Women Who Wear Wigs
In Women Who Wear Wigs four Turkish women from very divergent backgrounds speak up. They have one thing in common: all four of them wear a wig. They tell why, when, where and how they wear their wigs.
Melek Ulaguay, a left wing activist in the 1970s worked as a courier for the Marxist revolutionary movement. In order to be able to escape police persecution she lived in hiding for several long periods over thirty years. She disguised herself with a blond wig and an airline stewardess’ uniform.. Inadvertantly the uniform linked her to a mythical figure of the resistance, ‘Leyla the stewardess’ who was supposedly linked to a hijacking of a plane.
Nevval Sevindi, a well-known journalist, became bald as a result of chemotherapy for breast cancer. During the treatment she is filmed wearing a provocative blonde wig and fully made up. Afterwards we see her at the hairdresser's, where she wears dark wigs. While talking about her concerns over the supposed loss of her femininity and beauty, an unexpected radical history of being a revolutionary in Iran and being a feminist, spills out between the lines.
Woman X - For her own safety the third woman does not appear in the picture. She is a young Muslim student who, because of her veil, is not allowed into the classrooms of the university. She is faced with the difficult choice between the requirements of her religion or the right to education. As a solution she wears a wig: secular enough to be admitted by the university's authorities. At the same time she covers her head in this way, so that she complies with the requirements of her religion.
Demet Demir is a transsexual prostitute and activist. She is a feminist who opposes the constant pressure of society to always look beautiful. Yet she wears a wig for her work as a prostitute. When she is arrested, the police ridicules her and shaves her head completely. She has hair loss because of the continuous police brutalities and social persecution. She is filmed at home and describes the pestering by the police with a mixture of fear and irony. In the recounting of her story we hear she is also a transsexual representative in the court of human rights in the Hague as well as a candidate for civic post in Istanbul.
