Yes, I stopped using shampoo.
And yes, I’m using a clickbait title.
Why not lure you in with a little clickbait? As I’ve recently joined Medium, and have so been bombarded with a slew of clickbait titles, pathetically pandering titles, a deluge of desperate, attention-grabbing titles, plastered all over the front page — it only seems fitting.
Maybe that’s harsh. People want clicks. They want their work to be read. They want to get some money. That’s fine. I mostly just wanted to write “pathetically pandering” and “a deluge of desperate”.
It’s tiring to sift through clickbait title after clickbait title, though. It immediately turns me off, even if there is good content in the post.
You wonder, where is the creativity and the authenticity? Where is anyone writing about nothing in particular? The musings? Why does everything have to “Change My Life” and make me “Never See Things The Same Way Again”? Why does every article have to drastically improve my life and/or save humanity?
You know where the non-clickbait writers are. They’re flying under the radar. They’re written by people who have fifty subscribers, or none at all. They’re the ones who aren’t on the front page, who have 50 claps on a post, who are writing purely for fun, putting their thoughts right there on the page for us all. Unaltered, raw.
That’s good s***.
There is also plenty of high-profile writing that is not clickbait-y. You can reach an audience without it.
You know, I’ve probably alienated this post from some readers like me, who avoid clickbait titles. Shooting myself in the foot, with that one.
And, well – I’ve titled this post with a clickbait title, so now I’m no better than the rest of them.
Anyway, I do want to tell you about my journey with no poo.
First, why no shampoo?
There are two reasons why I’ve wanted to try it:
- To reduce waste and resource use
- To break dependency on a product that I may not need
That’s it. Saving money is a side bonus.
I’ve tried no poo a few times but haven’t been able to stick to it because I become insecure about my greasy hair.
Well, this time I’ve succeeded.
It’s probably been a month since I’ve used shampoo, possibly longer. This time around, I succeeded because I’ve cared more about not using plastic and creating waste than I’ve cared about my physical appearance.
My desire to save the planet has been greater than my desire to look good.
I was also motivated to try no poo again because I’ve been annoyed that I have cared so much about my physical appearance. That I can’t break my dependency on a product, just because I don’t like how I look without it. That makes me feel weak, like I’m caving to a standard.
I’m not judging anyone who does want to use shampoo and make their hair beautiful. I appreciate that. I just wanted to see if I could break it, for myself, and to see if I really needed it.
And the implications for the planet are that, if we could all break a habit that we didn’t really need, on a large scale… we could save millions and millions of individual waste items from ever being created, remove the possibility that they ever end up somewhere they’re not supposed to be, and save on the resources that go into creating such items.
So, here’s what happened.
I’ve broken through, now on my longest period of no poo ever. And something very interesting happened after two, maybe three weeks…
There was a day where I DIDN’T think about how my hair looked.
Every day up until this fateful day, I checked my hair in the mirror, often multiple times a day, evaluating its state, assessing the health, the shine, the texture… wondering if it was too greasy, too frizzy, whatever. As usual. The main thing that I was worried about and cared about was that it was too greasy.
Too greasy, though, really just meant it was greasier than normal.
Who’s to say hair is too greasy? What is the standard? Well, there isn’t one.
Greasiness isn’t really a problem. Or if it is, I haven’t found the problem yet. A more important problem would be smell, if my hair smelled bad, but it doesn’t. It smells fine. It smells like hair.
Still, I care about how it looks, and it wasn’t looking perfect and clean. I didn’t have the bouncing, sleek locks that shampooing can bring. But, what I did have was freedom from caring. Well, that’s what I have now.
It took about two or three weeks before I realized, I went an entire day without caring how my hair looked.
I simply didn’t think about it. And I realized, the next day… Hey, I don’t think I thought about how my hair looked yesterday.
I didn’t care how it looked, I didn’t care if it was “too greasy”, I didn’t even think about it. And that’s because my self-image has adjusted. I think it’s become normalized for me. It’s not too anything. It’s just my hair.
