99% Invisible - 100 Objects #18: Hair Relaxer

Episode Date: September 18, 2026

Somewhere between 85 to 95 percent of Black women in the United States have used a chemical hair relaxer at least once in their lifetime. It is a ubiquitous American product with a complicated legacy: it built Black wealth and opened economic doors, but also taught generations to see their hair as a problem to be solved. And now research is revealing a physical cost. Roman Mars and producer Priscilla Alabi explore how a single product became a mirror for all of America's contradictions.A History of the United States in 100 Objects is a production of 99% Invisible and BBC Studios. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and a whole week early. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Off a busy street in Brooklyn, New York, sits a storefront called Monica's Hair Salon. A salon, our producer Priscilla Alabi, visited a few weeks ago. I've been going to hair salons like this since I was little. There are 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 you want? Not for an appointment.

But to ask for a birthday hug. Well, this young lady has been taking care of me since I was like 12. This is Lorraine Samuel's salon. She's been here since 1996. 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 10 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, kind of like cream cheese a little bit.

It comes to the tub, like usually a plastic tub. It doesn't smell like anything. This one. This one doesn't. But it probably burns this one way though, right? It does. Yeah. 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 was a little bit of a little bit of your scalp for at least one week before your appointment, 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 end it to the hair shaft and then keep applying it, the creamy crack.

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 a comb, in the hair in the back where you started. Wow. You 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.

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. Fibroids, 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 in 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 Ala B. has the story. When I saw the targeted ad soon after my fibro 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. So I reached out to Lori Tharps, a journalist and hair historian who spent the last quarter century asking similar questions about hair.

So in your research, what surprised you most about the relationship black Americans have with their straightening their hair? I think the thing that was the most interesting and not in a good way was how early the quest for straightening our hair began as enslaved individuals, and the fact that that yearning for straight hair as a source of assimilation is still with us. But Lori says starting the story with enslavement is like starting at chapter two.

You miss a lot of context. And when you skip chapter one, black people end up looking obsessed, even though. pathological about their hair. If you go chapters before arrival, then we know that black people have always been artistic and creative with hairstyling. There was a rich hair dressing tradition in Africa. That was a part of their culture. Hair styling was fundamental to showcasing and sharing your identity.

You had a hairstyle that connected you to a tribe, to a family, to a people. It's an ancestral heritage. So when Africans were enslaved and brought to America, their hairdressing traditions transformed. What used to be a way to express yourself that connects you to your people and your identity suddenly became a strategy for survival. Black people were interested in straightening their hair very soon after being kidnapped and brought to the colonies because they were told. that their hair was inferior, that it was ugly, that it was more animalistic. We simply wanted to stop being treated like animals. And then hair straightening became a visual way to demonstrate our equality.

So they innovated. They created new techniques and tools from what was available. They had to get creative because they didn't have the tools or materials that they had in Africa. So instead of something like palm oil that was very common in Africa to soften the hair, they would use butter. They turned cornmeal and kerosene into shampoo, baking grease and butter into conditioner. Butter knives became crude flat irons. They would wrap the hair in yarn to kind of pull the kinks out. Very inventive, very creative methods.

They were so inventive that they'd change. techniques became legendary. So sought after that they became the barbers and wig makers of choice for white people. White people paid for their hands, their skill, their artistry, and that access to wealth, that became a pathway. They were able to make enough money, so many of them, to buy themselves out of slavery. Many of the early black universities and other black institutions were at funded or founded by black barbers. For example, they funded Wilberforce University, one of the first HBCUs owned and operated entirely by African Americans, built in large part on the earnings from hairdressing. Now, interestingly, though, to be clear, the black barbers at this time were not barbering other black people's hair.

They were barboring white people's hair, which is sadly ironic. because they couldn't do their own, I mean, maybe, you know, after hours, but they, you know, they couldn't have a barbershop where they did white clients and black clients because that would never fly. Black folks continue to innovate with their own hair, though. And by the early 1900s, that innovation would turn into full-fledged empires. Let's start with two women, Madam C.J. Walker and Annie Turnbull Malone, the first pioneers in black hair care as an industry.

