Racist Beauty Standards

Every time Aisha Mustapha would look into the mirror all she could think about was how she wanted to have smooth and silky hair. 

She walked to the salon and asked to have a relaxer, or in other words, a chemical straightener put in her hair. She was super excited to be able to run her fingers through her hair again and for once, to look like the women she would see on the covers of magazines and on television. She was excited to hear all of the compliments and to smile at herself when she glanced at her reflection. 

But when she sat in the salon chair, she began to feel a chemical burn on her scalp.

“I’ve been relaxing for as long as I can remember,” she said. “I got burnt almost every time I did, but just the last experience was the worst. Some areas of my scalp would form something like a scab, which took weeks to flake off like dandruff.”

After the salon, Mustapha noticed swellings beneath her scalp. She knew then that it wasn’t worth it — conforming wasn’t worth it. 

The idea of perfection is a disease of this nation — it’s a social construct that has negatively affected women of various communities. The concept of perfection in the United States tends to lean towards Eurocentric beauty standards: fair skin, straight hair and blue eyes. This is causing harm and serious health issues for Black women who feel they have to have those characteristics to be accepted.

“It’s about racist beauty standards driving the choice of relaxers,” Mustapha said. “It’s also not surprising given the ‘kinky hair’ stigmatization that’s rampant.”

“It’s about racist beauty standards driving the choice of relaxers,” Mustapha said. “It’s also not surprising given the ‘kinky hair’ stigmatization that’s rampant.”

Mustapha is only one of many Black women who have been exposed to harmful chemicals through beauty products due to chasing the look of society’s view of perfection. 

A new study reveals that racist beauty standards are driving the use of beauty products that are often contaminated with chemicals that alter the human endocrine system, causing organ damage and cancer in communities of color. These products include chemical straighteners and skin lighteners, which are frequently used among Black women, thus becoming an environmental justice issue as well. 

Those who associate straight hair or lighter skin with elevated beauty, professionalism, or youth, were more likely to report greater use of chemical straighteners and skin lighteners, according to the study published earlier this year.

The study cites that the “failure of companies to disclose the harmful chemicals in their beauty products, along with the targeted marketing of these products to women of color, raises environmental justice concerns.”

WE ACT for Environmental Justice, a Harlem-based organization with a mission to build healthy communities through combating environmental racism, began by conducting a survey of about 95 questions that asked respondents how, where and why they choose to buy chemical straighteners and skin lighteners. The survey focused on the Hamilton Heights, Washington Heights, Central Harlem, East Harlem and South Bronx neighborhoods, which are mainly populated by people of color. 

Lariah Edwards, an author of the report and associate research scientist with the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, said they chose this neighborhood because of the population and because of knowledge that the stores in these areas sell toxic products.

She said when it comes to clean products, access is a big deal in terms of financial access and physical access, as communities of color typically don’t have the same levels of wealth as other communities may have. 

“It doesn’t always financially make sense to spend more money on something you can easily get for cheaper,” Edwards said. “However, the cheaper products often are not as clean, or at least they are not marketed as clean, so that’s a concern.”

Isabelle Chaudry, the founder of the Equity and Wellness Collaborative, said that Black women tend to use more hair products on their hair because they have a different type of texture and type of hair in comparison with other races. She says Black hair requires plenty of maintenance and protection. 

“It takes a lot more to keep our hair moisturized and protected just by the nature of our hair texture and hair porosity,” Chaudry said. 

Tiah Tomlin-Harris, an advocate for clean products and cancer coach, says Black women may sometimes feel they have to fit into Eurocentric beauty standards because they are trying to maintain a certain look and aesthetic or are even trying to conform to required policies from their workplace or school. 

“As you were growing up, you had to look a certain way,” Tomlin-Harris said. “These are things that we were told and so we did things to help make ourselves beautiful not only for ourselves but competition with other women. We wanted men to be able to see us and even in the workplace, and just overall society.”

Tomlin-Harris recalls looking at magazines as she walked in the stores and almost never seeing a Black woman on the cover, but the only times she did, the woman had long silky hair. She said seeing a dark-skinned Black woman with her natural coarse hair was rare. 

“Beauty has been defined by Europeans and so it affects us because we’re looking for the things so that we can look like what we see,” she said. “It just keeps happening from generation to generation to generation.”

For people who may not understand how Eurocentric beauty standards can affect Black women’s personal decisions, Edwards said she often tells a story about her childhood. 

