The Big Chop: Going Natural After Relaxers Stories

Inside this volume

Fifty first-person accounts describe leaving chemical relaxers behind, starting with why people stopped — a scalp burn, breakage, a pregnancy, chemotherapy, a dermatologist's warning, a daughter's question, the still-developing research on straighteners and cancer risk, or the cost of endless touch-ups. Writers describe the decision itself: the big chop with kitchen scissors or in a salon chair, or the long transition through wigs, braids and silk presses, nursing the fragile line where two textures meet. There is the daily learning of an unfamiliar head of hair — wash day, shrinkage, moisture and sealing, satin bonnets, first attempts at twists — and the reactions at home, at church and at work, including a husband who preferred it straight. Writers include men who quit the perm, a barber, a stylist who stopped relaxing her clients, a woman learning her curls at fifty-two and mixed-race readers who never knew their texture. Later chapters cover texlaxing as a middle road, smoothing treatments that were a relaxer by another name, doing it on a tight budget, people who went back to the relaxer more than once, and those still in the middle of it.

Who it's for

For anyone eyeing the scissors or halfway through a transition, parents deciding whether to relax a child's hair, and stylists and partners who want to understand what is really being given up.

Format · Instant download · PDF & EPUB · Fifty first-person accounts · PDF: 283 pages

A collection of personal testimony, offered as companion reading — not medical advice.

• 50 single-author testimonies from real people
• A short, plain-language introduction to the topic
• Editor's note, contents page, and curated resource list
• Professional interior typesetting and an original cover

Every purchase includes a print-quality PDF (best for desktop, tablet, and printing) and a reflowable EPUB (best for Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, and phones). Files are DRM-free. You can download both instantly from the order-confirmation screen, and we email them to your inbox as well, so your books are always within reach.