Investigative Blogging: No Shampoo

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Unless you're living in an blogging bubble (guffaw) you've probably heard of the "No Poo" movement, a movement that has one of the worst.names.ever (and will thus be referred to as No Shampoo throughout this post). An extremely quick Wikipedia search reveals that the theory behind No Shampoo has two angles: trying to avoid the chemicals in shampoo, and rejecting commercialised standards of hair beauty. I am not a specialist on either of these arguments -- while I like the idea of trying to minimise the amount of mass produced chemicals that I voluntarily apply to my body, my main reason for turning away from shampoo is that I have no freaking money at all. Poverty is an exciting challenge, non?

The concept that not using shampoo might make your scalp and hair more healthy is not a completely foreign concept to me. My brother Josh was infamous in our family for not using shampoo at all, much to my mother's chagrin. The story goes that after months of shampoo-avoidance, he went to a hairdresser who told him that he had the healthiest hair and scalp they'd ever seen. I used to know a lot of hippies who would assure me that your hair actually begins to clean itself after it's been dirty for a while. I'm yet to find any evidence for this theory, but it is true that your scalp begins to limit the amount of sebum it produces if it's not completely stripped of oils.

For my own dip into the world of No Shampoo, I mostly followed the guide in this Hairpin article but padded out my information by looking at this Instructables tutorial. I bought a couple of plastic bottles from Plastic Box, filling one half with baking soda and half with water, and the other with water and a couple of tablespoons of ACV (that's apple cider vinegar, the wondercure, for non-hippie types). [FACT: You can get three kilos of baking soda from Moore Wilsons for only $5, which is much cheaper than the semi-hippie shampoo I was using earlier.]

Despite the depth of the information flying around, the process of removing shampoo from your beauty diet is very easy. Stage one involves replacing standard shampoo with a baking soda and vinegar treatment. The hair is washed with a baking soda and water solution - you need to really massage it into your scalp before smoothing it to the ends of your hair, and rinsing it thoroughly. The weak vinegar solution is used to rinse and condition your hair. I recommend rinsing your hair really thoroughly after this part of the process, because smelling like salt and vinegar crisps is not awesome.

Apart from the risk of smelling like a delicious snack, I found this part completely painful. I'd go so far as to say that I didn't notice any difference to speak of between the condition of my hair when washed with baking soda and vinegar, and the condition of it when washed with my standard natural-ish shampoo. Except that it was maybe softer?

Stage two was rather more tedious in that it requires giving up any kind of soap entirely, and washing the hair with nothing but warm water. This isn't so much washing as massaging one's progressively more greasy mop of hair under water daily. My head reached peak greasiness at day four and then pretty much maintained this level of dirtiness for four weeks. I took to brushing cornflour and baking soda through my dry hair in order to make it look less gross, but I swear I must of looked like a footman with all that powder in my hair.

I enlisted Shannon to smell my hair daily and advise me on how it smelt (can't stand the smell of dirty haired people) and he reported that it smelt good, like a person. In fact, he said, it smelt like Ginger. It's strange that the idea of your hair smelling like yourself has become such a foreign idea. Smelling like yourself is almost like an exposure - no layers of synthetic scent between you and the outside world.

In terms of appearance - well, I know it didn't look bad because my passport photo looks absolutely fine. I think that not-washing-one's-hair-with-anything-but-water is a conceptually dreadful thing rather than something that is truly disgusting. And damn it, if I'm challenging the commercial mores of shampoo, then I must be determined to go against the normalised image of the Pantene commercial! Yah! I spit at you Rachel Hunter.

Stage three is a blessed return to sanity, baking soda and AVC. This is your future routine: using the combination weekly or maybe more frequently if you're a greasier person (I'm a greasier person).

Two weeks into this last routine and I feel WONDERFUL. My hair is awesomely soft and manageable, with less flyaway bits. At present, I'm trying to stretch out washing my hair to every fourth or fifth day and leave it at that.

CONCLUSION: Stop using shampoo.

For serious, between the MoonCup, the No Shampoo and my crystal deodorant, I am some kind of hippie these days.