Hair care is SO last century
And exhausting
Like misunderstood and typographically-problematic King Cnut, I spent years of my life trying to force my hair into retreat. I rollered it, primped, and ironed it (literally, on the ironing board). 🎶 Those were the days, my friends.🎶
Over the years, the quality and integrity of my hair suffered, and began to mess with my self-confidence. I worried that my rubbish hair would ruin dates and certainly deny me any chance of busting through the glass ceiling.
The ironing didn’t help, but eventually I wondered if perhaps it was the shampoo, or all the extra “product” I’d taken to using, that was damaging my hair. I couldn’t stop though. I tried another, then another, product, frantically scouring the shelves in a desperate search for something that would give me better hair and make me feel like a goddess. There had to be something, anything …
The shear (sic) madness had taken hold.
Commercial interests have led us to believe in cleverly fetishized products that keep us fiddling with our bodies daily: exfoliating skin that’s already dead and falling off, squirting cleaners into our harmonious vaginas, sluicing out our sinuses, and shooting “cleansing” coffee grounds into our rectums. They’ve done a good job on our heads: 51% of respondents to a survey in 2017 use some kind of hair care product every single day.
We have become accustomed to reaching for the shampoo for cosmetic reasons — because hair looks fuller, shinier, and altogether more winsome. Michael Gordon, founder of Bumble and Bumble, became disillusioned about the endless need for additional hair products. He left BB, went away and thought about it for a while, and came up with soap-less New Wash.
No harsh detergent, no chemically-induced suds! Sounds like a good idea, right? Why not? (Unless you object to New Wash’s advertising which loftily announces that other beauty companies “add fuel to our self-loathing”. That may be true but … ouch. Thank you. Next).
Michael was right about the way we’ve been caught up in the ever-expanding hair care industry. “Wash daily”, “Lather, rinse, repeat”, “Squeaky clean” — how grubby can the hair on our heads actually get? We brush it, run our fingers through it (some more compulsively and annoyingly than others) and tie it into pretty ponytails. We cover it with hats, hijabs and hairbands, scarves and snoods, berets and bandanas.
Really, it’s GREASE we hate — yet we continue to stimulate its production with frequent shampooing.
But take heart. Proctor and Gamble, manufacturers of many of the most popular shampoos, recently acknowledged that “Beauty fans are embracing the grease to help them achieve fabulous hair.”
It’s all about sebum
Sebum is the unctuous substance secreted from millions of tiny sebaceous glands. It’s essential for lubricating and waterproofing our skin, and is quite abundant on our eyelids, nipples, and genitalia. It is its presence on our scalps, however, that has achieved shock-horror status. After we strip-mine our heads, we have to replace nature’s conditioner with stuff that comes in plastic bottles destined to wash up on beaches and seriously mess with the environment.
Diligent Research
In hot pursuit of the hirsute world, I investigated the ingredients of shampoos, volumizers, mousses, softeners, shiners, conditioners, moisturizers, detanglers, lubricants and organic, non-sticky, and residue-free products. My magnifying glass steamed up as I studied the contents listed on bottles. I researched surfactants, detergents, keratin, and acids, and got all in a lather about static electrical charges, thermal reconditioning, physicochemical adherence forces, hydrophobic and hydrophilic molecules, lipid changes and polar edges. By the time I got to polioxiethelines and Van der Waals forces I decided that I’d rather open a vein than continue.
Shampoo is a mix of chemicals that, as they clean, deplete the scalp and hair of their protective coverings. Just as scraping the wax from your ear canals forces the tissue to make more wax, stripping the oil from your hair and scalp is likely to produce excess oil as a reaction. Shampoo on coloured, highlighted, or relaxed hair, which is already porous, may further damage it.
Come away with me …
Changing pace for a moment, wander with me in the evening sun amidst the yarrow, roses, sunflowers, marigolds, lavender, horsetail, mallow, evening primrose, coltsfoot, and nettles. In the herbivarium, enjoy the delicate aromas of sage, rosemary, and thyme, and inhale chamomile, peppermint, and oregano. Grapefruit is there, and eucalyptus, tea tree, birch and peppermint — so bracing, so healthy!
All these delights are found in shampoos, although in such minute quantities that I suspect their presence is nothing more than a publicity elixir designed to assuage doubt and concern.
The botanicals pretty up some nasty shit. The real bread and butter ingredients of shampoo are tough. I don’t want to ruin your day, but the stuff contains sulfates, detergents, surfactants, phthalates, parabens, silicones, keratin, formaldehyde, and sodium hydroxide (lye). We are told, soothingly, that they are for cleansing, shining, strengthening, and volumizing. There are acids (ascorbic, benzoic, citric, lactic, salicylic, fumaric, and boric); salts (sodium benzoate, chloride, sulfate, alanate, glutamate, cocoyl, lauroyl, and sodium methyl cocoyl taurate, Maris sal and Celtic salt); and alcohol in all its incarnations. Alphabetophiles might enjoy FMLA, EDTA, PEG 55, PPG-5-Ceteth-20, HEDTA, and C12–14 Olefin sulfonatea which pop up often.
