Weird Product Wednesday: Jellies, Gelees, Gels, and Goo

We curlies sure slap loads of slime in our hair.

And it's hardly ever called slime. It goes by a wide range of names:

- gel
- gelee
- gellie
- jelly
- goo
- custard
- pudding
- butter
- paste
- souffle
- cream
- creme
- meringue


(And I'm not even going to tackle the mousse, polish, pomade, gloss, serum, lotion, glaze monikers out there. Not to mention the milkshakes and elixirs and whatnot.)

Okay, cosmetic companies, we get it. These are all names for products that we can glop on our heads in some fashion. Obviously paste is going to be thicker than gel, so that sort of differentiation is helpful. But the difference between a gellie, a jelly, a custard, and a goo simply confounds me. Maybe it does to you, too?

Now, a gel we understand. It typically has some copolymers in it and it provides some hold. In fact, we use it almost exclusively for hold.

But this other stuff... It's a free-for-all of naming conventions! I used to think "gelee" meant it was a product from France. A "jelly" was going to be looser than a gel and probably not provide as much hold as a gel (I still believe this to be true, but your experience may differ). And goo, well, you're on your own with that one -- the name implies that it might be fun to play with but beyond that, who the hell knows?

And then we have the custards, puddings, meringue group, which is distinguishable from the gel, gelees, jellies, gellies, and perhaps the goo by its creamier quality. Some of these have copolymers and some don't, so the amount of hold they might provide is yet another crap shoot. Read the label and you might get a clue but chances are, your best way to know what the product does is to buy it and take your chances. Because for instance, Kinky Curly Curling Custard is not creamy, it's gunky. Miss Jessie's Curly Meringue, though, looks (and sort of feels) like it belongs in a pie.

Which slime do you reach for to keep your locks in prime condition? I confess to owning a wide assortment of all these crazy products, and depending on the weather, my mood, and the other products I might have applied that day, I'll reach for the concoction that offers some kind of balance to those variables. Sounds scientific, but in practice, it's as much an instinctive decision as an informed one. Do we need all these different products with their appetizing names? Probably not, but there's something deliciously fun about opening your medicine cabinet and having it look not so terribly different from your refrigerator.

Still, though, I'd like to see some standardization among product categories. Or maybe just call everything slime and distinguish its hold abilities by color. I don't know. What would you like to see?

Rate your soap bars

An ingenious curly has started a review site for the various soap bars some people are using on their hair. Check out the Shampoo Bar Reviews Site to post a review or to help you decide on a bar or two to try for yourself.

Lift and separate with surfactants

The shampoo-less crowd has a tough time trying to explain to the brainwashed masses that cleansing with conditioner is effective. If only we could say, "the surfactants in most conditioners remove the dirt from my hair as well as any shampoo," and have them understand.

Surfactants are a necessary part of getting dirt and pollution (in other words, normal gunk as opposed to stubborn silicones and clingy oils such as mineral oil) out of hair. They lift the dirt and separate it from our hair (when we rinse, that is). Hence the image I've used here. A little conceptual, I know, but I get tired of using only hair-related images. Sometimes life isn't only about hair. Sometimes it's about boobs, too. But there I go digressing again.

In layman's terms, here's how surfactants work, per Tonya, our favorite Curl Chemist:

At sufficiently high concentrations in water, surfactant molecules group together to form three-dimensional structures known as “micelles”. These structures are clusters of molecules with an oily center made up of the non-polar tail, surrounded by a shell formed by the polar portion of the molecule. These micelles absorb oils from your skin, hair or clothes, and trap them inside until they are removed from the surface by the rinsing phase of the process. Another very important property of surfactants is their ability to produce significant foaming effects, an attribute considered to be desirable by many product developers.

Tonya, it turns out, just this month created an informative article about the nature of surfactants. (This is point where a well-placed "Great minds think alike" comment gets inserted and I act a little smug.) To summarize what she says, surfactants are chemically composed in such a way that they interact well with oils and water. Because of this chemical composition, surfactants get bubbly when you use them. (This is a desirable quality in hair products. Bubbles are not only fun, apparently, but they make users believe the product is doing something.)