They took the hodgepodge of hair straightening methods floating around and turned them into an actual system. Madam C.J. Walker and Annie Turnbone Malone became very wealthy by selling the idea of straight hair, but not with chemicals. They used hot combs and worked them through the hair with pomade to get a sleek straight look. But more importantly, they built an entire industry and economy around black hair care that, that didn't exist before. You have to remember that during slavery, black women were not given time to really pay attention to their hair

in terms of like really taking care of it. Madam C.J. Walker and Andy Turnbone alone were both really good at creating a beauty culture around hair for black women. And so it was be like, we're gonna wash your hair, we're gonna massage your scalp, we're gonna straighten your hair, she popularized the system for straightening the hair. And in so doing, Madam C.J. Walker became the first self-made millionaire woman in America, black or white. But the issue with straightening your hair with a hot comb was that the

results were temporary, because once moisture hit the hair, sweat, humidity, rain, it went back to its natural state. But someone was about to find a permanent solution. and completely by accident. Garrett Augustus Morgan was a tailor in Cleveland, Ohio in the early 1900s. He was trying to create a substance that would prevent high-speed machines and needles from destroying material like wool and other animal fur. One day, he tried a particular concoction and he noticed the thick texture of the fur relaxed. It became straight.

Next, he tries a solution on his neighbor's dog, which is a little suss, but the dog's fur comes out straight. Morgan then tries a substance on his own hair next, and his hair also becomes straight. And it was like an accidental discovery. He accidentally discovered that if you mix Lai and some other things, we could straighten the hair. Lye, spelled L-Y-E, a sodium hydroxide, a caustic chemical that people already knew could straighten hair. But it was too dangerous, too. corrosive to use safely. What Morgan found was a formula that made it possible to use

lie on human hair more safely, but it was still risky. And it was men, not women, who first were willing to gamble with the new chemical straightener, particularly jazz musicians. They wanted that sleek, processed look. They called it the conk. And one of the most iconic lores about this conk look is one featuring the equally iconic Malcolm X, when he was a teenager who had just moved to the big city of Boston. And the story that he shares about how important it was for him to look cool, for him, you know, he had his zoot suit. He wanted to be, you know, somebody in the streets of Boston. And he had the look, but he said that his nappy red hair, I'm paraphrasing, but his nappy red hair gave him away as being country, not being citified in, you.

having that slicked hair showed that you were truly from the city. And so they told him it was going to burn, but he didn't care. It was worth it for him. You watch the Malcolm X biopic movie with Denzel Washington, that scene where he throws his head in the toilet.

In Spike Lee's film about Malcolm X, there's a scene where the water went out just as Malcolm's hair is burning from Lye. He has nowhere to rinse. So he dunks his head into a toilet bowl just as the police burst into the place. Although that scene was a creative liberty Spike Lee took, the scene became a symbol of the lengths that many black people would go to assimilate.

Looking at it now, that scene represents an opportunity, a gap in the market that was waiting to be filled, because someone's going to figure out a way to not only make using life safer, but to make it sellable and accessible. His name is George Johnson, and his innovation will make him one of the most powerful black entrepreneurs America has ever been, ever seen. I consider him like the Madam C.J. Walker of his era in the black hair care industry because he literally made a fortune from his hair care products. He was the first person to make

a lot of money, packaging and, you know, creating a whole business around the relaxer. But his first relaxer was actually for men. A barber who was doing these homemade conks came to George Johnson, who was a chemist and said, hey, can you make some things that I can do quickly and easily? And that's how he came up with his ultra-wave product, which was a relaxer for men. He then followed that up with one for women called the ultrashine relaxer. And I guarantee probably every black women of a certain age, kind of Gen X and above, have heard of or had an ultrashine relaxer on their head at some point or their mother had or their sister has. George Johnson's products owned the market.

