Kutlug Ataman Women Who Wear Wigs. - Review - video recording review

Woman No. 1 The police are really after me; perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that I am "wanted." Friends in Ankara tell me, "Wear a wig, so that they can't recognize you!" I end up with a wig as blonde as a baby chick! Curls all the way down. At the same time, I'm hiding out at a friend's house. Also in the hide-out are others. I can't tell them who I really am, so I introduce myself as a Turkish Airlines stewardess named Leyla. They never see me as I really am without the wig. I keep it on the whole day. I'm serving the underground as a messenger in my curly blonde wig and my hostess uniform. Later I secretly crossed the Syrian border and left the country. In Syria I wore an overall black veil. The situation changed and so did my identity. What happened to the wig? I don't remember, but I know that I never used it again. After leaving Istanbul, I was in hiding a great deal of the time. I was off the streets. In fact, I was in a hide-out for three months.

You never went out?

Never.

Woman No. 2 Having one's hair fall out is a terrible experience. First your hair starts to look as if it is pasted on your head; then thousands of hairs start flying in all directions with the slightest touch of the hand--leaving bare spots here and there. It's horrible to witness your hair fall out that way. Before it fell out on its own, I had my head completely shaved. But even so, your pillow in the mornings is covered with tiny pieces of hair. Hair continues to fall off until you are completely bald. The breast and the hair are the two most important symbols of womanhood. I didn't want to do injustice to them. I didn't want the forms comprising my life to change. My breasts have not changed. As to my hair--with the wig, it was as if it never fell off. Perhaps it's a feeling of privacy. The hairdresser was the only place where I relaxed a little. Visiting the hairdresser during chemotherapy and radiation comforted me immensely. No one at radiation saw me without a wig either. It was always on. We had beco me one, my wig and me.

Woman No. 3 When I first stepped into the classroom wearing a wig, I kept on telling myself that there is nothing to be embarrassed about, and that I am being forced into it, and that my friends know this. The number of days we had missed school had reached a critical level. On the one hand, I knew I had to stick to the head scarf, but on the other, I had to appreciate school. From the religious perspective, they neither tell you to wear it, nor not to. So, the decision is finally up to the individual. With the wig on, you can hardly listen to the instructors. Your body and your soul are far apart. You are both there and you are not! It's like you're wearing a mask. You can't recognize yourself. They are wrong if they think that by making us wear wigs we'll give up on our head scarves. When you put your head scarf on after having worn the wig, you start thinking how beautiful the head scarf is, how good it looks on you. You realize you've really missed it. You never get used to the wig.