To be announced

many weeks back I had mixed up a batch of The Filthy Hippie Cosmetologist's Ultimate Hair and Skin Buttah. Some folks decided that they would like to try this stuff, and so I sent them a jar.

I've been using the Buttah pretty faithfully since I started this formulation, and I have some observations about it.

( For Hair )

( For Skin )

one of the problems I had to face when I swore off the silicones was that, unknown to me, my hair also reacts badly to protein ingredients. since I am also working on growing my hair long, I have to be quite rigorous in maintaining healthy, strong hair. since I have quite fine hairs, my hair is more prone to damage from losing part of the hair's cuticle.

So I was left with a problem - my hair cuticle is going to shed. If I don't find a way to fill those gaps, I'm going to have breakage. protein treatments drive my hair nuts. And then I found out that coconut oil could be the answer.

But first I'm going to ramble incredibly on other stuff I'd been meaning to talk about re: hair products. sections are under LJ-Cuts, so you can pick and choose what sections you want to read or skip.

( The function of Silicone )

( If you're doing CG, and you'd like to use some silicones )

( The Function of Proteins )

( What to look for on your labels to identify protein ingredients? )

( The function of Oils )

( Why I'm all hyped about Coconut oil )

I'd like to see similar studies done on other oils - but lucky for me coconut oil is cheap and plentiful, and if it will keep damage at bay, I'm using it.

cross-posted to curly_girls

1.

"Miss Temple, Miss Temple, what--WHAT is that girl with curled hair? Red hair, ma'am, curled--curled all over?"
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte

so here I am.

I remember the kitchen. I remember sitting in the red vinyl covered kitchen chair with my Gramma on one side and an aunt on the other, and my hair soaking wet and coated so thick in conditioner it would ooze through the teeth of the combs as they went an inch at a time to get the tangles out, talking overtop of my head as they worked. I remember leaning arched backwards over the back of that chair as an aunt held my legs so I wouldn't topple over and gramma rinsing the conditioner out, with cool cool water poured from a jug to the pink plastic baby bath on the floor.

I remember the braids - a lifetime in braids! usually just two, but sometimes a whole head of cornrows. I remember how it pulled and hurt to have my braids done and the deep conditioning treatments wrapped up in warm towels and the tears when I tried to detangle my hair myself.

I remember asking my gramma if we could iron my hair, the way my mother did. She'd iron it with a heavy amount of steam and it would come out long, long and straight and like a banner in the wind. long and straight like hers - except she didn't need to iron it to do that. My mother was white. Her hair was straight. my hair curled, like the offending girl in Jane Eyre.

"That will ruin your hair," my gramma said. "No irons. no relaxers. No conks. No perms. You have beautiful hair as it is."

How beautiful could it be, if I had to keep it bound in braids all the time? how beautiful could it be if no one could see it, swinging loose and free like the other girls? I didn't have to keep a comb in my pocket. I couldn't run my fingers through it. I couldn't get it feathered or get a shag or any of that. Braids. Just braids, and then picture day when I could wear it out, and the lightness of it would make my hair rise, higher and higher into a great, full bodied pyramid. "You look like Donna Summer! You look like Diana Ross!" my schoolmates would say. "Why don't you wear it like that all the time? It looks cool like that!" my schoolmates, nearly all of them white, enthused over it.

So I had to explain about the conditionser, and two women standing over my hair, and watching Sunday night television through tears as they pulled and tugged and yanked, and how I'd have to do it again tonight because it was a war against knots.

I never thought I'd wish for sunday night and the braids. And then I moved to live with my father and my stepmother.

2.

"...And why has she, or any other, curled hair? Why, in defiance of every precept and principle of this house, does she conform to the world so openly--here in an evangelical, charitable establishment--as to wear her hair one mass of curls?"
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte


my stepmother wasn't a wicked stepmother. but she was white. she didn't understand my hair. she didn't understand that I couldn't care for it by myself - she had thought that my grandmother and my aunt dressing it was just spoiling me, the indulged child. she didn't realize that the kitchen was where all my cousins had their hair done, that only my oldest cousin was old enough to start helping with her younger sister's hair, and once she'd learned enough, my aunt would grow hers back out to long and take her seat in the kitchen. I had only just gotten old enough to sit down and watch the other women do it - that when I learned the secrets of hair care they would be on another woman's head, passed along the family.

So she left me alone to do it myself, and I couldn't. I had the barest idea of what my grandmother and my aunts did. Finally she tried some things. blow drying was an unqualified disaster. The curling iron took hours. I explained about my mother and the clothes iron, but she wouldn't hear it. My hair set on rollers took nearly as long to set, and then most of an uncomfortable night to dry. finally, we went back to braiding. not cornrows, not parted patterns, nothing fancy. just two braids, one behind each ear.