Unlike the straightening combs with temporary results or the dangerous lie concoctions people were mixing up at home, ultrachine was long-lasting and safer, and you could buy it at any drugstore. You didn't have to go to the salon to get it done, although you could go to the salon. It just revolutionized and in some ways made hair care for black people way more efficient and affordable

by being able to get that relaxer at your local drugstore and do your hair for yourself. You could straighten your hair at home. Nobody had to know. That privacy was everything. There has to be mentioned that there was an aspect of shame, if I'm being honest, about the fact that we had to use chemicals to straighten our hair. And by being able to buy your relaxer at the drugstore and do it at home, nobody had to see you going out or going to the salon or anything like that to get it done. George Johnson became a multimillionaire and took the profits from his company and reinvested them back into the black community. Soul Train, Essence Magazine, platforms where black culture was presented as vibrant, sophisticated, and beautiful, just as it was. He went even further. Independence Bank in Chicago, the largest black-owned bank in the country, giving loans to people

redlined by white banks, to homeowners, to entrepreneurs. He funded civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Reverend Jesse Jackson. He employed hundreds of black and brown workers who couldn't get hired anywhere else because of racial discrimination in corporate America. They got profit share in the company. full health care, an on-site nurse, college tuition paid in full, paid maternity and sick leave, four-day weekends for every holiday, unheard of in corporate America back then. By 1964, the Johnson Products Company became the first black-owned company traded on the American Stock Exchange.

But soon, the government started selectively regulating Johnson's products. So it was very interesting in 1975 when the Federal Trade Commission said that Johnson Products had to issue a warning on the outside of the boxes of their relaxers, that these products were made with lie, indicating that they could be harmful, right? But the FTC didn't require that all companies that sell hair relaxers have a warning label. In fact, the beauty company Revlon had launched their own relaxer that could. contain lie, but they weren't immediately required to add a warning label. And to this day, as far as I know, I could be wrong, but we have never been able to find my co-author and I, we've never been able to find a reason why Revlon didn't have to put the warning on, even though they also had lie in their products.

It took almost two years for the FTC to make Revlon add the warning. Two years where Revlon could market their products as if their lie, L-Y-E, was safer than Johnson's. In those two years, Revlon got a foothold. By the time Revlon was forced to add the warning, the damage was done. Ultra Sheen's market dominance was lost for good. Why were they targeted, but their competition, their white-owned competition was not. It's a mystery or a conspiracy, but it is widely understood that black-owned hair companies, again, since black people were in the hair business, which we know is pretty much since they were brought to this country, have always reinvested their money into the black community. Whether that was in scholarships, whether that was in community centers, Madam C.J. Walker built a theater in Indiana, like, for black people because they were not allowed in white people's theaters, you know?

So when black-owned hair companies either get taken over or the competition from white companies feels biased in some way, black people get really angry about that because they know that the black hair care companies have always kind of, again, help the black community. It's also striking that this is one of the first ways that a black person becomes a millionaire. in America. It's a product that makes black hair look less like itself. Embedded in this product is such a strong tension between, like, you know, self-empowerment and then assimilation.

And it's also the source of wealth and self-improvement for the black community. It feels kind of messed up. Like, what's that about? It does feel messed up. It feels very messed up. And I think it just, speaks to the complexity of being black in America. I don't have an answer for you.

I just can co-sign on the fact that this is incredibly complicated, but it signifies something about the pains and the lengths that we as black people will go to to assimilate. But there was a cost no one told us about. The costs were only now beginning to understand. That's after the break. At the same time that George Johnson is having the struggles with the FTC in the 70s, the Black Power Movement is taking off. And hair, of course, becomes central to the movement. During the Black Power Movement, Black people decided that straightening their hair hadn't solved any problems.

You know, they've been straightening their hair, starting with Madam C.J. Walker, you know, with straightening combs and now relaxers, whatever it takes in order to play the game. And it hasn't worked. And so the idea with the Afro didn't start with the Afro. It started with something simpler and more radical. I'm not going to straighten my hair anymore. I'm going to use my hair as a form of protest. You will see the difference. You will see that I am a Negro, that I am different.

