We must embrace the growing natural hair movement

THE EDITOR, Sir:

Recently, researchers noted that black women may have a higher risk of uterine cancer than women who reported not using chemical hair-straightening products. This groundbreaking research was done by the National Institutes of Health. A group of researchers with the NIH’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences looked at the hair care habits of more than 33,000 women and found that those who used chemical hair-straightening products at least four times a year were more than twice as likely to develop uterine cancer. Researchers said chemicals like parabens, phthalates and fragrances in haircare products disrupt the endocrine system, which helps regulate hormones. That could, in turn, raise the risk of uterine cancer, the most common cancer of the female reproductive system.

Disturbingly, our local beauty industry practitioners have not said much about this research.

There have been at least 65,000 new cases of uterine cancer in the US this year, about three per cent of all new cancer cases, according to the study. Professor Wendy Greene calls the pressure, the “straight hair mandate”, noting that it can affect black people’s work, social and educational lives. Haircare products targeted at black women seeking to fit such beauty standards are often full of endocrine-disrupting and asthma-associated chemicals, many of which are not listed on product labels, according to a 2018 study published in the journal Environmental Research.

Our concept of beauty and self is largely associated with our colonial past. Unfortunately, our notion of beauty is oftentimes entrenched in a Eurocentric concept. We have been brainwashed to believe that chemically processed hair is beautiful in comparison to natural, unprocessed hair. Regrettably, too many of us have bought into the narrative which says anything too black is not good. Many black women are overly eager to process the hair of their preteens. This chemical processing of the black hair is not done in a vacuum. After centuries of enslavement and chattel slavery, which resulted in the differentiation regarding the treatment of slaves on the plantation, we should not be surprised that this practice – a rather discriminatory practice –persists over the centuries.

According to Professor Greene, pressure to adhere to societal beauty standards that glorify and prioritise hair textures and styles associated with white people have led some black people to rely on harmful haircare products like chemical relaxers to look the part. Greene is a law professor at Drexel Kline School of Law who studies black hair discrimination.

We have a far way to go before total emancipation, as many of us still have our minds locked in a colonial past. Perhaps with the direct association between uterine cancer and hair-straightening products we will look more carefully at our haircare habits. We must do our own research, and investigate our colonial past and the skewed interpretations many of us now have of beauty, black beauty. The time has come for us to reimage the learnt traditional concept of beauty. We need to affirm ourselves in our black skin and be aware of the ongoing institutional discrimination against natural black hair and how this violates our sense of self, our dignity and humanity. We must embrace the growing natural hair movement and move away from all vestiges of our colonial past, which have served to enslave our minds. We should reject all attempts to discriminate against the texture and style of our hair.

WAYNE CAMPBELL