Should You Avoid Hair-Straightening Products?

Those of us with naturally stiff, curly, or coiled hair understand that it comes with a set of demands for upkeep and styling, and the prospect of straightening our tresses can be appealing. To that end, many of us turn to relaxers, chemical hair-straightening products that break the disulfide bonds that maintain the hair's natural shape and reform them while the hair's orientation is forcefully held straight.

Such products do offer cosmetic benefits to those who want to achieve a certain appearance, but they also present several problems to one's self-image and well-being, to say nothing of the health of their hair. Here are four reasons why you may want to keep chemical hair-straightening products out of your life.

Weaker Hair

Your hair's tensile strength is the amount of tension it can tolerate before breaking, and harsh chemicals can do a serious number on that tensility. Remember, hair-straightening products work by breaking the bonds that naturally shape your hair. Breaking those bonds also causes your hair to lose tensile strength, causing it to become more fragile and easily broken.

Frizzing, Dandruff, Thinning, Etc.

The compound restructuring achieved through chemical hair-straightening may also lead to a variety of other undesirable outcomes for your hair. The authors of a 2013 study published in the International Journal of Trichology sent questionnaires to 90 women who used hair relaxers to study the potential adverse effects of repeated chemical hair-straightening. The proportion of respondents who reported adverse effects was 95.56%, and the most common reported impacts were frizzing (67%), dandruff (61%), hair loss (47%), thinning and weakening (40%), graying (22%), and split ends (17%).

Scalp Burns

A common ingredient found in hair-straightening products is sodium hydroxide, more commonly known as lye. A widely used industrial chemical, lye is corrosive when it comes in contact with the skin. While today's commercial hair-straightening products aren't as caustic as they used to be, they can still cause pain and burns if your scalp is sensitive or if you keep the product in too long.

Unhealthy Beauty Standards

Straightening hair points to the societal factors that have motivated historically marginalized groups of people to do so - the same factors that continue to inform contemporary standards of beauty for women today. It all relates to a host of complex, deep-seated issues, stemming from an uncomfortable past, that is by no means eradicated.

In the era of American chattel slavery, the idea of "good hair" was devised to spin into a narrative that promoted one cultural beauty standard over another, giving rise to the notion that soft, straight hair was desirable while stiff, curly, or coiled hair was less so. It's a narrative that has followed us into the present day. It continues to imply that certain types of people are less beautiful, chipping away at the self-worth of women and men around the world.

Even the actress Gabrielle Union has had doubts about her self-worth because of her natural hair. In a 2022 interview with Shape, she revealed that she underwent regular hair-straightening treatments for 15 years so that she could feel accepted among her Hollywood peers, but she described it as a digression from her true self that had the effect of being "destabilizing" and "not really affirming."

And recent research from the Arizona State University Department of Psychology affirms not only that Ms. Union's experiences aren't uncommon but that natural hair representation is important if society is to move past the cruelty informed by the "good hair" narrative.

Potential Cancer Link

The last few years have seen studies that suggest a possible link between the use of chemical hair-straightening products and the development of cancer.

One study by the National Institutes of Health followed 33,497 American women, aged 35 to 74, for 11 years and found that participants who frequently used hair-straightening products had more than double the risk of developing uterine cancer. Other studies, published in the International Journal of Cancer and by the Boston University School of Public Health, have suggested an increased risk of breast cancer arising from frequent, long-term use of hair straighteners. As a result, manufacturers of chemical hair-straightening products are now facing lawsuits.

With chemical hair-straightening, you may be subjecting yourself to risks against your hair health, mental health, and physical health. You can prevent harm to your well-being by developing a healthier relationship with your natural hair and promote a fairer standard in the process.