Horrible injuries are commonplace in boxing but none, surely, has been quite so devastating as that sustained by the heavyweight Jarrell Miller. In the moment it took for an uppercut to land, the Brooklyn boxer’s life changed forever. Miller went from professional athlete to, well, ‘the man who got his wig punched off’.
I have rewatched Miller’s hairpiece getting punched off countless times, my hand clamped to my mouth. Why didn’t his team throw in the towel? Why didn’t the referee just stop the fight? Why didn’t Miller, his wig flipped up at 90 degrees like a kitchen bin lid, simply step out of the ring, exit the arena and start a new life several thousand miles away under an adopted identity? The horror of watching a man lose the last vestige of his dignity in a fraction of a second is simply too much to bear.
Miller’s fate exposed the long-held fear of the wig-wearer: sooner or later you will be found out. When John Travolta stepped outside without his hairpiece in 2011, it made international news. ‘John Travolta Bald: Caught Without His Hair Piece’, wailed headlines – prompting him to ditch the wig altogether in favour of a cleaner shaved look.
A part of me can relate. I am profoundly bald now, but for the longest time I tried to hide it from the world with the only thing on Earth more humiliating than a wig: a combover. And I was terrified all the time. Terrified of breezes, or removing jumpers in public, or errant noogies, or anything that would collapse the carefully assembled (and, in retrospect, deeply unconvincing) fallacy that was my haircut. All this must be so much worse for wig-wearers: any of the above would cause their entire head of hair to dart off like a frightened badger.
Clearly, had this been 20 years ago, Miller would never have dared to step into the ring with a wig stuck to his head. But he was no doubt lulled into a false sense of security by the great strides the hairpiece industry – for that is what it is – has undergone in recent years.
Because people no longer wear wigs, they wear hair systems: expensive, elaborate, custom-made confections that are laboriously glued to one’s head to trick the world that you still have all your hair. On the plus side, they work like a magic trick. TikTok is full of videos of bald men applying a hairpiece and looking 20 years younger. On the downside, they are an awful faff, expensive and require the most finickity maintenance that includes lengthy weekly cleaning, satin pillows and special shampoo.
In fact, it was shampoo that apparently caused Miller to come unstuck. He washed his hair with his mother’s regular shampoo, which contained sulfates, causing the glue that stuck the wig to his head to lose its adhesive quality. But this one mishap is unlikely to dent the unstoppable rise of the hair system. Last year the global wigs and hair extensions market was valued at roughly $7.5 billion. Jump forward seven years and that figure is predicted to rise to around $12.3 billion.
Maybe this means the technology is improving. Maybe it means we’re becoming vainer as a society. Probably it’s both. Bald men appear to be rushing towards high-tech wigs as the solution to all our problems. If it works for you? Great, no judgment. I’ve been there. Just try not to get punched in the face in front of the whole world.
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