Hair loss is common in both men and women, especially as we age. (Representative image)
Hair loss is common in both men and women, especially as we age; for example, androgenetic alopecia (or pattern baldness) affects 80% of men and 40% of women. In most cases it is probably physically insignificant.
However, modern society abhors hair loss. Look at how news reports are speculating on whether ten-year-old Prince George and his brother Louis will inherit their father’s “baldness gene.”
The market for hair restoration surgery is expected to be worth £10 billion by 2026. You can even buy baby wigs that claim to make children under three years old “more attractive.”
This is not always the case. Baldness has been revered in many cultures and historical periods, from ancient Egypt to the 18th-century Isini people (now Ghana). A shaved and bald head can represent purity, a rejection of superficiality, and be ritualized through daily shaving.
Baldness also has a positive association with divinity. Medieval and Christian art includes bald depictions of Jesus and the Madonna. Today, Buddhist monks, nuns, and other political and religious groups regularly shave their heads.
In the 19th century in the West, baldness also began to be celebrated. But this is not for religious reasons, but for pseudoscience tied to harmful ideas about intelligence and race. It set a precedent for a Eurocentric bias in hair loss research that continues to this day.
Eugenicists and hair loss
Ten years after Charles Darwin published his famous evolutionary paper “On the Origin of Species” in 1859, his cousin Francis Galton expanded on it to argue that some human groups are more evolved than others Groups are more evolved. Galton and others used any observable differences in humans, including differences in skin color and hair, as “evidence” of different human races, some of which were considered superior to others.
Black people, in particular, are pseudo-scientifically categorized as having different hair and being evolutionarily inferior to white people. Victorian eugenicists viewed black people’s hair as animal fur, believing they were the same “dark-skinned, hairy-headed animal.”[s] The past 2000 years.”
Related to eugenics is the pseudoscience of phrenology, which attempts to predict traits such as personality and morality from physical characteristics. These include a person’s head shape, skin color and amount of hair. Phrenology, which had been thoroughly discredited, was used to support scientific racism, the belief that race was biological and that some races were superior to others.
In his 1891 book How to Read Character from Features, Shapes, and Faces, Victorian author Henry Frith wrote: “Hairless men are wise men: their minds and their bodies The powers are all quite strong…the brain dominates matter in Baldhead”.
These ideas are combined with false beliefs about the superiority and intelligence of white people relative to other “hairy” races.Frith writes: “The white and relatively hairless race[e] Rule the world [over the] A strong, wild, furry race. “
American medical students are taught that “slaves, Indians, women, and donkeys will never be bald because their brains are small and underdeveloped.” In 1902, physician David Walsh wrote a book about hair diseases in which he said: “Baldness is almost unknown to savages.”
Shockingly, this eugenicist logic remained unchallenged until the end of the 20th century. In 1966, dermatologist Ian Martin-Scott concluded that “baldness among colored people is a rare phenomenon and is virtually unknown in many semi-civilized communities” .
The diversity of hair loss is important
Thankfully, this false belief is rare in science today. However, as with many areas of medical research, hair loss research and clinical trials have primarily focused on white people, neglecting or excluding other racial groups.
Social psychologist Hannah Frith (no relation) and I recently reviewed psychological research on more than 10,000 bald men. We found that almost all study participants were European or Asian, and only 1% were from South America or Africa.
Meanwhile, dermatologists and other hair loss practitioners continue to routinely study medical textbooks that contain only images of white scalps and straight hair.
This is a problem because recent (and limited) research shows that hair loss is common among all racial and ethnic groups. A 2022 study reviewed data from nearly 200,000 British men (aged 38-73). Researchers found that 68% of white men experienced hair loss, compared with 64% of South Asian men and 59% of black men. (The relatively small difference is partially explained by the fact that the whites in the study were older).
There are also some forms of hair loss that are known to be more common in people of color. For example, Asian women are more likely to have alopecia areata, an autoimmune disease that causes hair loss.
Black people are more likely to suffer from traction alopecia, a type of hair loss associated with constant pulling on hair follicles, including through tight hairstyles. The situation highlights the impact a racist society has on hair.
Specifically, black people may feel the need to hide their Afro-style hair (stereotyped as uncivilized) through weaves, braids, and chemical relaxers. All of these practices can cause damage to the body, including damage to hair follicles.
Racially inclusive hair loss resources (provided by the Center for Evidence-Based Dermatology) can help dermatologists make more realistic recommendations that place people’s hair problems within their social and cultural context.
It is important to better understand racism in hair loss research. It reminds us that the texture, color, and amount of a person’s hair conveys nothing meaningful about their evolution or otherwise.
(author:Glen Jankowski, Senior Lecturer, School of Social Sciences, Leeds Beckett University)
(Disclosure Statement:Glen Jankowski does not work for, consult, own shares in, or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant relationships beyond his academic appointment)
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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