Friday April 25, 2008
No ‘Poo Day Four

I went running yesterday. And when I run, I go balls to the wall. I was soaking wet by the time I was done, and I was absolutely convinced that a water-only rinse wouldn't cut it as far as cleaning my hair.

I was also absolutely wrong about that.

Can you believe this? After a rinse and a quick scalp massage in the shower, my hair showed no trace of how sweaty it had just been.

I am bound to report that today--the day I would ordinarily be shampooing again--my scalp itches, and my hair has developed some strange static electricity. It looks perfectly clean, though.

I was prepared to have to put the lovely new rose-scented powder I got from Lush (Powder Puff, it's called) in my roots today, but it looks like that won't be necessary.

All the blogs I've read say to try different herbal infusions if you get itchy. If it gets really bad today I might try rinsing my hair with rosemary tea.

I went to the gym with Mistress B yesterday, who is very interested in the whole no 'poo thing. She has straight, fine hair that is similar to mine, and she is waiting to see the success of my experiment before she tries it for herself. Probably also because she's got a year's worth of Lush shampoo bars in her bathroom.

Being my friend and neighbor for the last eight years, she has also seen with what zeal I have given up many habits, such as cigarettes, fried food, sugar, alcohol, caffeine, watching too much TV, overexercising, starving, bingeing, shopping out of boredom and buying too many MAC lipsticks...I could go on. The point is, I like depriving myself of things. It's fun. I am determined that nothing outside of me will define me, no matter how much I like it.

I remember vividly being in grade school and undergoing a test in the form of a question that some of the popular girls were putting to the rabble as we rode home on the bus: Which shampoo do you use? As each girl answered, the popular girls would scream out the name of the shampoo, and the entire bus would vote on the appropriateness of the shampoo by either cheering or booing. When I said “Pert shampoo,” they screamed, “EEeeewww! Pert looks like boogers!.”

It was not the first time I understood that, as Chuck Klosterman says, what you consume defines you. It was, however, the first time I understood that I wished to be defined by something other than my consumption.