This isn't because I'm depressed or something. And no, I have not given up shampoo for Lent. As a Catholic schoolchild, I remember the days when, forced to pick something to not do for forty days, we would give up homework in lieu of TV or candy and snigger snidely to ourselves until our parents or teachers found out; but although I do hate washing my hair, this is not the same thing. This is a lifestyle choice, not a lazy-man's penance.
As my German coworkers remarked at lunch today, no-poo is a trend that's sweeping America. We were basking on the roof of our building, enjoying the weird fifty-degree cloudless German sunlight that happened today, when I overheard my boss say "in Amerika, nutzen einige Leute kein Shampoo" and I immediately jumped in, awkwardly.
"I'm doing that!" I yelled in German. "No shampoo!"
They looked at me critically. "Und... wie geht's?..."
I pointed at my hair. "Well, see for yourself."
As you can see, it's not exactly what you'd expect from someone who recently finished a project in which she helped sell Pantene to five thousand British women.
My boss said it, with typical German bluntness. "Your hair looks kinda fettig." (Literally "fatty". It's how they say "oily".)
And it does. In the past three weeks, I can tell that people have been quietly judging my bodily hygiene. I look sticky, and there are weird pockets of grease resting on my scalp; I'm terrified that my hair is just too dense to do this, although I'm optimistic that I'm almost through the roughest patch.
The no-poo movement insists that one's hair cleans itself naturally. Oils, say the gurus, are your body's way of keeping things washed and conditioned; conventional shampoo is totally unnecessary, just another element of the Western Beauty-Industrial Complex which exists to Sell Products and Enslave People Who Might Otherwise Spend Their Time Doing Valuable Things.
Hair, the gurus insist, will wash itself if you're just patient, if you spend a few weeks massaging the oil with your fingers under warm water, adding baking soda when necessary and rinsing the whole thing with apple cider vinegar to condition. In a little while, they say, I will have magical un-fuzzy locks, and will no longer be a slave to the evil shampoo manufacturers.
Well, except for the fact that I spend my days working for the UK division of Procter & Gamble. Who, on the telephone, are nice people who pay my bills and enable me to have this mildly-fun job.
My hair is dirty and my brain is confused, but still I will persist.
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