It’s been another year, and I’m still not going back to commercial shampoo.
I honestly almost forgot it was time to talk about this, because being “poo-free” has become so every day for me. Then a friend of mine sent me a link that included a video of Kathy Lee and Hoda on the Today show ripping apart another blogger for not washing her hair with shampoo.
The whole thing made me really want to write a big, long winded, angry rebuttal, going point for point about all the things that were wrong, poorly researched, and generally ignorant in their segment. But, when it comes down to it, I think the absolute worst of it is, on national tv, a supposedly respectable 60 year old woman is bullying a complete stranger. I don’t want to add to that by throwing more vitriol out there. Those who would listen already know better than to believe the kind of nonsense they were saying, and those who don’t…well, they wouldn’t listen anyhow.
So, after 3 years without shampoo, here’s where things stand for me:
I hate my hair. Like, extra “a”s and “t”s for emphasis, hate.
This has exactly nothing to do with being poo free, and everything to do with the weather, and that sweet little booger in my arms above.
I can say this with confidence, because I’ve also been the absolute happiest with my hair while doing poo free. Also, because my hair did this exact same thing after I was pregnant with G.
Problem is, this being one of the coldest winters in memory, our heating has been running constantly. My whole house is a static electric tinderbox. Add to that the fact that, as happens after you have a baby, a large portion of my hair fell out this summer. All of that hair has grown back to about 3″ long. I have a constant, staticky halo around my head that makes me look a bit like a lightning-struck dandelion puff.
One of the biggest questions about poo-free that I had been, up until this point, unable to answer, was how dyed hair fared with it. I added my
turquoise streaks to my hair at the end of August and have only had to re-dye them twice…one of those times being this past week. That’s with
semi-permanent hair dye. They don’t
make permanent teal dye. So needless to say, poo free is dyed hair safe.
While I was pregnant with R, I got down to using the baking soda once a week. I’m back to twice a week, for a couple of reasons. One, my skin, including my scalp, gets really dry when I’m pregnant. I honestly could have gone longer than a week at times. Two, I’m exercising a lot more now than I was when I was pregnant. Obviously I wasn’t doing aerial at 8 months huge. I use the baking soda rinse when my hair gets greasy, and I just rinse with water when it isn’t. I wash my hair when I need to wash my hair. Simple as that.
I started with no-poo mostly out of curiosity about what it would do to my hair, but it has been a fascinating journey in other ways too. If I had any doubt about the powers of marketing before this, I definitely don’t now. There hasn’t been shampoo in my shower for 3 years. I still have to fight myself to not buy a bottle any time I wind up in the hair care aisle. I don’t need it, heck, I don’t even really want it, but there’s that siren call of “this shampoo will make your life perfect” always there. …obviously the only thing standing between me and euphoria is the lack of a new bottle of Pantene, right? It sometimes makes me question which other items I “can’t live without” are just emotional manipulation.
I can’t help but feel that the woman who was chosen for the segment I linked to above was picked because she was an easy target. She admits to being “crunchy”…to the point it’s part of her blog name. That’s scary to a lot of people. She different, and unapologetic about it. I suspect that my blog, or the blog of somebody more like me, wasn’t picked, because it would have been a lot harder to build a case of “yuck, dirty hippie”. I don’t use shampoo…but I dye my hair turquoise. I make my own clothes, but out of obnoxiously bright colors or black, not vegetable dyed, organic cotton. I do my best to keep my kids’ screen time to an absolute minimum and don’t have “real” tv, but I don’t co-sleep, and I use disposable diapers. I wear makeup, and high heels and tend to only buy organic when it’s convenient. I hate to admit it, but I’m middle of the road.
I don’t use shampoo, not because I’m trying to avoid the chemicals per se (though that’s a bonus), but because it works for me to not use it. I’d wonder if I were fooling myself, if it weren’t for the half dozen or so non-crunchy friends who have tried it, based simply on my success. If I’m a hippie, apparently I’m a pleasant smelling, nicely styled hippie. I’m non-threatening, so maybe if it works for me, it’s not quite so out there.
But, I’m getting dangerously close to heading off on a rant, so I’ll stop this here.
If you’re curious about anything with no-poo, or heck, just feel like telling me you think I’m delusional and my head probably stinks*, leave a comment!
*Please be warned, if you do so, I’ll probably revoke my decision to not rant.