Black women in the United States know well that stereotypes and fashions are loaded with doses of racism and supposed health dangers.
They face a real dilemma. Officer Chian Weekes-Ribera, a veteran of the Maplewood (New Jersey) Police Department, sued her boss last week. She argued that she received a disciplinary sanction for wearing natural hair, in the traditional Afro style, what some derogatorily call “cotton hair.”
She is not the only one, far from it, who finds herself in this situation.
On the other hand, in what involves imitating “European standards of beauty,” according to lawyer Ben Crump, more than 7,000 complaints, the vast majority of which are from black women, have been filed in US courts in in recent months against a dozen companies, including multinationals L'Oreal and Revlon, for the alleged link between their hair straightening products and uterine cancer.
The claims recruitment campaign began at the end of last year and has now reached its climax.
It all started after the American National Institute of Health (NIH) published a study a year ago in which it found an association, but not a causal link, between the aforementioned disease and the habitual use of chemicals to iron the hair, which They have been used for more than a century and whose mission is to make curling disappear.
Shortly after that work came out, many women became aware of television advertisements urging them to call a toll-free number if they used hair straighteners and had been diagnosed with uterine cancer. The Internet is full of law firms offering “free evaluations.”
The lawsuits, all consolidated in a Chicago court, emphasize that these hair straightening products contain harmful substances that increase the risk of developing uterine tumors, while the companies do not warn of the existence of this danger.
Advertising for these products is overwhelmingly directed at black women. Both L'Oreal and Revlon replied that their creams are subject to rigorous reviews. They stressed that the NIH did not establish a definitive link, so more research must be done before drawing conclusions. For companies, today, science does not support this relationship between the product and the disease.
Research revealed that relaxers include phthalates, parabens, cyclosiloxanes and metals, and can release formaldehyde when heated. This flammable substance is a known carcinogen that has been linked to nasopharyngeal cancer and leukemia, based on information from the World Health Organization.
The NIH study pointed to the suspicion that phthalates and other chemicals are endocrine disruptors that can interfere with the body's hormones and are suspected of contributing to an increased risk of cancer.
Crump, a renowned lawyer who fights against police brutality suffered by black citizens (his most famous matter is the death of George Floyd in 2020), was the one who filed the first complaint.
There began a class action lawsuit in which, although racial discrimination is not alleged, the lawyer stated that it is “a civil rights issue” because black women try to imitate the typical beauty criteria of white women under the idea of acceptance.
This case emerges just when black women have become aware and are increasingly opting for natural hairstyles. To avoid what happened to Agent Weekes-Ribera, at least 23 states have passed laws prohibiting discrimination based on hairstyle in the workplace and in public schools.
Black people have discovered the so-called “beauty of blackness”, a matter of pride and not shame. And, apparently, it's healthy too.
