For decades, chemical relaxers – creams applied to tightly curled and coiled hair to permanently straighten its texture – were a fixture of Black haircare. Then came the natural hair movement. By the 2010s, growing numbers of Black women were abandoning relaxers, embracing their natural texture and leaving behind the familiar ritual of chemical straightening – including the burning scalp you were often encouraged to endure for “just five minutes longer”. Some did the “big chop”, cutting off chemically processed hair and starting the hair growth journey from scratch. Others, like me, said goodbye to the “creamy crack” largely out of teenage laziness. Either way, for a while it seemed as though the relaxer’s reign was over. Sales plummeted; at the height of the modern natural hair movement – around 2011 to 2016 – relaxer sales had fallen by 60 per cent, leading to report in 2022 that cream texturisers were approaching the “brink of extinction”. Chemically straightened Afro hair had gone from being the default to increasingly unfashionable. And yet, something curious is happening. The relaxer is creeping back.
London-based celebrity hairstylist Zateesha Barbour has noticed it among her clients, and says the reasons are often remarkably straightforward. “My clients who ask for relaxers say they don’t care [about the health risks],” she says. “Most people are just like, ‘I just want my hair straight. Why does [the decision] have to be so difficult? Why do I have to think about things that other people don’t have to think about?’”
Why are so many Black women returning to hair relaxers?
Renowned hair stylist and British contributing editor Charlotte Mensah, who recently celebrated 40 years in the hair industry, has observed a similar shift, much of which she puts down to natural-hair fatigue. “What I’m seeing is that some people are simply exhausted by the amount of time, product and manipulation they’ve come to associate with maintaining natural hair,” she says. “Deep conditioning, layering multiple products, long wash days and daily styling can become overwhelming.” But, she counters: “Natural hair itself isn’t the problem. Often it’s the routine that has become too complicated. Haircare shouldn’t feel like a burden.”
The timing is striking: the uptick in the use of relaxers appears to be resurfacing just as scrutiny around the potential health risks of chemical straighteners has intensified. In the US, the State of Arizona recently filed a lawsuit against L’Oréal alleging that the company failed to adequately warn consumers about health risks associated with some chemical hair relaxers, including alleged links to uterine cancer, fibroids and other reproductive-health problems. In the UK, a major landmark report titled Afro Hair: Is State Intervention Needed?, published by World Afro Day last month in partnership with research consultancy Shift Insight, examined health and social inequalities associated with Afro-textured hair. Among its findings, 84 per cent of respondents agreed that finding hair products with ingredients they could trust was vital, while a third of respondents with Afro-textured hair said hair products had damaged their physical health.
Yet despite these lawsuits and health warnings, chemical relaxer kits remain widely available in high street shops and online. Leading dermatologist and hair loss specialist Dr Sharon Belmo notes that this is largely due to the regulatory context governing these products. “Relaxers sold in the UK are regulated as cosmetics,” she says. “They must undergo product safety assessments, meet ingredient limits, labelling requirements etc, and serious side effects must be reported, like other cosmetics.” However, as Dr Belmo points out: “This does not prevent burns or other side effects from improper use.” She also dispels common misconceptions around alternative formulations: “No-lye relaxers, such as guanidine hydroxide, lithium hydroxide or ammonium thioglycolate, are often felt to be gentler and may sting less, but like lye (sodium hydroxide) relaxers, they are still highly alkaline and can burn the scalp and weaken the hair. I do not believe, nor do we have the evidence to prove, that they are inherently safer for the scalp.”
So why, at a moment of unprecedented scrutiny, are some Black women going back?
Are hair relaxers still the practical choice?
Celebrity hairstylist Andree Marie, founder of London’s Andree Marie Salon, who has styled numerous celebrities including Tems and Burna Boy, believes there is no single answer. Trends matter – particularly the revival of short ’90s styles like the pixie cut seen recently on Zendaya at the Emmys – but so do the realities of everyday life.
“I think a lot of women just want to have fun with their hair,” Marie says. “This new rise of relaxers has definitely also been influenced heavily by how popular pixie cuts have become again, with so many people wanting ’90s pixie or a ‘Bixie’.”
She also cites practical considerations. “A lot of people have genuinely tried natural hair and have decided a relaxer fits their lifestyle. Some black women are going back to relaxers when they hit menopause and they can no longer handle the fact that their hair begins reverting [from straight back to coiled],” she explains. She also points to how hormonal shifts during menopause can change curl pattern, density and moisture retention, making natural textures feel harder to manage. “Or some go hard at the gym and want ease,” Marie adds, referring to the frustration of sweating out a silk press, or spending hours restyling coiled hair after every workout.
That question of ease versus risk is more layered than it sounds. The aforementioned World Afro Day report also found that 42 per cent of Black respondents had skipped or avoided exercise because of hair-maintenance concerns – more than three times the rate among people without Afro-textured hair.
