Dirty Girl: Coming Clean

All right, enough of that.

I just can't handle feeling like a total scrub (to use a term from my youth) for that long of a stretch.  Yes, I was still taking daily showers, and scrubbing under hot water, but I still felt like I had a thick film of grime covering my entire body, face and hair.  There were moments that I enjoyed the increased thickness of my hair, and the ability to sculpt it in more three-dimensional ways, but none of that mattered, as the oil weighed down my fine hair so much that I couldn't stand to do anything with it but pull it back.  It made me incredibly self-conscious. 

My face, too, was getting out of control.  Not only did I get a couple of big screaming pimples; my forehead and nose broke out in a relief map of little ones.  I know it's vain of me, but there is nothing that makes me more insecure and self-aware as pimply skin.  Especially since I don't wear makeup.

I actually ended this experiment just a couple of days after my last post, only eight days into my no-shampoo experiment.  So to be fair, I probably didn't give it enough time.  By all (or most) accounts, my skin and hair would have found their natural balance if I had given it another week or two.  I just couldn't imagine that happening... I failed to see how that thick layer of grease in my hair, unfazed by all the scrubbing and hot water, could possibly just fade away by itself.  

And in the end, I didn't care.  It wasn't worth the feeling of disgustingness that I endured.  Most people who do this, it seems, do it because they are super passionate (or super paranoid) about avoiding synthetic chemicals.  To that I say: Meh.  Sure, I don't want to ingest poisons or needlessly expose myself to carcinogens.  I'll do whatever I can to avoid that, within reason.  I just don't think that skipping the shampoo is going to make a difference.  And I am way too vain to find out for sure.  It made me realize that I mostly did this to see if I could do it.  The verdict: I can.  For eight days.

And, it's not like I didn't get anything out of this.  I realized that if I wash my hair with shampoo daily, it is much more static-y, fine, and flyaway.  So, I'm washing my hair every couple of days instead.  Or I'm just using conditioner.  There are no rules.  I'm an adult; I get to make up my own rules for myself.  (I can eat ice cream for breakfast if I want to! I just don't want to.)

I have to say, though, that I was amused (and a little disturbed) that my skeptical husbutch told me today that she hadn't realized I had started shampooing again.  She said that she had noticed my hair being a little extra oily in the beginning, but figured that it had "evened out" after a little while.  Seems logical.

Experiment result: Meh.