Mod cons 3: hair conditioner

Here's another thing the marketing people persuade us to buy: hair conditioner, or all-in-one shampoo with the conditioner in.

Conditioner is a kind of sticky stuff that adheres to the hair and doesn't wash out when you rinse it. It adds bulk to the hair, because it's a kind of gunk, and because it attracts or retains moisture it makes the hair less prone to frizz and a little bit glossy. Unfortunately as well as attracting moisture, it attracts dirt and smoke. And because it forms a film over the hair it prevents the natural conditioning oils that the head produces from travelling along the hair properly, so you end up with very greasy bits near the head.

So the result is that you have dirty hair with greasy tops, and so you have to wash your hair after a day or two. And because you keep washing the natural oils away the hair gets thin and dry and fragile. So you have to put conditioner on it to make it look at all decent. But then it gets greasy and dirty and full of gunk. So you have to wash it. And so on.

This is good business for the manufacturers of stuff for washing your hair and rectifying problem hair, because you always have problem hair and it gets to be more of a problem the more you use their gunk.

Once you've got into this cycle it's very difficult to break out of it. Which is doubtless how the people who market the products like it to be.

It's much better never to get into it. It's a mod con, and once your conned into using it, you'll find it hard to stop. Without it, it's easy to look good by washing your hair just once a week—probably less if you don't live in a city— no conditioner, no fancy shampoo, nothing to paste on afterwards, just the natural gloss of your own hair oils.

Mod cons

Are there some things that we have been too readily persuaded that we need, when really the supposed "need" is created by our use of the thing we now think we need? I mean, companies advertise something as though it will make our life better, but actually it makes life no better. Meanwhile we come to think that we can't do without it.

The thing is a con, which makes us go on buying the thing that is making things worse.

I don't mean things that we could live without (with some minor discomfort). I mean things which we would be happier and more comfortable without, if only we could resist the pressure to have the thing we've been conned into having.

Here's an example: deodorant.

When I was a teenager I thought that there were some people who were lucky enough not to need to use deodorant (my younger brother for instance) but the rest of us were smelly and would be very smelly indeed if we didn't use deodorant every day.

Then I met a man who didn't use deodorant, and he persuaded me that all you need to do is wash your armpits at the end of each day. So I tried it, and sure enough, once you've washed off the weeks of bad chemicals from the deodorant, you become fresh and sweet smelling and you don't generate so much perspiration. Nor do your clothes get messed up by the deodorant, and they breathe better as a result, so you don't get hot and sweaty from wearing the clothes that had become non-porous from the nasty things you were applying to your armpits. And you don't need to wash your clothes so often, nor do you find that you need to buy new garments because the old ones have bad marks under the arms.

Perhaps it may be true that there are a few people who have some kind of illness or malfunctioning sweat glands, and maybe they might get a bit smelly. But it's my belief that most of us are fine with a bar of soap, a washbasin with warm water, a good flannel to wash with, and some well-chosen clothes...

I mean, obviously you don't want to be wearing clothes that cut in too tight under the armpits, or clothes made of nylon or polyester or acrylic. But such clothes are uncomfortable and look horrid anyway, and are another mod con, only suited to chavs.

I haven't used a deodorant for thirty years now.

Healthy and attractive human smells

Here are the scientists saying (roughly) some of the things I was saying in an earlier post about why we ought not to wash too much or take baths and showers too frequently, or use scented stuff in our laundry.

Baths and showers

A long while back I mentioned the idea that it's better not to wash too much. The thought is two-fold.

First, washing too much is unhealthy, and undermines the natural ways in which our skin and hair keep themselves protected against wear and tear and germs and things.

The second thought is that washing too much destroys our natural attractiveness to each other and prevents us from maintaining healthy relationships.

This is damaged partly by washing off the natural smells that make us attractive to other human beings, especially to bodies of the opposite sex and to our mothers and brothers and sisters and things. It's also damaged by putting on other non-human smells, especially the smells of soaps and shampoos and deodorants and other potions, which may seem pretty to us when we choose them in the shops but aren't actually very sexy as the smell of another person (as opposed to being delightful as the smell of a rose or a lily of the valley or a honeysuckle or a lavender flower; actually most of them don't seem to be any of those but some much worse artificial perfume which would be most distressing to find in a hedgerow). Hence the increasingly high divorce rate and frequent break down of intimate relationships. That's the thought.

And of course it's damaged in rather insidious ways by the clinging smells imparted to our clothes and linen by artificial perfumes in washing powders and fabric conditioners (about which I've written before). I have had several very miserable experiences recently of having to partake of a first rate meal, or even just a good homely meal, while sitting next to, or opposite, someone who smells like the vent from a college launderette. You anticipate a lovely meal of asparagus with garlic butter, with the delightful bouquet of a good wine under your nose. Instead you're constantly and repeatedly transported to that terrible aisle in the supermarket where they sell "laundry products": things that are obviously designed to appeal to people who naturally smell disgusting (I suppose. After all you wouldn't use those products if you smelled nice by nature, would you?)

The longer it is since we last used such artificially scented products ourselves the more intrusive it seems to become when one sits near someone who uses them, or when we have such a person in the house, and the more intolerable it seems. I suppose if you wear such clothes and sleep in such bedlinen you don't realise that the smell is coming from you, and that it's terrible to those who notice it. And I suppose you go around the world not realising that there are parts of the world that smell just lovely, by nature. Indeed there are some real people who have really nice smells too. Maybe some of those people under the horrible smelly clothes also would smell lovely, if you could only find out. And then you would like them and want to spend time with them, instead of longing to get away. I'm wondering whether to start a campaign to change all this by actually telling people that they smell horrid.

A third thought is that washing one's body too much and taking too many showers is wasteful. I'll come back to that.

The smell of baby

Another thing that was mentioned on Radio Norfolk was the wonderful smell that a baby has— natural baby smell, so to speak.

Do you suppose we are naturally wired up to respond well to the smell of a baby? Or is it imprinting from our early years? Or is that the same thing?

And does nature give baby a special smell so that that happens? And if so, doesn't that also fit with the more general idea that, on the whole, it is best not to do too much to mask the natural smells that enable us to find our children and our mates and so on.

This (by the way) is connected to thoughts sparked off by a theory my mother has about matters to do with bathing, aftershave and the divorce rate. I think dotty theories probably run in the family.