Dangerous "Beauty" products - an issue for CALD & disabled women
By Helen Said, Autistic advocate, Melbourne Australia
I first heard about the US Sister Study, and its worrying findings regarding carcinogenic hair products used by many women, in late 2019. I then began researching coercive, dangerous beauty products of all kinds, and found out that they impact most heavily on CALD women and Women of Colour, especially those with disability.
The 2019 US Sister Study found “Among African American women, using permanent dyes every five to eight weeks or more was associated with a 60% increased risk of breast cancer as compared with an 8% increased risk for white women.”
The higher danger for Black American women is apparently linked to the type of breast cancer they develop. Because of health and socioeconomic issues, they are less likely to detect breast cancer in its early stages. These findings could well have parallels amongst African Australians, who are of a similar racial background, or amongst Indigenous Australians, who often have poorer health outcomes.
But there are other cancer dangers for CALD women who dye their hair. According to the American Cancer Society, “Because darker dyes have more of some chemicals that may cause cancer, these products are of greatest potential concern.”
https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/hair-dyes.html
This is especially worrying for CALD women and Women of Colour for the following reasons:
1. * Many older CALD people, both women and men, use the more carcinogenic darker dyes to restore natural looking colour, and older people are more likely to have acquired a disability. They are more likely to have fragile health which could worsen upon using carcinogenic products which carry no labels or warnings.
2. * Hair dyes are more likely to be used more often by darker people as early greys and white re-growth are more obvious in our naturally darker hair. Rather than having the silver streaks gleaming against the dark-haired background, after a couple of washes, the more dangerous permanent hair colours are preferred.
3. * With the rise of working from home, and its popularity with workers with disability, the face, hairline and parting are emphasized in zoom and online meetings. CALD women with disability who need to work from home are thus more likely to use dark carcinogenic hair dyes even more often to cover these greys – I went from dyeing my hair every five weeks to dyeing it every three weeks, as an ageing migrant woman, once I started working from home during the pandemic. (I eventually opted to go grey. The Autism rights movement taught me to stop masking my identity.)
4. * The burden of the intersectional cocktail of racist, sexist, ableist and ageist discrimination means that middle aged darker women with disability feel ever more dependent on these beauty products to appear sexually attractive, employable and to avoid being type-cast as witches or voiceless peasant women.
5. * Early covid news from overseas depicted people over 60 being denied intubation and being allowed to die if they caught covid, in favour of saving the lives of younger people. This definitely influenced my decision to dye my greying hair more often when covid first hit.
6. * CALD women with disability, who find it physically harder or more expensive to dye their hair, are more likely to opt for permanent rather than temporary hair colour, reported to be much more carcinogenic in the recent Sister Study.
7. * CALD women with disability are less likely to be able to afford some $80-$100 for a salon hair dye, reputed to be a safer way to dye the hair. For example, I always dyed my hair at home, and having poor co-ordination and not much muscle tone in my arms, ended up taking shortcuts, rubbing the dye into my scalp, which I now know to be the most dangerous practice. I did this for 20 years. A CALD woman who starts covering her greys in her 30s, and keeps maintaining her youthful dark colour into advanced old age, could be exposing herself to these toxic chemicals for up to half a century.
8. As an Autistic woman, I just don’t have the affinity with gal pals and beauty products to get somebody else brushing or combing my hair dye in the recommended way. While I have no sensory issues with someone doing my hair, as an Autistic I am not typically feminine. As a younger woman, I never enjoyed the uninvited beauty advice or random comments about the racial characteristics of my hair that I often got from hairdressers, so I largely avoided chit chat and beauty services. This was a further reason why I did home hair dying for over 20 years, which, according to various studies, exposed me to more of the nasty chemicals. (I am pleased to say that times have changed and women’s choices are now better respected by many hairdressers.)
9. * CALD women with disability are less likely to be able to afford safer natural hair products. I went from paying $9 for the cheapest permanent dye to paying $16 for a semi-permanent after hearing of the Sister Study. But after seeing that this didn’t wash out either, I bought a natural product over the internet for $45, which would take several hours to mix and set and could wash out in the rain. By the time the product arrived at my house, I realized I could not afford the time, energy or money to dye my hair with this product while heading into retirement. In any case, I shouldn't have to pay taxes on being female. As a result, I am now greyer and braver. I thankfully work for a small ethnic community enterprise where I experience positive age, sex and ethnic discrimination. As for my attractiveness to men, I now have a jar opening gadget and I can keep my pension while working part time - I honestly can’t think of anything else that a potential partner in his 60s or 70s would still be capable of providing. 😉
The Sister Study goes on to say, “An intriguing finding was the association between the use of chemical hair straighteners and breast cancer. Dr. White and colleagues found that women who used hair straighteners at least every five to eight weeks were about 30% more likely to develop breast cancer. While the association between straightener use and breast cancer was similar in African American and white women, straightener use was much more common among African American women.”
