No Shampoo experiment

This is a somewhat incoherent blog, as I'm not really able to concentrate today. I'm having a problem with mysterious fumes in the house and I'm trying to fix it, but right now, it's still lingering. I've been so sick for the past few weeks that I can't even write blogs.

Well, I just read about using vinegar on your hair, and now I've decided NOT to try it. I did try it a long time ago when I had much shorter hair. I didn't dilute it, and it burned and irritated my face, so I had a bright red face for a couple days. (That was white vinegar, undiluted. They recommend using apple cider vinegar, diluted.) I am still going to use vinegar for housecleaning, since I'm not keeping any chemicals in the house anymore. (The definition of 'chemical' is anything dangerous and reactive, in a bottle, that's going to spill and fill the house with mysterious fumes for weeks.)

Anyway, the results of the experiment so far:

I've only rinsed my hair with hot water, and combed it out in the shower. Nothing else. Not even vinegar, baking soda, or the other things people are trying. (I didn't like the idea of baking soda, after reading somebody who said it was similar to getting a perm, and that it actually changed the structure of the hair. Since I'm in a hurry, I didn't research that any further to find out whether it was true. It might be wrong.)

After several weeks of using nothing at all except water: My hair has always been greasy, and I used to shampoo it daily. It is now classic length (hip length). The grease is building up on the hair, and has a sticky texture like chewing gum. My hair is now very hard to comb, especially being as long as it is. Lint is sticking to the grease on the hair. When I comb it, the lint sticks in the comb, and I can see the color of the sweater I was wearing that day.

I have a feeling that the goal of this experiment is to convince me to just let my long hair form natural dreadlocks. The un-combability of it suggests that to me. If I didn't comb it, it would start matting, but it wouldn't look the same as the dreadlocks of the afro-coily hair texture. The grease is so gummy and sticky, not oily, that it sticks the hair together and tangles it. I'm sure it would form dreadlocks, and I haven't yet firmly committed myself to accepting dreadlocks just yet.

However, dreadlocks wouldn't be the end of the world. I think that, with my straight hair, if I decided I didn't want the dreadlocks anymore, I could painstakingly comb them out. It would create a lot of loose, disconnected hairs that would detach whenever I combed out the dreadlocks. I have a feeling that the next step of my experiment will be to stop combing it, accept the tangling and matting, maybe just slightly detangle it with my fingers, and see what happens when gummy grease and tangles form dreadlocks in thin, straight hair.

My only concern about natural dreadlocks is that they will be irregular. I've seen some pictures of people with irregular dreadlocks. They can have some places with large mats, and other places with small strings. They aren't the perfectionistic dreadlocks that you see on people who are deliberately and carefully making dreadlocks on purpose.

I will create a way of pinning up my hair in a bun so that I can wear it in a 'tidy' style at work. It might end up being a rolled-up ponytail or something - I'm not sure yet - it will have to be something that is short and wrapped up and neat looking, which won't tangle in any moving parts of machinery, like the conveyor belt of the pizza oven. (Avoiding the pizza oven's conveyor belt has been one of my main concerns of the long braid.)

One of my coworkers was looking at a caucasian male customer who had waist-length blond dreadlocks. She looked revolted, horrified, and disapproving. "He'll have to CUT those out," she muttered quietly to me. That assumes that he merely 'wasn't aware' that he would 'need' to cut the hair to remove the dreadlocks, and it assumes that he WANTS to remove the dreadlocks, or that there is some reason why he should.

I'm not convinced that dreadlocks have to be cut out. A long time ago, my family had a Samoyed dog. Some parts of her long white fur tangled into mats. I used to get a fine toothed comb, and gently pluck apart the mats. If she could tolerate sitting patiently long enough while having her hair tugged and fooled with, then I was able to get them out. She had straight hair, not coily hair, so her texture would be similar to my own. It just takes patience. I could do that if I decided I didn't want my dreadlocks anymore. I would do a little bit at a time, and then braid the untangled portions so that they would stay untangled. Then I'd work on it a little at a time. In other words I don't have to be 'afraid' that the dreadlocks won't comb out or that they'll be permanent and irreversible. There would be a few tangles that would be too complicated to remove. I do occasionally have 'complex' tangles that I rip or cut out, but it's rare, and it's usually due to a lack of patience rather than the knot itself being unsolvable.

So I haven't decided yet. I might possibly stop combing, tolerate the sticky grease, endure the unwanted clothing lint, and see what happens. The grease makes my hair stay wet for a long time, which will make me freeze in the wintertime. That's the nice thing about combing - it helps the hair dry. So I have a feeling that with greasy dreadlocks, I am going to get wet hair that stays wet for four hours at a time or something. I guess I'll find out...