Surfactants come in a variety of strengths, in terms of their effect on hair and skin. One category is the sulfates, which the Curly Girl philosophy urges us to avoid. Sodium laureth sulfate, ammonium lauryl sulfate, ammonium laureth sulfate, and sodium myristyl sulfate and sodium myreth sulfate seem to be the harshest, with sodium lauryl sulfate, sodium myreth sulfate, sodium coco sulfate and sodium C14-16 olefin sulfonate being slight less harsh. Sodium coco or cocoyl sulfate, despite claims that they are gentler than its petrochemical cousins, is not any gentler. Just different because of the coconut oil it's derived from.

Less drying surfactants are the nonionic surfactants, such as sorbitol, decyl glucoside, laureth 4-20, and decyl polyglucose. Tonya's article ends by telling us that many of the cleansing products out there today use co-surfactants, such as fatty alcohols, nonionic surfactants, amphoteric surfactants (cocamidropropyl betaine), and even some oils to reduce the drying tendencies.

For a great list of surfactants, check out this page. If you do not shampoo, the anionic surfactants probably will be irrelevant to you because they are primarily found in traditional shampoos. If you like to shampoo every so often, however, check out the amphoteric surfactant list -- these are the ingredients typically found in milder shampoos.

The cationic surfactant list was useful to me because I've been noticing that conditioners with Behentrimonium Methosulfate (EO Rose and Chamomile, Activate Hydrating, and Robert Craig, to be specific) really do well with my hair. Perhaps, then, it is the mild cleansing they provide -- my hair always feels a bit lighter and bouncier after I use those conditioners.

But what I really want to say here is that if you've been trying to go "natural" with your co-washing, you might be unhappy with the results. Why? Because the surfactant content is low, if not nonexistent. Take Karen's Body Beautiful, for instance. The ingredient list for the Hair Milk is:

Purified Water, Jojoba and Avocado Oils, Vegetable Wax, Vitamin E, Panthenol, Arnica and Calendula Flowers, Echinacea, Nettle and Horsetail Extracts, Vegetable Glycerin, Wheat Germ Oil, Fragrance Oil and Natural Enzymes

I don't see anything there that would do anything but condition your hair. Conditioning is great but for co-washing, you want something that will get rid of dirt and oil. Aside from the fact that the Suave Naturals and VO5 lines are wonderfully affordable, they are also chock full of surfactants. Use 'em, girls. Use 'em.

Best. News. Ever.

Curlies! Did you know you can save 15% off any CurlMart purchase between now and February 28? No-Poo Jillipoo does not lie. Just use this code: Jillipoo09 (Please note that kits, cocktails, and Wen products are excluded -- but that still about a bijillion other products to choose from.)

CurlMart rocks!
[NOTE: The original discount code posted here was incorrect. The one you see now should work just fine.]

New name!

So, it seemed to me that there was just too much confusion between the woman who is making (and selling) her own gel at NaturallyCurly.com and this blog. Far be it from me to obstruct the noble pursuit of commerce (especially when it benefits curly hair), so I wanted to simplify things for her and for me!

Sorry for any confusion, but hopefully this change will be easier for everyone.

The much-maligned silicone

The boards at NaturallyCurly are abuzz with talk of texture, porosity, density, and elasticity. Tiffany is handling those topics beautifully, and Pittsburgh Curly and others are providing their own takes and impressions, all of which are useful and thought-provoking as always.

So, I thought I'd write about something else.

And that something else is silicones. Don't gasp. Like Jessica Rabbit, they are not evil. They are just misunderstood.

Silicones are synthetic polymers also known as polyorganosiloxanes (that's why we CGers look for ingredients ending in "cone" as well as "xane" when we read labels). The very properties that make them undesirable for those of us who follow the Curly Girl philosophy are the same properties that give them their usefulness.

Look what silicones do:

- They are heat-resistant and can protect hair from heat styling temperatures as high as 400 degrees (yes, that's Fahrenheit).
- They form a waterproof (hydrophobic) seal around hair, which is great for locking moisture in.
- They offer some resistance to sunlight, another terrific protection.
- They are flexible so all this protection doesn't come with immobility.
- Because of the seal they form, the hair looks shinier
- Supposedly, they help to eliminate frizz. I never found this to be true, but plenty of people have experienced this performance from hair products containing silicone, so to each her own.
- They help to detangle hair because of the afore-mentioned smoothing properties.

