All About Hair

While Vancouver has been gearing up for the imminent Olympic Games and my anger issues have been ballooning to previously unforeseen levels, an entirely different transformation has been taking place...in my hair.

That’s right. I, Ivy Donegal, have stopped using Shampoo, a decision prompted by the interweb and my own reckless abandon. A few short weeks ago, if you had asked me to stop rubbing various perfumed medicinal ingredients on my skull every day, I would have said, “No,” and also, “ew.” And I would have been wrong.

Despite popular belief, hair that lacks shampoo and conditioner does not smell. It does not fall out of your head, or turn into dreadlocks. It does not become one large, unattractive oil slick. It does get oily - and then this oil builds up and coats you entire head of hair, changing its texture and look, though not in an unattractive way....for me, my hair looked progressively worse for about four days, before it started looking better. And by “better,” I largely mean “different,” with more body, increased shine, and the ability to curl. (Curly hair might not be a good thing, since it tends to make me look like a well trained, vertical poodle.)

But that’s just me.

If you yourself are contemplating the poo-less plunge, I suggest lots of research and careful consideration, as well as acknowledgement that the au natural look may not work for you... After all, a hundred years ago nobody used shampoo, but a lot of those people probably looked like crap.

I, however, have always been an embracer of radical, debilitating hair styles - from dreadlocks (age 16 for one month), pixie cuts (age 18 for one year), to shaving off your hair completely (age 22...bad decision). So the decision to go head-first into a world of potentially smelly hair was a thing I took in stride. And so far, it’s a very happy thing (I’ve gotten more hair compliments in the last three weeks than any time in recent history), but please, decide for yourself. And give me lots of credit, should your poo-less hair turn out to look amazing.

Oh, and the feeling of enlightened superiority you’ll get every time a shampoo commercial comes on TV...amazing.