American popular culture has always been driven by Black influence. But for Black women, hairstyles seemed to be dominated by white culture. For over 200 years, Black women have been straightening their hair in order to fit in, get jobs, and be accepted among dominant beauty standards. But with recent studies, Black women are dying from the chemicals used to straighten their hair, forcing them to develop alternatives.
A 2007 article by researchers at the Slone Epidemiology Center at Boston University and the Howard University Cancer Center was one of the first to publish work regarding a threat that hair relaxers might be connected with breast cancer.
Oxford Academic published research in 2012 regarding Black women being at risk of uterine leiomyomata (fibroids) due to hair relaxer use.
The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology published research in 2017 that detailed, “African American women experience more hair-related anxiety and are twice as likely than white women to experience social pressure at work to straighten their hair,” and exposure to these toxic chemicals during pregnancy can trigger adverse health issues.
In 2021, further research about hair relaxers and breast cancer surfaced in Boston University’s Black Women’s Health Study, which followed 59,000 Black women over a 25-year period and found that hair relaxer put women at a higher risk for breast cancer.
A recent media uproar came when research results were released in October 2022 by the National Institutes of Health from a study conducted with 33,497 Black women participants. They found that women who reported frequent use of hair straightening products, defined as more than four times in a year, were more than twice as likely to develop uterine cancer compared to those who did not. These findings have companies such as L’Oréal under the knife and in the courtroom.
Black people’s hair has been under attack since the beginning of chattel slavery in 1619. Black people were conditioned through physical and verbal abuse to see their bodies, facial features, and hair as othered — as animalized. According to the Harvard Library’s article entitled “Scientific Racism,” one of the most effective tactics used to rationalize the mistreatment of Black bodies was the comparison of Black bodies to animals through scientific research called polygenism, which
suggested human races were of different origins and claimed the European race was the superior race.
As time went on, Black people were constantly bombarded with messages that led to brainwashing and self-degradation. After the abolishment of slavery, Black people had to become employable and were forced into assimilation and acculturation by way of lightening their skin and straightening their hair. The topic of straightening Black hair has been controversial since the early 1900s when Jamaican-born Black nationalist and leader of the Pan-Africanism movement, Marcus Garvey, warned Black people, “Do not remove the kinks from your hair — remove them from your brain.”
Today, Black people have more choices than their ancestors did; however about 60 percent of Black women continue to straighten their hair according to market research institute Mintel; and since the fall of the natural hair movement in recent years, that number may be increasing.
TikTok has 72.6 million views on the topic, “relaxers are back.” Pop Culture has pushed the idea about the need for Black women to relax their hair in order to be considered beautiful. For example, rapper Nicki Minaj, who refers to herself as Barbie, references “nappy-headed hoes” in her song, “Did it On ‘Em.” The social conditioning from dominant Westernized beauty ideas, as well as from the African American community itself, pressures many Black women to chemically relax their hair, which according to the research, is putting them at risk or in other words under attack.
One recent case that demonstrates Black women wanting their hair to behave in unrealistic ways is with Tessica Brown and her Gorilla Glue incident. Another example involves the rise of the “melt,” where Black women use a technique to make wigs appear as their “real” scalp and hair. The process calls for gluing the wig to the skin of the hairline and using a hair dryer to “melt” the netted lace front of the wig to the hairline; followed by short strands of hair, a.k.a. “baby hair,” which are then gelled at the edges to further hide the netting of the wig.
These hairstyles are almost always paired with relaxer-straightened hair. And thus, many Black women are voluntarily attacking their hair to fit within the dominant ideas of beauty. However, Black women are not fully to blame: centuries of brainwashing is most certainly the reasoning.
This article is meant to shed some light on the hard-to-hear truths that Black women continue to follow along with dominant beauty ideas at the risk of their own health. The dominant Westernized beauty standards uphold that women who are white with straight hair, light eyes, and skinny (nowadays slim-thick) are the most beautiful, leaving all other women who don’t fit into this category going to great lengths to try to obtain the unobtainable.
Articles have been recently published regarding some hair professionals’ thoughts that the relaxer research is propaganda to scare Black women, leaving the need for further investigation on behalf of Black women themselves. Many hair care professionals’ propaganda ideas may be tied to their wallets. Forbes published a recent article that stated, “Sales of chemical hair relaxers to salons and other professionals have been declining for at least a decade, according to market research firm Kline & Co., from about $71 million in 2011 to $30 million in 2021.” If Black women listened to and acted on the results of research, relaxer production and application profits would take a major dive.
The indoctrination that Black women have endured throughout history regarding being the lesser beauty makes it difficult to see the true reality. A new way of thinking about Black beauty OUTSIDE the dominant idea would require an entire shift in mindset. It would require a response to the issues that many just are not ready to respond to. And that’s understandable — hundreds of years of brainwashing will take another hundred to undo.
Black women, the choice is yours to take control over your hair, bodies, and overall well-being instead of allowing society to dictate who you are, how you should look, and which chemicals you allow near your body. ●