I'm done making myself small. And what does black hair do? It expands. It grows up. It does not make you small. It makes you a little taller, you know? if you let it out, it will make you taller. It was a way to say, I'm angry, I'm fed up,

and I'm not going to make myself small to make white people comfortable anymore. During the Black Power Movement, the politics flipped so hard that there are stories of black people who had naturally straight hair, getting perps to add curls. Not every black person has hair

that will look like an Angela Davis Afro. some people had to go get a perm to make their hair more curly. The idea was we want this look. I don't even have to say anything. I don't have to lift my fist in the air. I don't have to wear all black. If you see me with that hairstyle, then you understand that I'm part of the movement.

I'm ready to fight for my rights. Black hair was never just hair. It always makes a statement whether or not the wearer means anything by it. In his heyday, the Afro was radical. It was political. It was a statement of defiance. Then the beauty industry capitalized on the Afro. They made it profitable, selling wigs, marketing it as beautiful and empowering. And it was. But in making it profitable, they defanged it. It became just another fashion trend. By the 1980s, Straight was back. But there were also policies driving that return. For example, in 1981, a black woman named Renee Rogers worked as a

ticketing agent for American Airlines. She wore cornrows to work. The airline told her she couldn't. Rogers sued. She argued discrimination, but the judge ruled against her. He basically said hairstyles aren't a protected class. The airline said it wasn't about race. No one could have cornrows. But who was really wearing cornrows? The takeaway for black workers was, if you wanted to keep your job, you had to do your hair the way the company wanted. It was similar in the military. Actually, the military's policy was explicit. Black women could straighten their hair, but every hairstyle other than the afro involving natural textures like braids, twists, locks, those were all legally banable. So black folks kept on keeping on. If you had to straighten your hair,

hair to work, you might as well make it fierce. In the 80s, that was the peak of black beauty and style. If I wanted to make a montage of the peak of straight hair in black America from the 80s to the 90s, what moments would you include? Okay, I would definitely get some shots from some of the hair shows that were really big in the 80s and 90s. Hair shows. These large-scale hairstyling competitions where the goal was to be as expressive and gravity-defying as possible. Stylists were sculpting bird cages out of hair with live birds, propellers, waterfalls, rotating carousels, all styles that required relaxing the hair. And if you want to understand the peak of that era, look nowhere else than at the iconic singer, Miss Patty LaBelle.

Every single Patty LaBelle hairstyle because Patty LaBelle really knew how to wear the wings. We did everything to my hair. I became the girl with the hair. Here she is in a recent interview with CBS Morning talking about a hairstyle she called The Bucket. We could put fruit in it or a chicken or whatever we wanted to eat in that bucket.

You stop it. You would put fruit in the hair. In her, because it was held together with awkwardness and it was real firm. And so I could put food in there. And the band one day just took an apple. It was a little apple and some grapes. From the bucket, I love it.

Hair so sculpted that you could literally serve dinner from it. By the 90s, the straight hair culture had reached its absolute peak. Almost every singer, every, you know, video had black women with straight hair, whether they wear wigs. The straight look, just pick Naomi Canaan. or Tyra Banks at any given moment throughout the 90s. Wasteland, silky, bone straight. Every celebrity had it. Razor-cut textured pixie like Hallie berries

or sleek, close-cropped pixie like Tony Braxton's. But by the mid to late 2000s, the tide was turning. The obsession with straight hair was starting to slow down. A green beauty movement was taking off. People were eating organic and thinking carefully about what they put in their body. So why weren't they asking the same questions about what they were putting on their bodies? Why were they slathering caustic chemicals on their hair and scalp every six to eight weeks? So people started embracing more natural styles.

I remember as a teenager just seeing all these black women like with natural hair and just being like, wait, what happened? Like we all just decided that we were not straightened our hair anymore. Yes, absolutely. So it's like, I don't need to. to buy a relaxer anymore because one of the main reasons that black women cited using relaxers was simply because it made their hair easier to manage. Well, now with the natural hair movement and the accompanying products, suddenly black hair wasn't so unmanageable.

The beauty industry felt it almost immediately. The numbers don't lie. From 2008 to 2013, relaxer sales plummeted 26%. At the same time, sales of natural hairstyling products like curl creams, moisturizers, and setting motions skyrocketed. And in real life, Lorraine Samuel saw the shift at her salon too. In the 90s, how often would you say you were

using relaxers on people? Oh, maybe five times a day. Versus five times a week, which is now in 2026. If you were doing like 30, a week? Definitely. So now you're doing less. Now I'm doing about five a week. Oh, my God.

