Read Those Labels

Ok folks, I went to the wonderful Sally’s to look for some new products to try and get some input from the clerks on duty.  Basically, to have a good time. As I’m perusing the aisles, I come across some products I hadn’t heard of before. So the first thing I did was read the labels. I mean, I spent like 30 minutes in the store reading labels. Even the clerk, who was natural, told me she doesn’t read labels when she tries new products, she just gets them & sees how they work.

Here’s my issue with that: 1. I don’t have the money to spend on products to “test & see” if they work. So that is not a fiscally sound spending plan. 2. My hair does not like alcohol. Where some people have found that their hair is sensitive to protein (I have no idea if mine is or not), I have found that if alcohol is listed in the first 3-4 ingredients, my hair is going to quickly get ugly with me.

So, as I’m reading labels I’m seeing that there are a LOT of products with a LOT of alcohol in them, number 1. And 2, there are quite a few products that have ingredients in them that make absolutely no sense to me. Case in point, I’m looking at the argon oil products because argon oil is this great new oil that does great things for your hair and I have none of it in my product shed. So, I pick up a can of mousse from an argon oil line (that shall remain nameless) and guess what!? Alcohol was not in the first 3 ingredients. The first 3 ingredients, I kid you not, were water (OK), propane (huh?) and butane (WTF?!)!! The basic make up of the mousse is water, “blow-you-up” and “set-you-on-fire.” Needless to say, I didn’t look at anything else from that line!

I say all this to say, there’s always a lot of hubbub about reading food labels and making sure that you steer clear of this, that & the other, but the same needs to be done with hair products. I mean, imagine having that mousse in your hair and sitting next to an open flame! Or what if you leave the container in the car and it gets hot in the summer! Bye-bye coche!  I also say this because I read through a lot of labels while standing in Sally’s, and I haven’t done that in a loooong time because I haven’t bought that many styling products since becoming natural, but a lot of the products I looked at with “natural” in the title, or “for women with natural hair” or some variation of the two phrases, were so far from being natural when you looked at the ingredients. I mean, I’m a pretty good reader, so one of my initial deciding factors in choosing products for the future was “as long as I can pronounce the ingredients at first glance, it’s a go.” Well, propane and butane are pretty common words, so maybe I need to be a little more discriminating in that and be more conscious of what the words I can read actually are. At present, I’m going to continue using what I have, because I bought them and there is no returning them, but for the future, I may be a lot more choosy in my hair product labels.

Just some food for thought.