DIFFERENTIAL BEAUTY STANDARDS ARE INCREASING UTERINE CANCER RISK IN WOMEN

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Chemical hair straighteners, also called creme relaxers, or just relaxers, are silent killers and women of minority ethnicity are most at risk. Relaxers are a common name for chemical hair straighteners which are used by women with thick curly/kinky hair to smoothen out the waves. There are a lot of reasons why people use these relaxers ranging from the most obvious one of making the hair more manageable to a more deep-seated psychological reason that has a lot to do with current beauty standards for women.

Stereotypes About Kinky Hair and Unprofessionalism:

In my very early years, relaxing our hair was an activity that happened about every 3 months and it was a normal part of our beauty routine. At that age, I’m sure the actual thought behind it would not be perceived as a “beauty routine” for a 10-year-old me. But even that young, I subconsciously felt that I was neater after I had had a hair relaxation session, so I exposed my hair to creme relaxer about 3-4 times a year to achieve this level of “neatness". I grew up in Nigeria, and I am aware that a lot of other women with type 4 kinky hair share the same notion of “neatness” in relation to having straight rather than kinky hair. But what price are we paying for this?

Relaxers contain chemicals that interact with the molecular structure of our hair in such a way as to break the bonds that hold them in a 2-dimensional position, causing them to fall back towards gravity. Curly hair contains different kinds of bonds such as disulfide bonds that keep them wound tight together. To get the hair permanently straightened, these bonds need to be broken and certain chemicals that can achieve these have been packaged together and placed in the shops, you guessed right, relaxers.? But these products may be dangerous as they can cause cancer. Relaxers often get absorbed through the scalp and some of the chemicals they contain come in contact with our DNA, eventually changing the way it works causing cancers such as uterine cancer.??

How Cancer Forms:

Cancer happens when our cells start working abnormally. In the normal state, old cells have to die and then new ones are formed to replace them. This formation of new cells happens when one cell divides into two, two into four, etc until we have millions of cells. When the cells have achieved a certain number needed for that particular function, our genes send out a signal for the cells to stop dividing until the next time. However, when there is a change in the DNA or genes that issue the command for the cells to stop dividing, cells lose control and divide uncontrollably, this is called Cancer. Soon there are way too many cells in that location than was intended to be, yet the cells cannot stop themselves, so they spread to other parts of the body, a process known as metastasis. The cause of the change in the DNA or the gene itself may be hereditary which means we got it from our parents, or it may be due to environmental exposure which is a term geneticists use to refer to things you are exposed to in your lifetime, including chemicals like the ones in relaxers.

What Have Relaxers Got to Do with it:

Uterine cancers are cancers that start in the uterus, the most popular being endometrial cancer which starts in the walls or lining of the womb. Research is starting to show that women who use chemical hair straighteners are 2 times more likely to have uterine cancer than those who do not. It also shows that black women are far more likely to suffer this relaxer-induced uterine cancer, because of the fact that they start using these products at really early ages and so have had prolonged exposure to these DNA-altering chemicals. Permanent hair straightening only lasts for as long as there is no outgrowth of hair from the scalp. Any hair growing out of the scalp will bear the original coily texture and thus regular “relaxing”, especially of the root of the hair, is required to maintain a consistently strengthened look along the entire length of the hair, leading to more frequent exposure to relaxers.

Conclusion:

Creme relaxers have had decades of helping women feel beautiful even though they have to aspire to a set of beauty standards that require them to change their external look. But it appears that these products may be exacting more than just a change in the exterior and actually changing the internal genetic makeup of the individual, a real double jeopardy. While they may be closing one gap in the beauty industry, relaxers are surely widening the health inequality gap.