Wigs on the Overground

There I was, trundling toward Enfield on the Overground, half-lost in the rhythm of the train and half-watching the London suburbs unfold through the window – all net curtains, satellite dishes, and the odd surprise of a red-brick Victorian beside a kebab shop. We called at Stoke Newington, and on got a group of Jewish women – from one of the more visibly orthodox sects, by the look of things. And immediately I was struck, not for the first time, by the wigs.

Not discreet little nods to nature, but bold, unmistakable, 60s era helmets of hair. Often short, occasionally styled, always obviously wigs. The kind of wig that doesn’t try to pretend – doesn’t want to pretend. And that got me wondering. Not out of mockery, but out of genuine curiosity: why wear a wig that so clearly isn’t fooling anyone?

Well, as it turns out after a bit of searching, that’s precisely the point.

In the intricate and sometimes baffling world of Jewish religious law – particularly in the stricter Haredi and Hasidic sects – married women are required to cover their hair. Not for decoration, not for show, but as a sign of modesty and, in some interpretations, marital status. The logic goes that a woman’s hair is private, intimate – and should therefore be hidden from all but her husband. Enter the sheitel, the modest wig. Except – as with all things human – the application of this principle varies wildly depending on which rabbi you follow, which community you belong to, and, sometimes, which street you live on.

Modern Orthodox women often go in for the full ‘wig that looks like hair’ approach – real hair, salon-styled, indistinguishable from the real thing unless you’ve got your nose in it. But the more conservative Hasidic sects? That’s another matter. For them, the goal is not to look natural, not to blend in, but to be recognisably apart. Some even wear a hat or scarf over the wig, just to hammer the point home. It’s modesty, yes – but it’s also a kind of uniform, a flag of identity.

There’s something curiously paradoxical in all this. A wig is, at its core, a deception. A performance of hair, not hair. But here, it becomes the opposite – a statement of separation. Of not being part of the secular world’s obsession with appearances. Yet in doing so, it still draws attention – to difference, to otherness, to the very things it’s supposed to mute.

And one can't help but muse: how did we get here? How did covering up become an exercise in such conspicuous uniformity? Why the wig, of all things? Why not the headscarf or the snood, which are still used by other sects and arguably more modest, at least in practice?

The answer lies somewhere between theology and sociology – in the need for modesty tangled up with the need for visibility. For communities under pressure, both historically and today, dressing differently becomes a shield. A declaration: We are not like you. Which, in fairness, they aren't – nor do they want to be.

And so back to the train. The ladies sat, chatting quietly, heads sheitelled in matching regulation styles, the younger ones pushing buggies with children in identical coats. A world within a world, brushing up against mine for two stops and then disappearing again.

There’s something admirable in the discipline – the daily decision to wear your beliefs, quite literally, on your head. But it’s also a reminder of how complex, how performative, how contradictory religion – and identity – can be. The wig is both concealment and declaration, modesty and defiance, sacred and synthetic.

Meanwhile, I sat there with my own hair – unruly, untheologised – and pondered whether anyone would think I was hiding anything at all.