Better living through chemistry, right? Almost. Silicone molecules are too large for the hair shaft to absorb, so they sit on hair retaining moisture and keeping the sun rays at bay. At the end of the day, you have to decide whether you want your hair to breathe. If you're okay with sealing moisture in and preventing new moisture from feeding your hair, use silicones. Just know that silicones build up because they do their sealing job so well, and in most cases the solvent for removing them is sulfate (sodium lauryl sulfate and its cousins, which I will talk about in an upcoming post). Sulfates strip the hair of natural oils so when you use them to remove the silicones, you are treating your hair to some fairly harsh detergent. Only you can decide what's best for your own head. As long as you know the risks, you're a grown-up who can make her own decisions.

All silicones are not created equal, however. As this excellent post by Girl with Curl points out, science is a beautiful thing and has given us gradations of silicones. Some coat the hair quite thoroughly while others only leave a thin layer of protection on your hair. It's also worth noting that some silicones, such as cyclomethicone, evaporate fairly quickly, so if you're hoping for all-day effectiveness with that one, you might be disappointed.

Most silicones need some kind of shampoo to thoroughly remove them. The good news, though, is that only the heavy silicones require sulfate shampoos to accomplish that, and for some people, a good co-wash is all they really need. Girl with Curl addresses this in her post, and also, there is an excellent article by Curl Chemist at NaturallyCurly.com.

What about silicone on your skin?

When silicones first came out and started appearing in skin care products and foundation (especially primers), I was very dubious. It seemed to me that coating my skin in something designed to keep air out (or depending on the advertising spin, locking moisture in) couldn't possibly be healthy. And there are people who hold that point of view today (The Health Report -- about which I know nothing -- lists them as questionable). In the book What's in This Stuff? author Patricia Thomas says the following:

On the whole, silicones allow skin to breathe better than mineral oils, but question marks still hang over their long-term safety. While they increase the feel-good factor of a product, they are poorly absorbed by the skin, which raises some doubt as to how well the ingredients suspended in them will be absorbed.

And when I read now that silicone-based anti-aging creams are sought after because the silica (the basis of silicone) helps to fill in fine lines, I have to wonder whether that's healthy for skin. Maybe silicone in skin products is benign -- I just don't know enough science to say for sure. But it sounds kinda icky, doesn't it?

Paula Begoun is a fan, and certainly the industry in general has jumped on the silicone bandwagon. Silicone seems to get praise for its water-binding properties and non-greasy feel. Some forms also reflect light, making us look oh-so-beautiful. Cosmetics companies all claim that skin-care products containing silicone deliver protection yet allow skin to breathe. Which, when you think about it, seems contradictory.

So, in a nutshell, I have no answers. All I can say is that the jury is out on silicones for skin. But they sure are hard to avoid...






Sources used in this article:
MHRA
E-articles
Beauty Brains
Dow Corning

Soapin' up the curls

Many curlies have embraced the joys of using soap bars to clean their hair and scalp. Although this was not one of my more successful experiments, it does work well for some -- kathymack at NaturallyCurly.com being the pioneer on this front.

I interviewed kathymack for The Daily Curl, so take a gander at what she has to say about soap, soap-making, and using the bars to clean your head.

On the flip side, I want to quote what Tiffany the hair stylist has to say on her blog about soap bars:

...Which brings to a small derail. I know people are tired of me harping on the excessive use of shampoo bars. If, however, you have porous hair, you are not doing yourself any favors by using them. These bars are fairly alkaline and raise the cuticle, the exact opposite of what people with overly porous hair are trying to achieve. Your goal is to establish a routine and determine the most effective product use for your hair without swimming upstream in the process.

I think Tiffany's observation/warning is the reason kathymack follows her soaping experiences with a vinegar rinse (it closes the cuticle). So, be advised that soap + acidic something = hair happiness.