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Let’s not overlook Bis-hydroxyethylglycinate coco-glucosides crosspolymer, a foam booster, or Montmorillonite, an anti-caking agent used in animal feed and in demolition.
No wonder our hair needs “de-toxifying”.
PS: If you know what “natural fragrance” is, please tell me. If it’s roses, say so.
It gets worse
Personal hygiene and other household products, including shampoo, are increasingly dangerous sources of air pollution, in some places even worse than those from transportation.
Whereas modern fuel systems minimize evaporation with efficient catalytic converters, beauty and household products — most of which are also derived from petroleum — don’t have these modern refinements. They emit dangerous VOCs (volatile organic compounds), especially in their oh-so-sniffable fragrances. These have been implicated in sometimes-serious respiratory and cardiac problems. Microscopic particles enter the lungs and cross into the bloodstream. People with significant exposure, including those who are paid subsistence wages to work with cleaning products all day, have shown declines in lung function and rates of premature death comparable to those seen in smokers. Exposure to VOCs probably causes 29,000 premature deaths each year in the UK. In Los Angeles, home of clogged freeways and brown haze, pollution from chemical vapours is now at least as bad as that from fuel.
Coming to a town near you soon!
The Acid Test — not just a load of pHooey
One problem with shampoo is its pH. Like the vagina and the rest of our skin, scalps have an acid pH of 5.5; the hair shaft has a pH of 3.7. (Water is neutral at 7.) This acidity is anti-bacterial and anti-fungal which, if left to do its job, should keep your shaggy magnificence safe and healthy.
If the pH of your product is too high, its alkalinity can significantly influence the hair’s appearance, leaving it to shout “I’m dull and lifeless.”
A very thorough study published in the International Journal of Trichology analyzed123 different shampoos and showed that only 38% of commercial shampoos had a nicely acid pH of 5.5 or less. The rest are alkaline. The pH is not printed on shampoo bottles. According to several manufacturers I contacted, the pH of their product is “proprietary”, a secret. So we are kind of screwed there.
Alkaline shampoos clean effectively, but their negative charge leads to friction and frizz, damage to the outer layer of the hair (the cuticle), and breakage. To neutralize the alkalinity, washed hair cries out for something acid — like, oh I don’t know, CONDITIONER!!
Wait, what? That’s brilliant!! One product births the need for another. Ka-chinggggg!
Conditioner
The invention of “conditioner”, (what does that actually mean?) meant you could happily wash your hair every day. Conditioners have an acid pH which buffers the alkaline negative charge of shampoo. This smooths the cuticles, helping to eliminate frizz and static, while other substances such as panthenol and stearamidopropyl are emollient, humectant, and lubricant. They make your hair feel soft and smooth, and look shiny. You should use a few more products, of course, so you can leave the house with sparkling hair, gleaming with conditioner, teased with mousse, thickened with volumizer, slicked with a dribble of Argan oil for extra sheen and, with a final flourish, sprayed into submission.
Looking good is simply exhausting!
Co-Washing: One less plastic bottle in the bathroom
One brave new solution to using less shampoo is to “co-wash — the hip term for cleaning the hair and scalp with conditioner only. No detergent! Singer Adele, along with other celebs such as Gabrielle Union, Cate Blanchett and Kim Kardashian have come out about significantly reducing their use of shampoo. It seems to work pretty well for them.
The logical next step is to stop using shampoo altogether. London Times journalist, Matthew Parris gave up shampoo 25 years ago. The gift that goes on giving, he said, creates its own wretched demand. Although transitioning to the unfortunately-named no poo method can be difficult at first, it gets better very quickly. For me, it was a panacea, healing for both hair and the environment. I hardly ever use shampoo now, and even my hairdresser supports this.
(By the way, Proctor and Gamble recently introduced plastic bottles for its Head and Shoulders shampoo that are made from 20% “beach plastic”. It’s a thing!)
Cut Down or Cut Out? Do something …
Cutting down on, or even eliminating, shampoo and reducing exposure to all those chemicals is something we can all do — small changes and sacrifices might go towards saving the planet from its current catastrophic course. (Even though, of course, it’s a drop in the ocean. Ultimately it’s only politicians that can save us. God help us!). Less detergent and fewer plastic bottles will help, among other things, our hair and scalps, everyone’s lungs, the beaches and oceans, aquatic animals, and inevitably the magnificent coral reefs.
