Toupees and wigs
While most toupees are small and designed to cover bald spots at the top and back of the head, large toupees are not unknown, particularly among the older generation of Television personalities.
Toupees are often referred to as "weaves" or "units" or "hair extensions" by those seeking to avoid the negative connotations that the word "toupee" conjures up. While women can wear hair appliances that perform the same size and function as a toupee, these are generally referred to as wigs.
Toupees = Cap in Hindi
In Northern India, Hindi word "Toupee" means a wearable on head, like caps, hats etc. It is possible that this is the origin of the Western word toupee.
Toupa = Wig in Tamil
In Tamil widely spoken in southern most India, South East Asia, Mauritius, Seychelles, Reunion & Ceylon is seems to be derived from toupe used in English or Hindi Tou pee for Cap.
Toppee = Cap in Tamil
Seems to be derived from Hindi word Toupee of same meaning.
-R.Dhinakar
Toupee use and manufacture
Toupees are often custom made to the needs of the wearer, and can be manufactured using either synthetic or human hair. Toupees are usually held to one's head using an adhesive, but the cheaper versions often merely use an elastic band. More sophisticated toupees use "weaves" in which the toupee is fastened using the wearer's own hair (see below).
While an attempt is made to match the toupee's color to the natural hair color of the wearer, sometimes the colors are not identical. This color mismatch is often exacerbated when a toupee is poorly cared for and fades, or the wearer's hair color turns gray while the toupee retains its original color.
While toupee dealers and manufacturers usually advertise their products showing men swimming, water-skiing and enjoying watersports, these activities can often cause irreversible wear to the toupee. Saltwater and chlorine can cause a toupee to "wear out" quickly. Many shampoos and soaps will damage toupee fibers, which unlike natural hair, cannot grow back or replace themselves.
While dealers of toupees can in fact help many customers to care for their toupees and make their presence virtually undetectable, the hairpieces must be of very high quality to begin with, carefully fit and maintained regularly and carefully. Even the best-cared-for toupee will need to be replaced on a regular basis, due to wear and, over time, to the growing areas of baldness on the wearer's head. Some recommend that if one chooses to use a toupee, three should be owned at any one time - one to wear while its counterpart is being cleaned, and a spare.
Hair weaves
Hair weaves are a technique in which the toupee's base is then woven into whatever natural hair the wearer retains. While this (it is often promised) results in a less detectable toupee, the wearer can experience discomfort, and sometimes hair loss from frequently retightening of the weave as one's own hair grows. After about six months a person can begin to lose hair permanently along the weave area, resulting in traction alopecia.
Toupee or not toupee?
Men typically wear toupees to avoid being perceived as bald, usually after resorting to less extreme methods of coverage such as the combover, or the failure of various anti-baldness medications, such as Propecia, Rogaine and other remedies.
It has been stated that many men often know they are fooling no one with the use of the toupee, but that the historic cultural bias in Western Culture against baldness is so strong that they feel the need to have hair on their heads. Unfortunately, in their desire for their baldness to be unnoticed, toupee wearers often become noticed for their toupees.
Toupees and chemotherapy
One important exception to this is that sometimes those who wear toupees do so while recovering from chemotherapy. A positive self-image has often been said to assist in the recovery process, and doctors often help direct recovering patients to find hairpieces to help project their usual healthy appearance. This effort is particularly made when the recovering patient is a child, or a woman.
Another exception might be that if a person's head had been damaged by an accident, or through some surgical proceedure, they may wish to conceal that scarring.
Alopecia alternatives
Toupee use has declined in recent years, in part due to the rise of the aforementioned medications. However, hair transplants have replaced the use of toupees among those who can afford them, particularly celebrities. Other trends leading to the decline in toupee use include a rise in acceptance of baldness by those men afflicted with it. Short haircuts, in fashion since the 1990s, have tended to minimize the appearance of baldness, and many balding men choose to shave their heads entirely - a trend sparked in part by famous male pattern baldness sufferer Michael Jordan.
Toupees and humor
Toupees have a long and often humorous history in Western culture. The toupee is a regular butt of jokes in many media, with a typical toupee joke focusing on the wearer's inability to recognize how ineffective the toupee is in concealing his baldness. If toupee wearers should learn anything from such humor, it is that they should beware strong winds, sudden rain, and leaning over.
Spoken jokes
“Hey, you ever get a call from Anita Newrug?”
"Ned, you're being attacked by a racoon!"
"Time to get that carpet cleaned, Jimbo...."
Louis Rukeyser, host of Wall Street Week was famous for his pun-filled humor. In answering a letter on investing in a hairpiece manufacturer, he quipped on-air that "if your money seems to be hair today and gone tomorrow, we'll try to make it grow back by giving the bald facts on how to get your investments toupee."
There is also a classic dirty joke usually involving a man with a toupee, a young woman, a lost toupee, the punchline to which is, "That isn't mine; I don't part it down the middle."
Radio
Jack Benny made himself the butt of many jokes on his radio show, including jokes about his cheapness and his toupee. In fact, he never wore a toupee, but he recognized the laugh value and since it was radio, no one could tell he wasn't wearing one.
Television
TV comedy writers often resort to the toupee as a joke involving episodes involving blind dates, television personalities, vanity or all three. Typical scenarios involve either the wearer having a "sudden embarassing reveal" or "obliviously not realizing his toupee is missing or askew."
