I have not washed my hair in a week.
There. I said it.
And the funny thing is, there is absolutely nothing wrong with my hair. It does not smell. It is not oily. Small woodland creatures have not taken up residence behind my ears. It simply has not told me that it needs washing.
But some old voice in my head still thinks I have confessed to something.
Who remembers getting your hair rolled into those little pink curlers?
When I was a little girl, Saturday night was hair-washing night. My mother or one of my older sisters washed my hair, then it was set in those pink curlers so it would be perfect for church on Sunday morning. That was the routine. Once a week.
I carried the same habit through most of high school. I have no memory of wondering whether I ought to wash my hair more often. Nobody acted as though once a week was dirty, careless, or socially unacceptable. It was simply how we took care of our hair.
Somewhere along the way, that changed.
Women began washing their hair every other day. Some began washing it every day. Bottles multiplied in the shower. Shampoo, conditioner, clarifying shampoo, moisturizing shampoo, volumizing shampoo, scalp treatment, leave-in treatment, and something apparently required to repair the damage caused by all the other things we had just put on our heads.
I do not remember voting for any of this.
I do not remember science arriving at the door to announce that the women of my childhood had been walking around with dangerously unwashed heads.
I remember advertising.
I remember shiny hair swinging in slow motion. I remember women looking horrified at the possibility that their hair might appear flat, oily, dull, or less than freshly washed. I remember beautiful women in shampoo commercials suggesting, without ever saying it plainly, that cleanliness, desirability, and femininity could all be poured from the same bottle.
And I absorbed it.
My second husband, