long wigs are a hard no in the tropics). It took trial and error.
In this article, I have shared the things I have learned through the errors. The trials, you will still have to go through for yourself. Your hairstyle is a personal thing. What works for you won’t work for other people. In the same way, what doesn’t work for anyone also won’t work for you. The above is my advice on what won’t work. Now get out there and start experimenting to find what does.