Then there’s the discrimination. According to the same report, 76 per cent of Black women said they had experienced negative bias at work due to wearing their hair in its natural state, while 64 per cent said hair discrimination had limited their career progression. Against that backdrop, what might initially look like a simple grooming decision can become considerably more complicated. Social media suggests the conversation is shifting too, with #RelaxerTok attracting hundreds of millions of views and a new generation openly documenting their use or return to chemically straightened hair.
Is this then, a sign of growing hair autonomy? Or the quiet reassertion of Eurocentric beauty standards? Marie thinks the answer may be a combination of both. “Some Black women are pressured because of work and some just don’t care anymore; they feel they have tried it all and simply prefer a relaxer.”
Mensah is wary of turning individual hair choices into sweeping cultural statements. “We have to be careful not to assume that every Black woman who chooses straight hair is rejecting her natural texture or responding to Eurocentric beauty standards,” she says. “Clients want options and the freedom to decide what works for their individual needs, their lifestyle and how they want to present themselves.” While Mensah is quick to acknowledge how beauty standards still influence all of us, and that having that conversation is important, “so is personal autonomy”, she stresses.
Still, some hairstylists have opted for a firm stance on relaxers by stepping away from chemical processing altogether. Celebrity hairstylist and texture expert Michelle Sultan has spent years championing healthy, chemical-free styling practices, allowing relaxers to naturally phase out of her salon. “Historically, a lot of women have relaxed their hair because it was presented as the most practical route to manageability,” Sultan notes. “For me, it always starts with conversation, my role is to show clients that manageability doesn’t necessarily have to mean permanently changing the structure of their hair.” She continues: “Technology has moved on enormously. We now have incredible tools, products, treatments and styling techniques that allow us to work with texture, rather than automatically feeling that we need to remove it.”
For Sultan, the issue is deeply personal. “I have suffered with fibroids,” she reveals. “I cannot say, and would never suggest, that my fibroids were caused by the years in which I personally used chemical relaxers. However, having gone through that experience myself and being aware of the wider conversations and research around women’s health and exposure to certain hair products, it isn’t something I take lightly when I’m advising another woman.”
Personal choice and lifestyle aside, Dr Belmo stresses the importance of looking beneath the surface at the hair shaft, scalp and hair follicle. “Chemical relaxers are highly alkaline agents which break down strong disulfide bonds in the hair by a process called lanthionisation,” she explains. “While the broken bonds give the hair a new straight shape, this breakage also causes damaged cuticles and weakened hair strands that are more prone to breakage.”
Are hair relaxers safe?
Dr Belmo details the primary dermatological risks associated with relaxers, mainly due to their high alkalinity (pH 10-14) as “scalp itch and irritation, chemical burns, irritant contact dermatitis, hair loss and change in hair colour”. Addressing the systemic health concerns and high-profile litigation linking chemical relaxers to uterine cancer and fibroids via potential endocrine-disrupting chemicals, Dr Belmo presents a balanced perspective, “The cancer data is concerning but not conclusive,” she cautions. “The key study is the Sister Study, published in 2022. This showed that women who self-reported using relaxers more than four times a year in the previous year had a higher incidence of uterine cancers in comparison to women that were not using relaxers (4 per cent vs 1.6 per cent, respectively). This study also found a higher incidence of fibroids in women who used relaxers more frequently and reported more scalp burns. It is felt that perhaps the broken skin barrier aids further absorption of the relaxer.” Nevertheless, she is clear that while “relaxers have been shown to contain endocrine-disrupting chemicals, we do not yet have robust studies confirming that they cause uterine cancers, nor do we know which ingredient might be responsible or at what dose”. Ultimately, she says we need more studies.
Despite these uncertainties, many women continue to relax their hair, but Dr Belmo emphasises an empathetic, practical harm-reduction approach. “I know natural hair is not for everyone and understand that many women, including many of my patients, choose to relax their hair,” says the trichologist. “I often recommend changes to try and reduce the risks, such as always going to a professional hairdresser, reducing frequency of touch-ups, treating new-growth only, coating the scalp with a barrier cream before applying the relaxer, never accepting burning and neutralising thoroughly. I also advise against relaxing when there is scalp inflammation, which I see and treat a lot, and avoiding scratching the scalp prior to relaxing – to avoid increased absorption and chances of scalp burns.”
It’s easy to dismiss the return to relaxers as some sort of cultural regression, and many would argue that it is. However it’s impossible to ignore, despite the alleged health risks, the social factors that are influencing Black women to weigh up personal convenience and systemic pressure and still land squarely back at relaxers. When 76 per cent of Black women face workplace discrimination (for wearing their hair in its natural state), choosing a relaxer or a texture release can be a bid for daily autonomy in an environment that offers very little of it.