The Addams Family
In Episode 31, April 1965, Uncle Fester of The Addams Family has a pen pal come to visit. Unfortunately, Fester has written that he's handsome, athletic and with a full head of hair. Gomez and Morticia persuade him to buy a toupee. The toupee salesman makes a house call, and is so scared by the Addamses that he flees, leaving all his model hair. Fester tries several, and settles on a model which, of course, falls off when his pen pal arrives. His pen pal calls him a fake, and leaves. Fester keeps all toupees as target practice.
The Late Show with David Letterman
Like Jack Benny above, Letterman repeatedly makes jokes about a nonexistent toupee—and, since his hair is thinning, the joke has often been aimed at the idea that he'd wear a toupee that looks so bad. Letterman also has a running bit ("Hairpiece/Not a Hairpiece") in which he must decide whether a guest onstage is wearing a toupee.
- David Letterman and Ted Danson both took off their toupees on an episode of Late Night.
Monty Python's Flying Circus
Episode 41 of Monty Python's Flying Circus, which first aired on November 7, 1974, featured a skit named "Toupee Department" in which all the employees of the store are wearing atrocious toupees, but none of them realize that their fellow employees are bald. (They all think they're the only one wearing a toupee). When Eric Idle walks in with a full head of real hair, they all believe he is wearing a toupee and try to convince him to buy a better rug.
The Dick Van Dyke Show
However, toupees were perhaps most famously used for comedy in an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show, Episode 128 "Coast-to-Coast Big Mouth”. During the episode, Mary Tyler Moore, playing the part of Laura Petrie, wife of Rob Petrie played by Dick Van Dyke reveals to a television audience that Rob's boss, the famous television comedian Alan Brady, played by Carl Reiner, wears a toupee.
Seinfeld
In Season 6, Episode 99 of Seinfeld, "The Scofflaw", George Costanza wears a toupee for the first time. In Episode 102, "The Beard", George wears his toupee to a date set up by Cosmo Kramer, only to find that the woman, Denise, is bald. When he turns her down and tells Elaine about it, she yells "YOU'RE BALD!" to George, who replies "I was bald". Elaine then tears the toupee from George's head and throws it out the window, with George nearly jumping out after it. Later, George decides to continue seeing Denise, who then seeing George is bald, turns him down.
The Simpsons
In Episode 207 of the Simpsons, Halloween "Treehouse of Horror" Episode IX, the first segment was entitled "Hell Toupée" (get it?). In it, the low-life character "Snake" is sent to the electric chair. He vows revenge on all on Apu, Moe & Bart, who were present at the time of his arrest. After electrocution, Snake's hair is saved for transplant, and the lucky recipient is Homer Simpson. The hair takes on a life of its own and uses Homer to exact Snake's revenge.
Music
A song by Australian comedy duo Lano & Woodley from their "Sings Songs" CD is called "Toupee" and details many humorous uses of a toupee, such as a shower puff, oven mit and pot scourer and advantages of wearing a toupee: for example, it can be swapped with others, it does not have to be cut like regular hair, and it to check whether he is well groomed, the user may simply take it off his head.
Known and suspected toupee wearers
Wearers of toupees take pains to keep their use secret, but all too often, its presence is obvious, or at least evident enough to engender suspicion.
Film and television stars of both past and present often wear toupees for professional reasons, particularly as they begin to age and need to maintain the image their fans have become accustomed to. However, many of these same celebrities go "uncovered" when not working or making public appearances.
Several of the names included here include possible combovers and users of hair plugs and transplants. That said, a list of known and suspected toupee wearers includes:
Suspected toupee wearers
Known toupee wearers
- Elton John
- Tommy Lee Jones
- Gene Kelly
- Walter Koenig
- Stan Lee
- Chris Meloni
- Dean Martin
- Fred MacMurray
- Ricardo Montalban
- Bert Newton
- Joe Pesci
- Charles Nelson Reilly (stopped wearing in the late 1990's)
- Burt Reynolds
- John D. Rockefeller
- David Lee Roth
- Ron Santo
- Willard Scott
- Steven Seagal
- Peter Sellers
- William Shatner (has since had restoration surgery)
- Paul Simon (stopped wearing in 1996)
- Frank Sinatra
- Jimmy Stewart
- Congressman James Traficant
- John Wayne
Toupee trivia
Saparmurat Niyazov, the President of Turkmenistan wears a toupee, and Turkmenitstani reporters are forbidden to report it.
The running gag about Alan Brady's toupee on The Dick Van Dyke Show was based on Max Liebman, the producer of Your Show of Shows (1950), who also wore a toupee.
Jason Alexander, famously bald as Seinfeld's George Costanza and in real life, wore a small toupee for his part as the agent Albert J. Peterson in the 1995 TV movie of Bye Bye Birdie.
Thadeus Stevens, famed 19th century U.S. Congressman and abolitionist, was known for his humor and wit. On one occasion while in the Capitol, a woman requested a lock of his hair (collecting locks of hair was common at this time). He being bald and wearing a toupee, he ripped it off and offered all of his hair to her.
Burt Reynolds's 1996 bankruptcy statement disclosed a $7,500 debt to two toupee companies.
The only movie in which John Wayne did not intentionally wear his toupee after going bald was in The Wings of Eagles (1957), in which he played Frank Wead, (aka Spig Wead) a naval aviation pioneer and screenwriter. In the WWII-era scenes, the older Spig Wead has a noticeably bald head - Wayne's own. Prior to this, Wayne appeared without it accidentally in the 1949 film The Fighting Kentuckian. His hairpiece was knocked off during one of the fight scenes but no one noticed until after the film's release. Wayne never denied wearing a hairpiece and when once confronted by a college student with the fact, he responded, "Of course it's mine, I bought and paid for it."
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