Growing up as a Black girl in the 1990s, she remembers her mother going out of her way to find her a baby doll that looked like her. She wasn’t looking for the fair-skinned doll with blonde pigtails but for a doll with dark skin and a similar type of hair as hers. Her mother searched store after store and couldn’t find a doll that resembled her daughter. 

Edwards remembers being extremely grateful and thankful for her mother in the way she recognized how important it was for her to get a doll that looked like her because she was the darkest skin amongst her siblings.

“It’s important that you see yourself and your environment in a positive light,” she said. “It’s important that you can open a magazine and see someone who looks like you being the symbol of duty or being the lead of the story or being the romantic interest on television.”

Edwards said having Black women represented in society has a big impact on how Black little girls and women carry themselves and how they interpret the concept of beauty. This also transfers to the workplace. 

Chaudry was once advised to straighten her hair for an interview during law school because it would “look more professional.” She chose to not listen to the advice, but this was the first of many times she would receive similar comments regarding her hair. 

Tomlin-Harris saw the effects of using toxic products when she found a lump in her breast at the age of 38. Even before the mammogram and biopsy, she knew in her gut that it was cancer. 

As Tomlin-Harris didn’t have anyone in her family who had cancer and worked in the pharmaceutical industry as a chemist, she immediately knew she had to get rid of her products. She started by throwing out all her haircare, skincare, makeup, cleaning solutions and aerosol sprays into the garbage. 

“I started to look at how to read the labels and what I can replace these products with so that I can lower my risk of progression of the disease because I was battling the disease already,” Tomlin-Harris said. 

When she went to the doctor and asked what she could do to help herself, she was told: nothing. Now, the cancer coach and breast health educator decided to take matters into her own hands by getting rid of all the toxic products she kept in her home and began to pay close attention to the labels on her products.  

“I don’t think people are aware because it wasn’t something we talked about,” Tomlin-Harris said. “I honestly believe that we purchase what we can afford. You look in Black communities and you see beauty supply stores everywhere and you don’t see any of those products in there that are deemed as clean beauty.”

Guests at beauty supply stores typically found in Black communities may pass by a few big-name brand products, extremely cheap makeup and hair care, fake jewelry and not a single salesperson to ask questions to or give recommendations. It’s a pattern I’ve seen throughout the city and other parts of New York. 

She said there has always been a lack of awareness in the Black community regarding safe beauty products and most people don’t even know how to pronounce the words that are listed on the label. 

“In white communities, they’ve always talked about these things,” Tomlin-Harris said. “When you go into our communities and go into the beauty supply store, it’s not owned by us. It’s owned by other cultures and a lot of the ingredients and the products that they’re selling, God knows where it’s coming from.”

“In white communities, they’ve always talked about these things,” Tomlin-Harris said. “When you go into our communities and go into the beauty supply store, it’s not owned by us. It’s owned by other cultures and a lot of the ingredients and the products that they’re selling, God knows where it’s coming from.”

Chaudry believes companies should begin by analyzing what ingredients are put into their products. 

“It’s unfortunate that the products that are marketed for Black women just have these harsher chemicals, and the laws that regulate the chemicals are very laxed,” she said. “This means that companies and people who create products can get away with a lot of damage, just not having to abide by stringent policies or guidelines for developing their products.”

Chaudry said she wasn’t surprised at all by the recent studies showing that Black women are mainly harmed by toxic hair and skin products. 

“It’s something that I think will continue to happen, and hopefully, people who have been harmed by relaxers can get justice because products have been found to be dangerous,” she said. 

Four Black women are currently trying to get justice and have filed lawsuits against L’Oreal and other companies alleging the chemicals in their chemical hair straightening products caused them to develop uterine cancer or other severe health effects. A study found Black women report using chemical hair straightening products more than other populations. 

“Black women have long been the victims of dangerous products specifically marketed to them,” civil rights attorney Ben Crump said in a news release. “Black hair has been and always will be beautiful, but Black women have been told they have to use these products to meet society’s standards.”

She said there were periods when she just wanted to wear her natural hair with no extensions or any additional component, but it really came down to the education or workspace and their policies. 

Tomlin-Harris pointed out that these issues of conformity are also being pushed in the Hispanic community, as she recalls going to the Dominican hair salon and having them straighten her hair so it would be easier to work with. 

She believes many Dominican salons had perms in their shampoos and conditioners, and many women who go to the salon would not know what was in the products that were being used. 

