Chemical/straightening and other hair product usage during childhood, adolescence, and adulthood among African-American women: potential implications for health

Abstract

Few studies have characterized life course hair product usage beyond ever/never. We investigated hair product use from childhood to adulthood, usage patterns in adulthood, and socioeconomic status (SES) correlates among African-American (AA) women. Using self-reported data from 1,555 AA women enrolled in the Study of Environment, Lifestyle, and Fibroids (2010-2018), we estimated the usage frequency of chemical relaxer/straightener (≥twice/year, once/year, rarely/ never) and leave-in/leave-on conditioner (≥once/week, 1-3 times/month, rarely/never) during Users may view, print, copy, and download text and data-mine the content in such documents, for the purposes of academic research, subject always to the full Conditions of use:

Hair Maintenance and Chemical Hair Product Usage as Barriers to Physical Activity in Childhood and Adulthood among African American Women

“…To standardize responses with the childhood categories, we categorized chemical relaxer use in the past 12 months as ≥twice/year, once/year, and rarely/never. Leave-in conditioner use in the past 12 months was assessed using two questions about type (i.e., rinse-out vs. leave-in) and frequency of conditioner use, and these questions are provided in a prior publication [ 9 ]. To standardize with childhood use, leave-in conditioner use in the past 12 months was categorized as ≥once/week, 1-3 times/month, and rarely/never.…”

“…Assessment of other hair products use in the previous 12 months is described in detail in a prior publication [ 9 ]. Briefly, participants also reported use of other hair products, and we used latent class analysis to identify latent classes based on frequency of use (i.e., high (≥once/week), medium (1–3 times/month), none (rarely/never)) of chemical relaxer/straightener, shampoo, individual growth/moisturizing products (i.e., shea butter, natural plant based oils, hair food, moisturizing creams and lotions, conditioners/detanglers), and a group of common hair styling products (e.g., hairspray or styling spritz, styling gel, mousse, pomade, hair grease, oil sheen, setting lotion).…”

“…A potentially important, understudied contributor of racial/ethnic disparities in physical activity and relatedly, poor cardiometabolic health is the difference in hair product usage behaviors among Black/AA women compared to non-Black/AA US women [ 8 , 9 , 10 ]. Black/AA women generally have naturally curly hair that requires either permanent chemical straightening products or use of heat and temporary straightening products in order to obtain straight hair, which is a widely accepted European beauty standard [ 8 , 11 , 12 ].…”

“…Black/AA women generally have naturally curly hair that requires either permanent chemical straightening products or use of heat and temporary straightening products in order to obtain straight hair, which is a widely accepted European beauty standard [ 8 , 11 , 12 ]. These hair manipulation practices begin as early as childhood [ 9 , 13 ]. Hair straightening and other products marketed to and used mainly by Black/AA girls and women have been shown to contain chemicals with endocrine-disrupting properties [ 14 ].…”

“…We hypothesized inverse associations between chemical hair product use/hair maintenance frequency and physical activity. Given our previous findings in relation to changes in hair product use at different life stages among Black/AA women [ 9 ], we performed two cross-sectional investigations of these associations: one at age 10 years and one during adulthood.…”