Their website lists the donation requirements and that the charity is mainly organized around donating to children with long term hair loss due to alopecia. It also states that the rest of the hair that does not fit the requirements will be sold to offset costs of producing the wigs, which doesn’t make the sold hair any less valuable to the overall cause, without those donations the money to make the rest of the wigs would not be there. As for the argument that the wigs should go to cancer patients instead of other children with alopecia, well thats just ridiculous because those children suffer just as much from the discrimination and self esteem loss without the cultural sympathy that cancer patients get.

Donating hair is something everyone can do at a relatively small monetary cost to themselves. The argument about money donations being more effective may be true, but thats not the point, the point is if you don’t have that extra money to donate you still can donate your hair, its just another alternative way to help someone else’s life.

And for all the people that made the argument that it would be more effective to provide them with synthetic wigs. I would like to know how many synthetic wigs that they personally provide children every year. It seems like when you try to do something nice people start crawling out of the walls to tell you your doing it wrong. The synthetic argument will become valid when people start growing synthetic hair on their heads that is as cost effective for them to donate. And when those synthetic wig supporters stop spending their time criticizing the group thats actually doing something about the issue and start doing something themselves.

Hair longer than BSL is not common where I live, and I adore having it and look forward to having it longer. The idea of shaving it off…would scare me. I get cysts on my scalp, and while I may be of the opinion that I am beautiful as a big person, or just as a person full stop, the idea of exposing those cysts to public scrutiny is..um…..yeah. Dunno.

I also warn people against donating to Loves of Love: http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=longhair&keyword=Locks+of+Love&filter=all for an overview of some issues relating to them.

The best part of the entire experience was when a friend of a friend announced that he “knew” I was a lesbian because I had “short hair” and “a boy’s name.” Friend and I got a major kick out of that one…especially since my friend is bisexual. :D

Hair is such an issue for me. As a fat gal, I’ve always wanted pretty hair. I’ve always had thin hair. I never got to have long hair, because when I was young, my parents didn’t want to deal with it. When I was a teen, I couldn’t get it to really do much past shoulder length. It started thinning when I was in my late teens due to PCOS _and_ hypothyroidism. Now I keep it at chin length and I just deal with having my scalp visible.

Both of my daughters have “good” thick hair, and I let them grow it as long as they want it. :