“My hair texture did change,” she said. “More people then started to come forward and say this was the experience they were having. Recently, my cousin’s hair was super curly and now it’s just bone straight. Her hair was so damaged that she had to cut it off.”

Edwards says the term environmental injustice of beauty is linked to colonialism, racism, racialized beauty practices and adverse health outcomes. The term focuses on the idea that all of these external factors play a huge role in the chemical exposures that women of color are personally experiencing. 

“Women of color feel pressure to fit that definition in order to receive the benefits that we often give to people who look conventionally attractive,” Edwards said. “Whether we mean to or not, studies have shown that people with darker skin don’t feel like they receive the same treatment as their counterparts.”

Barbara Jacques realized that Black women don’t have enough healthy products at their disposal, but she learned it the hard way. She discovered she had an ovarian tumor when she and her husband were expecting their daughter. 

She then created her own vegan skincare line for women of color once she realized all of the toxic chemicals in her and her husband’s beauty products. 

“It wasn’t until I learned about my tumor that I started making the connection when it came to not just a primary focus on my hair, but also the whole body and understanding the systematic effects certain ingredients have on your overall health,” Jacques said. 

Jacques said she often saw that there weren’t enough beauty products for Black women with unique skin concerns like hers. Following the scare, she began studying holistic medicine and plant botany and started to transition from using traditional beauty products to more natural products. 

“I think I spent like two hours in the beauty aisle just looking at the back of ingredients trying to find something or just products that I could use for myself,” she said. “Still to this day, there are very few products that are made for women of color and I always see a product recall because of the lack of insufficient research and data when it comes to melanated skin.” 

After experiencing the health scare, she created JACQ’S Skincare to diversify the skincare industry and address skin concerns specifically for melanated skin tones. 

“I wanted to create a product line that was truly wholesome and that had vegan ingredients that weren’t linked to cancers and tumors,” she said. “I just wanted to create something for us by us that I didn’t see in the market at the time.”

She said it took her a while to unlearn the systematic standards of what beauty is and to learn that she is her own kind of beauty. 

“We’re all beautiful in our unique way,” Jacques said. “I feel like our community is starting to understand that until we start to lobby or even speak up about the lack of accountability in the beauty industry and the huge injustice, we will continue to get overseen and overlooked.”

“We’re all beautiful in our unique way,” Jacques said. “I feel like our community is starting to understand that until we start to lobby or even speak up about the lack of accountability in the beauty industry and the huge injustice, we will continue to get overseen and overlooked.”

When Tomlin-Harris was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer, she also learned Black women are disproportionately impacted by breast cancer — one of the reasons being the toxic chemicals in products the community uses. 

With a mission of educating more Black women and girls about their products and causes of cancer, Tomlin-Harris co-founded the My Style Matters organization — a cancer education program for women and girls. One of the educational programs includes helping women discover the importance of non-toxic beauty products and eliminating toxins and exposures from their lives. 

The organization also gives product boxes full of six weeks of product at no cost to women who are undergoing cancer treatment called the ‘Kick Cancer Care Kit.’ 

“It’s non-toxic because we want them to get kick-started with making healthier choices and what better way for me to do it than to actually give you the actual products and let you experience their products,” she said. “Consumers have to be aware because people are gonna keep getting diagnosed with breast cancer and other cancers and other autoimmune diseases and things of that nature.”

Chaudry believes there needs to be more improvements made by consumers and the Federal Drug Administration. She says as of now, the FDA doesn’t have strong regulations in place surrounding what ingredients go into cosmetic products. Both the recalling of ingredients and screening for safety don’t occur as often as they should, according to Chaudry. 

Four bills were introduced in Congress last year as a part of the Safer Beauty Bills package, which would require disclosure of all ingredients and ban the use of mercury, formaldehyde, parabens and other toxins in beauty products.

“It gives the Federal Drug Association the power to recall some products that may be on the shelf and then have negative health effects when people use them,” Tomlin-Harris said. “So it’s a step in the right direction, but it’s definitely not at the level of what we’re asking for.” 

Astrid Williams, manager of environmental justice with Black Women for Wellness, a nonprofit organization with a mission to uplift Black women and girls through health education, empowerment and advocacy, helped coin the term “beauty justice.” 

Until there is beauty justice — or in Williams’ words — fair and equal treatment around all ethnicities and equal access to clean and affordable products for everyone, these ladies feel that there is still a long way to go.