So that’s it. My hair has stayed the same now for the last week. Every day it looks basically the same. I like it. It’s my hair. And it feels right, it feels natural. I’m not dependent on a product. I don’t feel anxiety about it if I go too long without shampooing, and it starts to get “greasy”. It just is what it is.
Physical appearance matters much less than a radiant spirit. It is far less important than how you carry yourself, and how you behave towards others. The best fashion is a smile. Or a pleasant demeanor. I read that line somewhere, that line isn’t mine. But isn’t it amazing?
You know who has greasy hair? Severus Snape.
You know who is one of the greatest characters ever, in the history of characters in the universe?
Yeah. Severus Snape.
Sirius Black also had greasy hair. So there you go.
(I know they’re fictional characters, okay? Let me use them anyway. I just finished Harry Potter and I’m not over it.)
Greasy Hair In Society
We could delve further into some philosophical and societal discussion here… We could ask, why do I feel so insecure to walk around with “greasy” hair? What’s the problem?
Is it because of the connotations that people will draw about me? Is it because of how I feel about myself?
We can actually use Severus Snape as a model here, to explore some of these questions. There is a reason why Rowling describes Snape as having greasy hair, and often refers to it. Snape is unkempt and generally unpopular. He is portrayed as being snarky, mean, even nasty, and was definitely, not a cool kid. That is his character portrait, and so, to help create and bolster that image, Rowling chose to describe him as having greasy hair.
That in itself says a lot about what we think about people with greasy hair.
Rowling describes Sirius Black as having greasy hair when he was first out of Azkaban. Why would Rowling use this descriptor? Possibly to signal to us, the readers, that Black had just been having a very rough time. He probably didn’t keep his greasy hair later in the series, if it is touched on, as his condition in life improves. We would even expect that, no? Because now he’s not suffering, therefore he must be taking better care of himself, and therefore his hair is “clean” and not greasy. He must be shampooing.
These connotations are probably why I was aware of my hair being greasier than normal, and why I felt like that was a bad thing. I was associating myself with an image related to Severus Snape, villanous and nasty, or Sirius Black, an escaped convict.
People in my circle have commented on my hair, noting that it is greasier than usual, and they have meant well, possibly wanting to avoid me from experiencing those connotations and judgments. Perhaps they were worried that I wasn’t caring for myself properly. Perhaps they are worried what it will mean for them if they are seen to be associating with a greasy-haired person.
Ultimately, I myself have probably been much more concerned with my greasy hair than anybody I know.
Self-Image Is Obscured
When I was young, I hated my acne.
I suffered when I had a particularly large pimple on my face. It was horrible for me, and made me self-conscious.
Looking back on it, however, I’m sure I cared way more about my acne than anybody else did.
I think the same thing is true with whatever it is about ourselves that we don’t like.
You care more than anybody else does. As they like to say, nobody else really gives a damn about you.
People may take a look at your pimply face, your greasy hair, as you pass by, they make a snap judgment, and then you never see them again. Maybe they even make fun of you.
Well, they can get bent.
And on the other hand, what’s probably more likely is that you think that people look at your pimply face, and your greasy hair, and draw x, y, or z conclusion… When in reality, they see that you have a fun Hello Kitty shirt on, or you have beautiful green eyes, or they find you really funny and charming. You really don’t even know what they think. Perhaps they don’t even think anything about you at all.
Anyone who really does care about you, they won’t give a damn about how you look.
You probably care more than anybody else. I probably cared way more than anybody else about my greasy hair. Unlike me, other people don’t spend every day staring at me in the mirror, multiple times a day, scrutinizing over every detail of my physical appearance, or whatever aspect of my physical appearance it is that I’m so concerned about at the time.
I write this like I’ve already learned this lesson, but here I am, writing about how I was just so concerned about my greasy hair…!
What other people see, is how you carry yourself, what you care about, your energy, your smile. At least, that’s what they should see. And that’s what you should focus on.
That’s what I want to focus on.
This is a topic that we could go on and on about; hygiene standards, societal expectations, self-image… but I don’t want to do that much philosophizing on a Wednesday.
It makes my head hurt.
Here’s to another month of greasy hair!
HAKUMUSU 