So we don't spend as much in product. But in general, a feeling was growing. That this relaxer treatment can't be good for us. Then a few years ago, the science caught up to the fear. In 2002, a massive study would confirm what women had been sensing all along. I was really intrigued because that was the first. first time, there had been an association and a really good study linking hair relaxer products, black women, and two kinds of cancers, endometrial cancer and uterine cancer.

That's Linda Villarosa, a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine, where she covers health and social justice. I hadn't seen such good research about it before, but when this research came out, I said, oh, there's been a lot of smaller studies, but this big study means that maybe it's time to do an article. She published an article in 2024, discussing what scientists found from the NIH study. The conclusions from the research are alarming. It had followed 34,000 women and found that those who frequently used chemical hair straightening products and the majority of whom were black women were two and a half times more likely

to develop uterine cancer than those who did not. use them. Two and a half times more likely to develop uterine cancer. The 22 research makes an association with using relaxer products and ovarian, uterine, and endometrial cancer. So it's an association. It doesn't mean that if you used it, you will get cancer. It also doesn't mean you're going to die of it. Other research linked these products with fibroid tumors, and that is really important that we know because black women are much more likely than other women to get fibroid tumors. The study found correlation, not causation, a strong correlation between relaxer use and reproductive cancers. But for hair historian Lori Tharps, the distinction between correlation and causation misses the point. she doesn't think we should be cautious about it at all.

She thinks we should be waving a red flag, a big one, telling black women this product could cause cancer. And that's enough. There should be big warnings on the boxes, on the labels. Salons themselves should have warnings when a person wants to come in and do a treatment, a relaxer. They should be warned. This could give you, could give you fibroids or cancer.

sure you want it. If they're adequately warned and they still want to, you know, by all means, go for it. Cigarettes give you cancer and people still smoke, but a lot less do now than they did before because they understand the risks involved. But I do not believe by any stretch of imagination has this information been effectively disseminated. I think instead of calling it creamy crack, we should call it creamy cancer. That may be a start, but a loud warning won't change the social reality that makes black people reach for hair locksers in the first place. What it says about America is that if black people do their best to assimilate to white culture, there are riches to be made. If you can box assimilation, if you can put assimilation in a box

and sell it on the stores of drugstores in America, that is the path to great wealth. but it comes at a price. And that price continues to be paid. We started this story with nine-year-old me wanting hair a comb could easily pass through. But to paraphrase Malcolm X in his 1962 speech in Los Angeles, who taught me to hate the texture of my hair? Who taught me that my natural hair wasn't beautiful, that I needed to change it to be acceptable?

White supremacy is still real. racism is still real. People are still losing their jobs with natural hair styles. So even if this is dangerous, we still live in a world where straight hair is considered superior to natural kinky curly hair. So, you know, we're operating with this idea that something is dangerous, but white supremacy is dangerous. Lori L. Tharp's is the co-author of Hair Story, Untangling the Roots of Black Hair and America. A history of the United States and 100 Objects is a production of 99% Invisible and BBC studios. It's hosted and curated by me, Roman Mars. This episode was reported and produced by Priscilla

Alibi. Our other producers are Ellie Lightfoot and Brenna Daldorf. Our associate producer is Isaac Fisher. This series was edited by Annie Brown and Courtney Harrell. Mixing by Iver Manly. Fact-checking by Amy Bracken. Our theme song is by Swan Real. From 99% Invisible, our executive producer is Kathy 2. From BBC Studios, our executive producers are Annie Brown and Courtney Harrell. Our production coordinator is Shan Palais, and the production manager is Mabel Finnegan Wright, artwork by Stefan Lawrence. 99% Invisible is part of the Serious XM podcast family,

headquartered in Beautiful, Uptown, Oakland, California. and BBC Studios is headquartered in beautiful, White City, West London. If you want to get in touch or have an object for us to consider, email us at 100 Objects at 99PI.org.