Welcome to the next in an ongoing series of writing prompts in the Worldbuilding community !
I'm aiming to post one of these each Sunday. They aren't a replacement for the excellent daily prompts from 
Image generated by AI in Wombo.art
The prompt this week is - Wigs
Wigs and other hair additions and replacements go back in history a surprisingly long way. The ancient Egyptians, both men and women, frequently shaved their heads and wore wigs; the more elaborate it was, the higher a social status it indicated. In many primitive tribes, shamans wear some kind of wig or hairpiece as part of their headdress.
Wigs in Europe came to the fore during the Renaissance. Queen Elizabeth I famously wore one after her own hair started turning grey, and the English Civil War is frequently stereotyped as Cavaliers (wearing wigs) vs Roundheads (Puritans who didn't) although that's actually a huge simplification. Who can forget the wigs of 17th Century European nobility at Versailles and other royal courts, swept away by the egalitarianism of the French Revolution.
In modern times, wigs have gained a number of names - "Hair Replacement Systems", toupees and the like. They aim to be as realistic as possible rather than the obvious ostentations of the past, and much mockery ensures when they fail, which can be rough on cancer patients who wear wigs while their hair regrows. Gerry Anderson was prescient when it came to sci-fi, giving the girls in Moonbase in "UFO" distinctive metallic purple wigs - logical when you consider that hair waving around in zero-gravity can be a terrible hindrance.
Tell me a story about wigs from your fantasy or sci-fi setting ! Are they a practical solution to a problem, or a symbol of social status ? Are they a source of mirth, or of competitive display ? What about wig-makers - are they invisible or regarded as skilled craftsmen ? Where do wig-makers get the hair they use - from volunteers, people selling theirs because they need the money, from criminals, animals or artificial fibres spun by machine ?
Just to add a bit of spice to things, the two entries I most like (and are linked in comments to this post, so I can find them !) that are posted by midnight (GMT) next Saturday will each get a prize of one Hive SBI.
This link will take you to the FAQ where you can read more about Hive SBI - it's a project I thoroughly support because it gives both the donor and winner a steady trickle of passive income paid out in the form of upvotes on posts.
Guidelines
I stole these guidelines straight from
- Prompt replies may be anything! Art, game assets, stories, worldbuilding details, fake wiki entries, maps... whatever you want to create!
- Please ensure you reply to this post with a link to your reply
- Posting in or cross-posting to the Worldbuilding community is highly encouraged
- Use the hashtag #worldbuilding
- Prompt replies can be any length.
- AI images to illustrate your posts are fine, as long as they are credited to whichever software you used to make them
- Posts using AI to create the text are not acceptable; these prompts (and community) are a way to expand and have fun with human imagination, and I firmly believe AI will never be able to replicate the human spark.
Some other neat communities for writing that you might want to check out are:
It can be a lot of fun to mix and match our prompts with some of these other community prompts.
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