Potency and power

Abstract

Building on a rich body of feminist scholarship on estrogen, this account interrogates how potent estrogenic cosmetics and consumer product labels emerged together, through the regulatory practices of scientists and lawyers, in mid-century Canada. Composed from archival and other primary sources, the story traces the development of Canada’s first cosmetic regulations – which applied only to cosmetic products containing estrogens. In 1944, “sex hormones” had been the first substances for which the Department of National Health and Welfare adopted labels in lieu of dose or potency standards under the Food and Drugs Act. With dose-response thresholds thus written out of the Sex Hormone Regulations, in 1949, regulators devised a new type of consumer product label that warned women to use estrogenic cosmetic products “with care”. Further regulatory amendments in 1950 appeared, on their face, to require positive proof of safety for estrogenic cosmetics, However, through varied administrative and enforcement practices that hinged upon “directions for use” in product labels, National Health officials quietly reintroduced dose-response logics back into estrogen regulation. As legal technologies for disciplining women consumers to regulate their own exposures, product labels were becoming instrumental. With labeling, estrogen catalyzed an early example of risk regulation in Canada.

Registering Cosmetics? The Constitution of Legal Form and Injurious Substance in Canada (1945–1946)

“…For companies engaged chiefly in manufacturing cosmetics and toilet goods, output leapt from $6,918,573 in 1939, to $18,992,908 in 1945, an increase of 275 percent ( Canada, 1941 ; Canada, 1947 ). The industry's rapid growth coincided with women turning to ‘performances of femininity to demonstrate their commitment to the war effort’ ( Tessaro, 2020 : 5–6). Melissa McEuen has demonstrated how these patriotic performances produced and augmented racial hierarchies in wartime America, where a ‘genuinely “feminine” face was dictated by racial meanings and age’, and the ‘women considered most likely to possess or have the ability to create one were middle-class housewives’ ( McEuen, 2011 : 6).…”

“…Tom Johnson has offered programmatic suggestions for how legal historians might embrace the material turn in the humanities and social sciences ( 2018 ). Building on insights from science and technology studies (STS) and legal geography, Johnson demonstrates how, in the context of the law of shipwreck in medieval Suffolk, ‘law projected a certain kind of materiality, and these projections manifested in material things’ ( Johnson, 2015 : 407; see also Tessaro, 2020 ). Outside of history, sociolegal scholarship has been approaching time and things together.…”

Chemical Futures

“…The Cobayes' main concern is the potential of such chemicals to cause endocrine disruption, infertility, and cancer. Manufacturers have denied this toxicity, but regulators have been slowly and partially recognizing the risk (Bellanger et al 2015;Colborn et al 1997;Tessaro 2020). The Cobayes call on their peers to avoid endocrine disruption by making their own soaps with safe ingredients, using reusable menstrual cups rather than sanitary pads, and buying locally sourced foods.…”