Pretty without the Poison
Note: This is a repost of a blog from my old site, originally published October 14th, 2020I have had my eye on the “Toxic-free” or “Clean Beauty” movement for a while, since I switched to sulfate free shampoo around 2013. As a small business owner, finding the balance between my realistic budget and the ideal products can be difficult. The struggle is fully real nowadays, as the industry is currently completely polarized. It was true before the pandemic and it is has only intensified as we compulsively sanitize everything we touch.
On one side we have the evil empire of giant corporations that is basically the embodiment of the boogey man: testing on animals, buying out small companies and destroying their formulas, weakening your immune system or causing cancer... On the other side we have the coven of luxury hippie companies that cost more because they make everything in small batches with handpicked pollen from the butts of free range bees and oh btw there’s no preservatives so you have to use this $70 cream by next week or it gets moldy...
Now, I lean towards the latter camp, I’d rather be woo-woo than toxic. But for everyday consumers it’s not a question of ideals, it’s a question of budget. The cheapest ingredients are synthetics and carcinogenic, the best ingredients are natural and expensive to process gently and efficiently. Meanwhile most of us are not in the 1% tax bracket. The money for “real shit” has to come from somewhere and it can be difficult to see your beauty routine as “real shit” when you’ve got rent and car payments due. I get it, I’m in the same boat.
The thing to be cautious of with Clean Beauty is, just because its “natural” doesn’t mean its automatically good for your hair. After all, lead is natural, arsenic is natural, cocaine is natural, opium is natural...
Start with making sure your products are toxic-free, but do further research. Be weary of alcohol, salt, and silicones.
I’m making a more detailed glossary of specific chemical ingredients but here is a basic understanding of the terms I use.
Surfectants: detergent, soap, the thing that makes the bubbles happen. Used to cut grease but at the price of stripping moisture. Think “dish pan hands” but your hair. I’m not a fan of surfectants because the more moisture you strip, the more you have to put back in, and your scalp usually produces more grease to compensate. When I was using shampoo I was also having to follow it with a deep conditioner mask every time. Now I don’t use either. (see my previous blog, what type of shampoo should I use?)
Endocrine disruptors: Such as parabens and pthylates. These may not affect your hair in a noticeable way, you may not have an allergic reaction or breakage. But there are so many in the products we use every day that the harmful affects easily accumulate over the years. It can contribute to hormone imbalances like PCOS or endometriosis.
Fragrance/Parfum/Perfume: Basically the get out of jail free card for chemicals. A company can put anything in a fragrance and does not have to disclose what it is, in the name of preventing corporate espionage. Every successful luxury brand product has a generic dupe and that dupe needs to smell as close to the original as it can. However, fragrances often include endocrine disruptors. Not to mention, for the number of people who are highly allergic to “fragrance” - It’s unfair that they don’t get to know what chemical they are actually allergic to.
Silicones: Think of them as plastic food wrapping... It coats the hair with “plastic” with shiny results but at the cost of preventing moisture from getting in. Clients who have used silicones for years have to go through several clarifying washes to get rid of all the buildup. Afterwards the hair is bound to feel rough from the combination of silicone damage and clarifying shampoo. It’s like having to sand a piece of furniture before re-varnishing, it feels rough at first but the hair is much better off after recovering.
Shea butter: This is one of those things that used to be good but is somewhat problematic now. It’s natural but the cheaply processed shea butter (what most people are using) is just as bad at coating the hair and blocking moisture as silicones. Cold-pressed high quality shea butter can be okay, so to determine if the product is “good” or “bad” requires deeper research on the specific brand.
Sodium Chloride: Table salt. A natural, non toxic ingredient that is still bad for your hair in large quantities. If you have ever been to the ocean with fresh haircolor, you know. I once spent a week in Tulum; as an experiment I started with fresh dark teal and lime green hair and I returned with pastel minty blue. Salt is powerful when it comes to stripping haircolor and moisture. I would avoid in shampoo, but with styling products like salt sprays? It really depends on the rest of the ingredients, imo. Generally, if the only product you use contains salt and your hair feels dry or the color is fading - stop using it and try something else. But if your scalp and hair feels okay, no harm no foul.
Charcoal: Everything with charcoal is so tempting because it’s my favorite color, so TRUST I get it. But think about this - if you take birth control or other important medication, they warn you not to eat or drink anything containing activated charcoal while those pills are in your stomach. It is so good at “detoxing” that it detoxes the medicine right out of you! Dentist’s have denounced charcoal toothpaste as too harsh for everyday use. It wears down the enamel in your teeth, which is much stronger than your hair. Charcoal is natural but powerful, use sparingly.
The thing I struggle with, the thing that prevents me from being fully on board with this movement, is I’ve tried expensive natural organic small batch small business brands and was also disappointed by the results.
