I cover my hair about 75% of the time that I leave the house as it is a requirement of married Jewish women. I don't cover it at home because when I am at home, I rarely have any visitors and I am trying to minimize damage. Yes, covering your hair constantly does damage it. And frankly, I am just too vain to watch my hair break and fall out.
As for what I cover with, my preference is tichels., Beautiful scarves. Love them. In North America, tichels are hardly seen but sheitels (wigs) are the norm. I have an idea why and it irks me. It's come to it being an almost political statement. If you wear a tichel, people assume you are Israeli. If you respond you are not, they assume you are Sephardic or have a Sephardic husband. If you also deny that, they look at you like you are not only a freak but also very wrong. See, most of the North American Jewish population is Ashkenazic. and the hair covering of choice is the sheitel.
The sheitel does have it's benefits, to be sure. The biggest is that you can finally have hair that looks fabulous all the time. Some of the more picky rabbis have realized this and so they require women wear a cover of the sheitel. Yes, a cover over a cover. No, they can't just wear a hat or tichel. They have to wear a sheitel, with a hat or tichel over it. Why? Because they said so. And it's political. So if you don't, your community will probably come to regard you as rather goyish. That's because those rabbis prefer sheitels because they cover every strand of hair.
But sheitels are hot, itchy, and do a lot of damage if worn all the time. And why can't Jewish women not want to destroy their hair and not want to be uncomfortable? Why can't the tichel or the hat be embraced? Sure you occasionally see some hair peeking out of a tichel in Israel. But these women are somehow less observant than their North American counterparts who sit comfortably every night not worrying about if their husband or child or themselves will be blown to bits by terrorists?
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