Deva addresses the 'cone

At Naturally Curly, a representative from Deva has disclosed that the reason Deva has used amodimethicone lo these many years is because it couldn't find "a botanical replacement." Effective 2009, however, all conditioning products put out by the company will be 'cone-free.

Nice. Good news. I'd like to be happy, but there's something just not right about this situation. I couldn't address my misgivings on the discussion boards because I don't want to be the voice of negativity there, but I don't mind telling you here, at my blog, that I am suspicious of this sudden visibility of Deva. They have been untouchable and rather uncommunicative for years. And now, without warning, they are chatting up the curly community. Call me a curmudgeon, but it feels disingenuous. (Yes, I know that sounds strange from me, given my plea to Lorraine to open up about why she puts silicones in her conditioners. But I don't know... I just find this unprecedented transparency uncharacteristic and therefore, odd.)

I mean, here's a company that sprung up shortly after Lorraine Massey published her book. With no explanation or apology, it sold conditioners containing the very same ingredient Curly Girl advised us to avoid. The company also made shampoos, and although Deva was very keen on shouting from the rooftops about the absence of sulfates in those shampoos, it was odd that they had shampoos at all, if the advice in the book was to hold true. (Well, I take that back. The book says wavy-haired people might need the occasional shampoo. Were the shampoos, then, directed at wavies? Doesn't seem that way.)

My next beef: Why put out a product in the first place that doesn't conform to your very public philosophy? Why not wait until you *can* find the "botanical replacement"? Could they not wait because maybe there was too much money to be made in the interim? I was among the people who bought a bunch of Deva products the moment I learned Massey had created a line of them. I assumed, as surely many other unsuspecting curlies did, that the conditioner would not have silicones, given who its inventor was. But alas, the 'cones were there -- and just happened to have needed the "low poo" to remove them. Convenient, no?

And lastly, why the extended silence? Did the questioning on the part of the curly community just finally become too loud to ignore? Perhaps it was our incessant haranguing that eventually made it impossible for Deva to keep selling us a product that contradicted its founder's beliefs about acceptable hair product ingredients. If so, good for the curly community! It pays to be tenacious.

I will try to take Deva at its word and accept this new, friendly, unsiliconed face it wants to present to the world. But I'm watching you, Deva. I'm watching you.

[Added one day later: Naturally Curly, adding to the suspicious nature of all of this, removed that post and instead quoted the representative in a different post. I have updated the link above -- look for Gretchen's post on page two of that thread.]