Detangling the roots and health risks of hair relaxers

Don’t Call Me Resilient

For decades, North American Black women have been using hair relaxers to help them fit into mainstream workplaces and the European standards of beauty that continue to dominate them. More recently, research has linked these relaxers to cancer and reproductive health issues - and a spate of lawsuits across the United States, and at least one in Canada, have been brought by Black women against the makers of these relaxants. Cheryl Thompson, a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University and author of "Beauty in a Box: Detangling the Roots of Canada's Black Beauty Culture," joins Vinita to untangle the complicated history Black women like herself have with hair relaxants - and where these lawsuits might lead.