I’m taking a shower at someone else’s house and I noticed they have 1 bottle that says “3-in-1, shampoo, conditioner, and body wash”.
Why isn’t this the standard? Why do we even need 3 different types of soaps to bathe?? Have I bought into Big Soap capitalist propaganda without even noticing??
I just finished showering with the 3-1 soap and I don’t feel any difference between the 1 soap vs the 3 soaps I have at home.
So basically shampoo/soap + conditioner is used to first chemically strip off natural oils and then replace them with chemicals.
Being a short haired dude I struggle to understand how hair, which is basically dead tissue would benefit from moisturizing, though I guess adding oils and silicone will probably make it look more glossy. And obviously give soap more stuff that needs to be removed on cleansing.
I dunno, this seems like a situation that is engineered purely for marketing purposes.
As a woman with long, curly hair, if I don’t condition, I go from having nice curly waves to a ball of unmanageable frizz. I’ve also had to experiment with different shampoos to get the results I want, to clean my hair without damaging it. It definitely isn’t engineered for marketing purposes. Ask anyone with long, curly, or kinky hair and they’ll tell you how important their hair routine is. If you have short, straight hair, it probably doesn’t matter nearly as much. Your hair is fully replaced in a few weeks. I need to keep my hair healthy for years. My hair is down to my sternum, and it took years to get this long. If I didn’t take very good care of it with the right soaps and conditioner, it would not be able to be this long or this nice.
Reducing it to just chemicals and chemicals is well, reductive. Basically everything is a chemical. Your natural oils are chemicals. Sweat is a chemical. Dirt is chemicals. We need to wash out some chemicals, but we don’t want dry scalps or damaged hair, so we need to use the right soaps and the right conditioner to remove those bad chemicals and replace them with chemicals to mimic our natural oils until they build back up. Most people probably don’t need to wash their hair as often as they do, but conditioning is definitely not a marketing scam.
What about leather, could it benefit from applying a layer of oil? Or wood? Or rubber? Or cast iron? Living tissue is not the only thing physically affected by moisture levels.
Oil seals in moisture to prevent hair from drying out, which, obviously, will change it’s texture and elasticity. The skin on your head naturally produces grease to keep your hair moisturized, but when you wash with soap, it strips that grease out. If you shower regularly, you need to replace it.
I used the word “health” because it is commonly used to describe hair texture. You won’t be medically unhealthy if you don’t use conditioner, but your hair will probably be dry as shit and frizzy.
I’ve seen pictures of people from the past with my hair type, from the time before conditioner. I will buy conditioner. Styling goops too. Do you mean everyone should cut their hair so short it doesn’t matter? I like having styled hair - will agree it’s culture/marketing but so what?
Could use shampoo as body wash, sure, not so different. I don’t use natural soaps because in hard water they do more harm than good. Conditioner is a non negotiable. Sometimes I just rinse and condition, but never wash without conditioner-ing.
My husband keeps his hair very short but that involves haircut every two weeks, it’s not cheaper overall.
I don’t know, if you consider it as dead tissue, it makes sense it would break down over time, and certain oils could slow that process down.
It’s not about glossiness. I’m guessing you don’t have frizzy hair, but it removes that, and allows hair to clump into locks, instead of a big cloud. If you have straight hair, then yes, the main benefit is being shinier.