It's no longer socially acceptable to openly denigrate a person for having a Black or Brown face, so most racists have retreated from the face and landed in the hair, where they feel safer to mock and ostracise, forcing people to risk using carcinogenic products to mute their racial attributes.
Darker skinned people who maintain bushy or frizzy hair are still often considered unkempt or even uncivilized and unsuited for professional employment. Young CALD people or People of Colour can be denied jobs or suspended from school for adopting youthful hairstyles which more naturally suit African or Indigenous hair types.
Women who seek employment or partners can feel pressured to straighten their hair, and this applies many times over to darker skinned women with disability. It’s hard for some women with disability to straighten their hair at home. This involves some dexterity and hand strength, and reasonable eyesight, to manage a hot iron at about 200 degrees, to achieve the right look without burning yourself. A disabled CALD woman, with a naturally curly or frizzy racial hair type, may feel compelled to cop the expense and have her hair chemically straightened at a salon, to escape at least some of the racist, sexist pressures in her life and improve her chances of finding work and partners.
But who warns us that hair straightening chemicals and hair dyes carry a cancer risk? Nobody. Why do we receive so many health warnings about cigarettes, a carcinogenic product heavily used by white men in Australia, yet there are no health warnings about carcinogenic products mostly used by CALD women?
I sent all of this information to an African-Australian community leader and they told me that their community is already very worried about skin lightening creams. This sent me into another Autistic information gathering frenzy, with disturbing results.
The Guardian reported, on April 24 2018 that “Not all products that purport to lighten the skin are illegal, but many creams from outside the EU contain chemicals banned under safety regulations. These include mercury and hydroquinone – which with prolonged use are linked to poisoning, skin damage and liver and kidney malfunction – and corticosteroids, which in the UK are prescription-only products. Misuse of corticosteroid creams is associated with thinning of the skin, an increased chance of skin cancer and, counterintuitively, darkening of the skin.”
The 24/4/2016 issue of the Huffington Post reports, “There are no statistics for the use of skin lightening products in Australia, but anecdotally it's believed to be widely used within Asian and African communities here.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2016/04/24/skin-whitening-beauty_n_9753900.html
I do not know enough about these communities to know whether this also presents as a disability issue in particular, but this wouldn’t surprise me given that Asian and African women with disability would feel an extreme burden of prejudice. The Guardian article sheds further light on the pressures that Black and Asian women experience which opens them up to exploitation by the skin lightening industry:
‘A landmark US study in 2011 found that light-skinned black women receive shorter prison sentences than dark-skinned black women. In 2015, another study found that white interviewers regarded light-skinned black and Hispanic job applicants as more intelligent than darker-skinned interviewees with the same qualifications. Cynthia Sims, of Southern Illinois University, found a gap in career opportunities between dark- and light-skinned women in India, while a Seattle University study by Sonora Jha and Mara Adelman found that the chances for a dark-skinned Indian woman dating online were “nonexistent”.’
But there’s more – we now know that waterproof mascara and liquid lipsticks and foundation may contain cancer-linked 'forever chemicals'
https://www.insider.com/cancer-linked-chemicals-found-in-mascara-liquid-lipsticks-foundation-2021-6
‘Thousands of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) exist, but only a small portion of them have been tested for toxicity. All PFAS are human-made and slow to break down in the environment and the body.
"Because they don't break down, they can build up in water and food, they can stay in our bodies, and they can cause health effects," Thomas Bruton, an author of the study and senior scientist at the Green Science Policy Institute, told Insider.’
Why might this be a disability issue in particular? Because women with disability may not be so adept at freshening up the make-up in the bathroom – they may not have the eyesight or dexterity or may not be able to access public bathrooms or the mirror may be up too high for a wheelchair user. They may need assistance to dress and make-up in the morning and this has to last all day, hence a likely preference for these water-proof and forever coloured make-up, containing the most dangerous chemicals.
When I go out, I sometimes use colour-stay lipstick. With my brain type, I do not maintain the observation or the awareness of feminine details of dress or think to refresh the lipstick. I cannot tolerate earrings or high heels, so I just slap on some colour stay lipstick and off I go to face the world. I now know that “lipstick-wearers may eat several pounds of lipstick in their lifetimes, makeup products are relatively unregulated compared to the food and drug industries, Graham Peaslee, senior author of the study, said in a press release.” Hence I now mostly wear colourful beads and scarves instead of lipstick. I am thankful for a somewhat greater tolerance of women's personal choices in more recent years and this trend needs to continue, along with safety warnings on dangerous products and the development of safer cosmetic alternatives.
Now that we know how dangerous some "beauty" products are for women, will the US Secretary of Health, anti-toxin crusader RFK Jnr, step in to regulate this industry? I doubt this. I can't imagine Melania or Ivanka Trump changing their beauty routines. The Trump administration is only interested in controlling women, deporting immigrants and denigrating Autistics, not making life better for any of us.
It's not popular to criticise the beauty industry or dump its products. It looks like leadership on this unpopular topic is once again falling to Autistics and feminists.
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