Tuesday, September 09, 2008

no poo for me

Anyone who knows me can tell you that I've never been a girl to shy away from new experiences. I love experimenting with new stuff (please see: blue hair and bacon toffee) but even I think I'm crazy for my newest experiment - I'm eschewing poo.

I've been poo-free since Friday.

No, I don't need more fiber in my diet (well, I might, but we all probably do), the poo to which I'm referring is shamPOO.

The environment in which I live is 50% humidity and 50% windy, which sucks for my hair. One or the other is fine - in humidity, I can rock the curls and in wind, I can straighten - but with both, I'm left with a headful of frizz. I'm CONSTANTLY searching for something, short of pulling a Britney, that will make my hair fabulous. In my search, I've come upon this whole movement of dirty hippies earth-conscious people who no longer use traditional shampoo because of the harmful chemicals, sulfates, blah blah blah. These people have also reported hair that is bouncy, shiny and frizz-free.

sign.
me.
up.

There are several shampoo companies who have organic/healthy/hippy shampoos out there that have less of the harmful stuff in them and are supposed to be good for the hair. The problem with these shampoos is that they're kind of spendy - like $20 a bottle.

A home recipe for dirty hippy natural shampoo is baking soda. Just baking soda. Rub it in your hair, rinse it out and voila clean hair. Apple cider vinegar is said to be a good conditioner.

So on Friday, I attempted my first shampoo-less shower. I rubbed the baking soda into my scalp and rinsed it out and... my hair felt like straw. So I cheated a little bit and used some conditioner (because the smell of vinegar kind of grosses me out and the thought of conditioning my hair with vinegar is kind of icky) and my hair was still pretty dry at the roots.

I did my second baking soda wash today (apparently, the hippy method enables you to go for longer between washes) and my hair feels dry and a little gross again.

I'm trying to be patient (and keep my hair up) because in all of my internet learnings, I have read that my hair needs to "detox" from all of the chemicals I've been using over the years (but that sounds like a load of poo) and it could be days or weeks before my hair looks fabulous. But I can't help feeling like I should be wearing a note alerting people that my hair is detoxing and will be beautiful in days (or, god forbid, weeks)

OMG, I blogged 3 days in a row, someone notify the media