And then good news, my stepmother said. I was going to a hair salon.

3.

"...but we are not to conform to nature; I wish these girls to be the children of Grace: and why that abundance? I have again and again intimated that I desire the hair to be arranged closely, modestly, plainly. Miss Temple, that girl's hair must be cut off entirely; I will send a barber to-morrow..."
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte

"You look Chinese," Tanya said.

"I do not!" I retorted. I was back from the hair salon. I could still smell the relaxer. My scalp still itched. one spot was tender. but it was straight, and cut to feather, like the other girls, and cut short - I'd gone from hair past my shoulders when curly and dry, or braids that went nearly to my waist, to hair that barely skimmed my jaw. the woman had hacked it off by the handful - as there was no sense in relaxing what wouldn't be kept. It took three hours, and then the blow dryer, and the curling iron, and product after product after product.

"You do look Chinese," Tammy said. They were twins. "Why'd you do your hair like that? I liked it better the other way."

"When it was out," Tanya agreed. Tammy and Tanya had been my secret hairdressers. They took my hair out of my stepmother's plain braids and redid them. together they could do a woven five strand plait down the back of my head, and delighted in braiding my hair becuase it held.

Now it was too short for that. Now I had "low maintenance" hair. My stepmother told me over and over again how nice it looked, and a good thing too because that afternoon had cost eighty dollars. I kept smelling lye and chemicals. I worried that there was still some chemicals in it. she misted a bit of perfume over it to try to cut the scent. she wouldn't let me wash it, because the hairdresser had warned us not to get it wet for four days - a full week, if I could push it.

I actually went five days. I took my expensive shampoo and conditioner into the bathroom and came out of the shower with my hair kinked up, just as it always had, in waves that were pulled down by the weight of the water. My stepmother took one look at my wet hair and burst into tears.

I resolved to grow it long again. but I still didn't know how to really care for it, not even short and relaxed. I'd try to grow it, get it relaxed, hate it when it hit a certain length and go get it cut again, trying this and that and the other thing to have good hair. but I'd hate it.

Something entirely different led me to the drastic action of shaving my head.

I looked damned silly, bald.

but it felt free. and my real hair was what grew back. my real curls. I wondered if this time I could grow it back out to where it had been in childhood. If I could figure out how to have a hairstyle that I could wear while letting it grow.

The teenaged girls next door had a solution - buy some of the cheap artificial hair. braid it in. instant long hair, and just keep reweaving it in until it had grown.

I paid them in beer and pizza. eight hours later, I had a head full of cornrows that went down to my ass, and I loved it.

4.

"Madam," he pursued, "I have a Master to serve whose kingdom is not of this world: my mission is to mortify in these girls the lusts of the flesh; to teach them to clothe themselves with shame-facedness and sobriety, not with braided hair and costly apparel; and each of the young persons before us has a string of hair twisted in plaits which vanity itself might have woven; these, I repeat, must be cut off; think of the time wasted..."
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte

...Other people weren't quite so supportive. "It looks... really black," my roommates said. "I don't think I like it. It's not you."

"It's my head, and I'll dress my hair as I please," I retorted. "It's fun and I like it. And what's wrong with looking really black? I AM black."

"You aren't even half-black," they pointed out, and it was true. but one quarter to three eights is enough to make me not white, even if I didn't have The Hair...It was enough to make people assume I had an opinion on basketball (I prefer hockey) and on hip hop (I don't know the genre) and that I could sing like I could make heaven crash down on the roof of a church (my voice goes consistently flat and I'll pick any key but the right one.)

I wore the braids for nearly two years. Then I spent nearly a year with natural locs. Then I took them out and my hair hit my shoulders. I went to get a cut and it was just barely long enough to get it into a ponytail.

And then I started to learn. I tossed my hairbrush. I only kept wavy toothed detangling combs. I only detangled it when it was wet and saturated with conditioner. I could style it a bunch of different ways, and I learned how to iron it flat and straight, but most of the time I sould simply bind it in two braids, one behind each ear, and get on with life. People would exclaim that my hair was different every time they saw me.

I learned. and it grew.

Then one day I was out of shampoo, and something had to be done. I mixed a teaspoon of sugar in a handful of Queen Helene with Cholesterol, and treated it like it was shampoo, just like i'd read somewhere on the internet. I rinsed it out and conditioned like I normally do, and let my hair drip from soaking wet to dry with a towel wrapped around my shoulders, careful not to disturb it too much.

when I checked it in the mirror once it had dried, I nearly cried. It turned out beautiful.

That was three days ago.

Now I'm hot to find only the gentlest possible shampoos. The homegrown mixes. I have a bottle of apple cider vinegar, but I'm not sure exactly how to use it. I've caught murmurings about how Sodium laureth sulfate is the culprit behind the canopy of frizz I've suffered through for years.