Innersense Organic Beauty: A brand I had heard a lot of good things about. Mostly from people who use them but also from my co-worker who specializes in curls. A former coworker has been following the Toxic-Free movement more closely due to her specialty being all ends of the curly hair spectrum. She explain to me that shea butter is becoming a big problem, but that the shea butter contained in Innersense was okay because it’s high quality and all of their ingredients are cold-pressed. I raised an eyebrow about the shea butter but the cold-pressed ingredients sounded promising, so I tried it anyway. I ordered an intro kit for $66, which is a lot of money to shell out on something that you may completely hate... and it turns out I did! I wasted no time putting Innersense’s “Color Awakening Hair Ceremony” to the test. As with most lines, the conditioner isn’t really problem, but the shampoo is a dealbreaker. Innersense Color Awakening Hairbath is natural and organic but instead of surfectants, the main cleansing ingredient is Sodium Chloride... common table salt! I used it a couple of times and immediately watched my neon green color come out of my hair and circle down the drain. I hadn’t used any type of shampoo since I started using New Wash last year, but Innersense faded my color just as much as my sulfate-shampoo days. Not only that but my scalp was so dry, I had more scratchy flakey scalp problems after shampooing with Innersense than I do after BLEACHING MY ROOTS. That’s insanity to me! Your scalp should not be more upset with your shampoo than it is with a chemical bleach solution that, if left unattended for hours, can melt your hair off.
Reverie: This is brand that I’ve seen all over instagram alongside brands I use already, and it looks like it’s a really good quality line, too good. I inquired about wholesale and trying it out. The line is so expensive that the sample kit of all 7 products is $157. If it’s too expensive for me to try right now can I really expect my clients to pay $52 for Ever hair oil or $72 for Cake scalp tonic? Furthermore, I fundamentally can’t get on board with brands that make you buy multiples of all the products in order to get wholesale pricing. It doesn’t work for my small space and if I only sell one product from that line, then I’m stuck with a bunch of expensive stuff that no one wants. I also am turned off when I want to see an ACTUAL ingredient list and they only list the luxury ingredients and the ingredients they don’t use.. but won’t provide the list itself. We need to normalize TRANSPARENCY about ingredients!
So this is where I find myself at a crossroads. Is it really too much to ask for something to be organic and natural AND color safe? I fundamentally believe it is chemically possible to do both, but then it is very difficult to find brands that people can realistically afford in a pandemic-induced recession...
Good news, everyone!
Clean Beauty brands I’m using now
Cult+King: This line is so rad! I straight up swiped their “pretty without the poison” tagline for the title of this blog. It’s the first brand I’ve truly felt an ideological kinship with. They don’t gender their products (because that’s stupid), they prioritize people and planet over profits, and everything is so natural and nontoxic that you can use the hair Balm on your face. I love that they use beautiful glass bottles and offer refills in recyclable aluminum containers. I do have one little issue... Their only offering for shampoo is in bar form, which is cool, but it has charcoal in it and is not recommended for colored hair. Which would be 90% of my clientele. The shampoo bar smells AMAZING and I really want to use it, can we please get a charcoal-free option? I use their Style as my curl cream. I love their Tonik, it smells amazing and I use it to refresh my curls in the morning. It’s also a scalp tonic that can be used if you have any break outs or, in my case, ingrown hairs from shaving my mohawk myself - quarantine problems, amirite?
Hairstory: New Wash is what I have been using instead of shampoo for nearly 2 years. It was so nourishing that it helped me realize I actually have curly hair now! Plus my hair never fades, which is great for my clients but problematic for me when want to change it up. It’s a higher price point for New Wash, but actually $40 for a product that replaces shampoo + conditioner is no different to paying $20 for each one. You scrub your scalp (with their amazing scalp brush) and leave it in a few minutes to condition, so you’re using half the product. New Wash scents are all botanical, free from chemical fragrance. They also have refillable aluminum containers which can be recycled (along with the scalp brush) and their refill packaging can be flat packed, creating much less waste. Plus they have an amazing subscription option so you can buy refills in bulk and get the best value for money.
Afterworld Organics: A promising line I found often tagged alongside these other two brands. I just started using them and I’m in loooove. They, like Hairstory, provide a combination of scalp brush and 2-in-1 soap free hair cleanser. Hair Glow comes in two fragrance-free scents, Royal Lavender and Amberwood, which is great because on rare occasions I’ve met people who hate lavender... they exist. Moisture Lock is my absolute favorite! It’s used like a gel and dries with extreme hold, but it leaves your hair insanely shiny and soft. Hair Healer is a heat protectant that also nourishes and smoothes. Texture Mist is a gentle, buildable salt spray. Afterworld does a great job of explaining the use of salt in their Texture Mist “Atlantic sea salt and Polyquat 20 work together to increase texture and volume while hydrating the hair. Polyquat-a powdered extract made from plant cell fibers- binds moisture to the hair, acting as a barrier against the drying nature of the sea salt.” Overall, they do a great job of explaining the use their ingredients. Their about page contains a note on “alcohol ingredients” that talks about fatty alcohols being different from isopropyl alcohol.
All of these lines have something in common, they focus on glass, recyclable, and overall less wasteful packaging. They are concerned with the long term effects of their ingredients on the human body and the ecosystem. These lines also allow me to earn commission while offering products for sale online for your convenience. This is imperative for a small business like mine to stay afloat. With such little retail space and in the middle of a recession, small businesses need all the help we can get. No more overhead cost for me to gamble on selling products. You can order what you want and it comes right to your door without fear of breaking quarantine. This is especially valuable for those of you working from home and, due to being high-risk, still having zero contact with people outside of your household.
On principle, I use brands that assume your intelligence, not depend on your stupidity to sell their snake oil. The integrity of their ingredients can speak for itself.
Stay safe, stay clean, and...
