Unfashionably normal
Mar. 4th, 2007 03:28 pmBack in the olden days when I was a little girl, shampoo tended to come in variants for Dry, Normal and Greasy hair. I've always found that Normal works well enough with my routine of weekly washing, occasional emergency conditioning, and no other chemical applications. For most of the time since I moved to the US, I was quite happy with the Normal version of Clairol's Herbal Essences, in spite of the silly commercials.
Then, around the end of last year, the familiar bottles disappeared, replaced by a completely different range with different cutesy slogans, different colours and shapes of bottles, and different additives. It turns out that the new range doesn't have a Normal version. There's the green 'Drama Clean,' which I used for a while, but that seems to correspond to Greasy, and after a few weeks of that I had to resort to the goopy blue extra-hydrating kind, formerly known as Dry. The only other alternatives are for artificially coloured, straight, or curly hair; none of these seem to apply to my gentle natural wave, which only achieves curliness in really humid conditions. (It isn't entirely clear from the packaging whether the respective shampoos are intended to enhance or correct the conditions of straightness or curliness, or are aimed at natural or artificial occurrence of these conditions.) The blue goop seems to be helping, but I doubt I'll need that as a regular thing once my hair has recovered from the green stuff. I picked up a bottle of a different brand that does have a Normal flavour, but it seems a shame to waste the others. Perhaps I could use one application of green and one of blue until they're gone.
Then, around the end of last year, the familiar bottles disappeared, replaced by a completely different range with different cutesy slogans, different colours and shapes of bottles, and different additives. It turns out that the new range doesn't have a Normal version. There's the green 'Drama Clean,' which I used for a while, but that seems to correspond to Greasy, and after a few weeks of that I had to resort to the goopy blue extra-hydrating kind, formerly known as Dry. The only other alternatives are for artificially coloured, straight, or curly hair; none of these seem to apply to my gentle natural wave, which only achieves curliness in really humid conditions. (It isn't entirely clear from the packaging whether the respective shampoos are intended to enhance or correct the conditions of straightness or curliness, or are aimed at natural or artificial occurrence of these conditions.) The blue goop seems to be helping, but I doubt I'll need that as a regular thing once my hair has recovered from the green stuff. I picked up a bottle of a different brand that does have a Normal flavour, but it seems a shame to waste the others. Perhaps I could use one application of green and one of blue until they're gone.
