by Khaila Gentle

BELIZE CITY, Tues. Oct. 18, 2022

A number of the young girls pictured on the boxes of hair relaxers did not actually have relaxed hair themselves, a recent Twitter thread reveals. It’s a revelation that has some black women feeling duped and has also sparked much discussion in the world of black hair care.

When Twitter user Ash Leon shared a photo featuring a collage of relaxer boxes from the 90s, she perhaps intended to stir up some nostalgia. Most women of Afro-descent who grew up in the 90s or 2000s, and even long before that, are all too familiar with the concept of hair relaxers, known colloquially here at home as a “perm”.

It’s a process that has been somewhat on the decline in recent years, thanks to the natural hair movement, but back then, it was akin to a rite of passage for almost every girl child. In those days, many young girls, this writer included, felt that a fresh perm right after graduation or at the beginning of the school year meant that the transition to young womanhood was imminent. And even now, as those young girls, now young millennial women, stroll through the aisles of their favorite cosmetic store, they can’t help but feel a touch of nostalgia at the sight of Dark & Lovely or African Pride boxes sitting on the shelves. They look at the young models beaming on those boxes, with their silky soft—straight—hair, and remember the moment when they thought, “I want my hair to look like that, too.”

They think back to the hour or so spent sitting on a dining chair or in a hair salon trying their best to ignore the slight tingling-turned-burning of their scalps, or to a few weeks after, when silky straight hair would turn stiff and dry—but, of course, would still be mostly straight. Now, however, when they look at those boxes, and the young black girls on them, they might find that nostalgia accompanied by a sliver of mistrust.

Since the time of posting on October 2, 2022, Ash Leon’s tweet, which asks where those relaxer models are today, has received over a thousand replies and almost half a million likes. It has also left many surprised after some of those models revealed that they had natural hair their entire lives. One woman, by the name of Jerrika, responded to Leon’s tweet and shared that she was the model for the Soft & Beautiful brand of relaxer, but her hair had only been pressed.

“I was a perm box gal, with only a press out,” she wrote.

Another model, Kyla Upshaw Croal, told The Root magazine that she was sixteen-years old when she modeled for the Soft Sheen brand. She said that she was glad she didn’t have to get a relaxer to do the shoot, pointing out that many of the girls did not have to use the hair treatment kits and were instead given extensions or used curling irons, rollers, and mousse to get the desired look.

“There were no lawsuits at the time for false advertising,” Croal said.

Responses to the revelation have been mixed. Some Twitter users, feeling like they were deceived as children, have expressed outright anger, questioning whether they can take legal action against the relaxer brands. Others, however, have responded with humor.

Adama Munu, who wrote on the story for Refinery29, spoke with reporters at NPR News and explained the reasoning behind the pain that many women felt.

“When I think about this thread, you know, in that moment when we saw these girls, there was this joy. But we quickly came to the realization that there were these emotions of insecurity and inadequacy that also accompany these memories. And so when these women revealed—or at least some of these women revealed that they didn’t perm their hair, it kind of harked us back to those feelings of inadequacy and feelings of having to go through something to acquire something that wasn’t even actualized in truth,” she said.

She later added that she is in no way against women choosing to relax their hair.

“If that is something that women want to do, then they—I think we’ve earned the right to have that choice, as long as we’re cognizant of the fact that the relationship between these relaxer kits and the idea of Eurocentrism as the default is never going to go away,” she said.

Most people have simply taken the moment as an opportunity to reflect on the shared experience that black women across the globe had growing up in the 90s and 2000s. A number of the women who did have their hair relaxed at the time have since gone natural.

One woman, Jaeylin Evans, tweeted that, like many of her counterparts, she has since opted to wear her hair in its natural state. Meanwhile, sisters Alexis and Aleah Davis told reporters at Buzzfeed that, while they did often use the product that they were advertising while growing up, the experience has since helped them embrace their natural hair. Many other models have also gone on to express how hair relaxers have impacted how they view their natural hair, even today.

Twenty-four-year-old Nathalie Gitu, who modeled for Dark & Lovely, says that she stopped relaxing her hair in 2018. She stated, though, that “Whether in an afro, relaxed, shaved, or braided, Black hair will always symbolize survival, resistance, and celebration”.