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Potency and power

Building on a rich body of feminist scholarship on estrogen, this account interrogates how potent estrogenic cosmetics and consumer product labels emerged together, through the regulatory practices of scientists and lawyers, in mid-century Canada. Composed from archival and other primary sources, the story traces the development of Canada’s first cosmetic regulations – which applied only to cosmetic products containing estrogens. In 1944, “sex hormones” had been the first substances for which the Department of National Health and Welfare adopted labels in lieu of dose or potency standards under the Food and Drugs Act. With dose-response thresholds thus written out of the Sex Hormone Regulations, in 1949, regulators devised a new type of consumer product label that warned women to use estrogenic cosmetic products “with care”. Further regulatory amendments in 1950 appeared, on their face, to require positive proof of safety for estrogenic cosmetics, However, through varied administrative and enforcement practices that hinged upon “directions for use” in product labels, National Health officials quietly reintroduced dose-response logics back into estrogen regulation. As legal technologies for disciplining women consumers to regulate their own exposures, product labels were becoming instrumental. With labeling, estrogen catalyzed an early example of risk regulation in Canada.