Gabrielle Union Talked About Letting Go Of Relaxers: 'Harder Than My Divorce'

Gabrielle Union gets candid about her hardest breakup ever.

The "Bring It On" star, 49, talked about how she changed the way she looked when she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area when she was young during an interview with People.

The actress grew up in Omaha, Nebraska where she was surrounded by "amazing Black women."

"I come from one of the largest Black families in the state of Nebraska — one of the largest in the Midwest," Union shared. "I was constantly surrounded by amazing Black women with all sorts of hair textures and types. I just thought everything was possible."

At the time, Union revealed she would wear "cornrows" and had "hair beads" while living in Nebraska. However, she completely changed her hair when she moved to a different state with her family.

"Most people think of the Bay Area as having a lot of diversity, but the town we moved [to] was 99.9 percent white," Union recalled. Being young, she "just wanted to fit in."

"I wanted swoop, swinging hair and in order to get that I needed a relaxer," The "Being Mary Jane" star said of the chemical treatment used to straighten curly locks.

Union continued, "I had to convince my mom, and I'm sure she thought, 'What's the worst that can happen? They've been around forever.'"

Union used the straightening treatment since she was eight. According to the magazine, she didn't stop until 15 years later.

"I didn't care about my hair health. I would try to leave the relaxer on as long as possible," she explained. "It was about assimilating and trying to look and appear appropriate and attractive. I wanted that kind of validation that young Black girls get when you fully assimilate and you move away from Blackness towards something that is a little bit more destabilizing and not really affirming at all."

While Union accomplished her goal of fitting in, she knew it was wrong.

"To constantly be questioning yourself and not feeling worthy or good enough, I knew I needed to free myself of that and the first step was letting my relaxer go," she said.

Although, letting go of the treatment was especially difficult for the actress.

"It felt like one of the hardest breakups ever," Union admitted.

"I've been married twice, and I feel my breakup with relaxers was harder than my divorce," she joked.

Union was married to retired NFL star Chris Howard for almost five years. She found love again with current husband Dwyane Wade, tying the knot in 2014. Four years later, the pair welcomed their first child together -- daughter Kaavia James. The former NBA star is also dad to daughter Zaya, 14, and sons Zaire, 20, and Xavier, 8, from past relationships.

Union first opened up about embracing her natural hair in February 2021.

"When I was younger, I hated everything about [my hair]," she told People. "I wanted it to be anything but what it was."

She continued, "I wasted so much of my youth in my twenties, thirties and certainly my teens wanting to be someone else. I was inundated with images and messages saying, 'You're just not as pretty as so-and-so.'"