The video clip of the “straightening comb” brought it all back.
The sharp, iron edge scraping into my soft scalp. The smell of burning hair, mixed with greasy pomade. Oh, the dreaded hot comb!
The video was part of a promotion of ABC affiliate WLS-Ch. 7’s Chicago Black History Month half-hour special, “Our Chicago: Black Hair Is…,” which aired Saturday. The show entertained and informed with a great diversity of voices that “showcases Chicagoans and their personal hair experience.” (I am a contributor to the station.)
Black hair is as diverse as Black people. We are blessed with every shade of skin color from ebony to ivory. So goes our hair. Wavy, straight, kinky, curly and nappy. Especially nappy. For those of us — most of us — with nappy heads, “Black hair” is “bad hair.”
The refrain is common — “you’ve got bad hair.” Hair shaming is a painful part of our history. We are told that our beautiful kinky crowns are inferior and undesirable. We are told: You don’t want to look like a “Little Black Sambo,” with coarse, unruly hair, sticking out from all ends, dark and untamed.
At my Roman Catholic elementary school, I watched the white nuns favor the Black students with the lightest skin and the straightest hair, because they were “better.” I didn’t get that special consideration.
We are compelled to conform to a white, European version of beauty that is impossible to attain. That’s someone else’s definition of beauty. While natural hair styles have become acceptable in some arenas, such as the entertainment industry, you regularly hear of Black people who accuse employers of forcing them to adopt straight hair styles.
Back to that straitening comb. In my childhood, that heavy, steel-clad instrument was the way to tame our “naps.” It represents the hair trauma I have suffered since childhood.
I sat at our kitchen table in trepidation, as the straightening comb was heating up in the flame of the gas stove. Mama would lift it from the jet, wave it for a slight cool and apply it to my tender scalp. It burned. It hurt. But you had to go straight.
As I grew older, going straight progressed to relying on chemical “relaxers,” lye-infused hair products that burned our hair into submission. There was nothing relaxing about it, yet we endured the pain and damage to our hair and scalps to attain “acceptable,” ramrod tresses.
Over the generations, Black people have pushed back. In the 1960s and 1970s, during the Black Power movement, we celebrated our hair heritage, sporting royal Afros. Later, some, including me, embraced cornrow and loc styles.
Still, many succumb to processing our hair and denying our beautiful naps, kinks and curls.
We cut our locs and braids, fry our follicles with chemicals, or hide them with wigs and fake hair, and under wool caps and scarves. With those actions come pain, chronic hair loss and worse.
When I started wearing my natural hair, my mother told me she feared it would stunt my career. I never looked back, but I know that came with a price. Opportunities missed, jobs I didn’t get, false impressions of who I am and what I stand for, all because I chose my hair.
I do not judge my sisters who stay straight, but I do fear for them. As we celebrate this Black History Month, we are still struggling with the damage done in our quest to conform to a white version of beauty. The pursuit of going straight could kill us.
“A 2020 analysis found that 10.5 million Americans used home hair permanents and relaxers, and clients are still having their hair relaxed at salons,” according to a recent New York Times report, “The Disturbing Truth about Hair Relaxers.”
About 89% of Black women in the United States have used hair relaxers at least once, the study found. It was co-authored by Dr. Tamarra James-Todd, an associate professor of environmental reproductive epidemiology at Harvard University.
“In other words, an overwhelming majority of Black women have straightened their hair using chemicals at some point in their lives, often beginning in childhood,” the Times noted.
Black women who rely on chemical hair straightening products to straighten their hair are at a higher risk for uterine cancer, compared with women who do not report using these products, according to research from the National Institutes of Health. The agency’s “Sister Study” is a 20-plus-year examination of risk factors for breast cancer and other health conditions involving more than 33,000 U.S. women ages 35 to 74.
“The researchers found that women who reported frequent use of hair straightening products, defined as more than four times in the previous year, were more than twice as likely to go on to develop uterine cancer compared to those who did not use the products,” the NIH reported.
The key dangerous ingredients are formaldehyde and some formaldehyde-releasing chemicals.
“This research has prompted lawsuits involving nearly 9,000 plaintiffs across the country and at least the promise of new action from the federal government,” the Times reported.
In 2023, the Food and Drug Administration proposed a ban on formaldehyde-related chemicals in hair-straightening products, which are frequently used by Black women. President Joe Biden’s administration never acted on the proposal, and it “remains in limbo under President Donald Trump,” CNN reported this month.
Trump’s nominee to lead the FDA, Dr. Marty Makary, is awaiting confirmation. Agency spokesperson Courtney Rhodes told CNN the proposal “is still in the rulemaking process” but “continues to be a high priority” for the agency.
Let’s move it forward. Banning these life-threatening chemicals would be a welcome way to right Black history’s wrongs.
Laura Washington is a political commentator and longtime Chicago journalist. Her columns appear in the Tribune each Wednesday. Write to her at LauraLauraWashington@gmail.com.
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