In A Lather: The Evils Of Shampoo

A burgeoning “no-poo” movement is putting the kibosh on shampoo!

According to a piece on NPR, we as a nation are lather-happy. Partially as a result of crafty marketing, we wash our hair far more than denizens of other lands, and the result has been a boon for the shampoo industry. In America, for the past few decades it’s simply been considered unhygienic not to wash one’s hair several times a week.

But there’s a new group of people who are saying enough! Says blogger Jeanne Haegele, “There’s a lot of people doing this no-shampoo movement.” For Haegele and some others, the motivation is ecological: they want to cut down on their plastic consumption, and some shampoos are bad for the Earth. Haegele now makes do with baking soda, vinegar rinses and the occasional lather with a bar soap.

Meanwhile, some hair experts and dermatologists say frequent shampooing is bad for hair anyway, stripping it of sebums and causing scalp oiliness. To anyone who’s visited a curly salon, this is nothing new: shampoo is anathema to the Devachan empire, who pioneered “no-poo” and “low-poo” formulas that may not do much for your plastic consumption — or your wallet — but will keep precious oils intact. The very suds that signal “clean” to us are murder on curly and African-American hair, and, when used daily, do no favors even to straight locks.

But is no-poo truly in ascendency? As long as there are popular high school girls with shiny manes to toss around, and as long as we have television commericals featuring rivers of high-gloss Pantene, I’m going to go with…not a chance.

When It Comes To Shampoo, Less Is More [NPR]
The “No-‘Poo” Movement [Re-Nest via Apartment Therapy]