100 Objects #18: Hair Relaxer
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What does a hair relaxer treatment look and feel like in a Black salon?
Off a busy street in Brooklyn, New York, sits a storefront called Monica's Hair Salon. A salon our producer Priscilla Alab visited a few weeks ago.
I've been going to hair salons like this since I was little. They're places where people come for their hair, but also for advice, gossip, celebrations.
Oh, I love us. I just love us so much. A woman pops it. What'd she want?
Not for an appointment.
Happy birthday hug
But to ask for a birthday hug.
Well this young lady has been taking care of me since I was like twelve. And uh
This is Lorraine Samuel Salon. She's been here since nineteen ninety six. Today she's about to give a customer a classic salon treatment. One I've been thinking a lot about lately. What are you doing to your customers here right now? I'm giving her a relaxer. I was nine, maybe ten years old, the first time a chemical relaxer touched my virgin hair. That's the actual term for unprocessed hair. My natural kinky coils made hair grooming days very challenging. So my mom and I decided to relax my hair to make it more manageable. I was so excited for the possibility of long flowy hair that a comb could easily pass through. So what does it look like, the actual physical object itself? Hmm.
Kinda like cream cheese a little bit. It comes with a tub, like a usually a plastic tub.
Kinda doesn't smell like anything. This one.
This one doesn't.
But it probably burns the same weight though, right? It does. The first time I was preparing to get my hair relaxed, I was instructed very seriously, don't wash or scratch your scalp for at least one week before your appointment, because that would cause burns. In previous salon visits, I'd seen women yowl when the pain got unbearable. I didn't know it then, but I was being initiated into something much bigger than a hairstyle.
And it burns towards the end if you leave it in too long. So you're just supposed to add it to the hair shaft and then keep applying it. The creamy crack.
Oh. That's the relaxer's nickname, creamy crack. because it's said that relaxing your hair is addictive. Once you start, it's very hard to stop. If you stop, the hair breaks off where the new curly growth meets the already straightened dead hair. You see it. You
see it getting straight.
Oh yeah, there's no resistance in that hair anymore with the comb. In the the hair in the back where you started. Wow.
See the tough one?
Yeah.
Today, somewhere between 85 and 95% of black women in the United States have used a chemical relaxer at least once in their lifetime, as I did starting at age nine for years. Fast forward to 2023, while scrolling through Instagram, A targeted ad stopped me cold.
If you used chemical hair straightener and were later diagnosed with uterine fibroids, contact our office today.
A law firm wants me to join in a class action lawsuit. I had just been diagnosed with fibroids. A condition that disproportionately affects black women.
The new research linking chemical hair relaxer to uterine fibroids may help explain this disparity.
There are many ads like this.
Did you or a loved one develop cancer after using hair relaxing or hair straightening products? If so, you may be able to sue the hair product manufacturer for damages.
How did the narrator first experience a chemical relaxer as a child?
Fibroid, uterine cancer, ovarian cancer. All implying that this thing so many black women use. happening in so many salons across America and even the world could actually be making us sick.
From 99% invisible and BBC Studios, this is the history of the United States in 100 objects. I'm Roman Mars. Today, the Chemical Hair Relaxer, a ubiquitous American product that built black wealth and opened economic doors. But it also taught generations to see their hair as a problem to be solved. And now research is revealing a physical cost. This is the story of how those two truths came to exist at the same time. Producer Priscilla Alabi has the story.
When I saw the targeted ad soon after my fibroid diagnosis, I wanted answers. How did we get here where so many black women were doing this to ourselves?
My name is Lori L. Tharps, and I am a journalist and the co-author of Hair Story Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What does a hair relaxer treatment look and feel like in a Black salon?
0:02–3:49
2
How did the narrator first experience a chemical relaxer as a child?
3:49–10:33
3
Why did early Black entrepreneurs turn hair straightening into a path to wealth?
10:33–16:39
4
How did George Johnson’s Ultra Sheen change the relaxer market and Black communities?
16:39–21:58
5
What role did the Black Power movement play in reshaping attitudes toward hair?
21:58–26:13
6
What recent scientific studies link hair relaxers to uterine, ovarian, and endometrial cancers?
26:13–31:05
7
What warnings and policy changes are being proposed for relaxer products and salons?
31:05–34:47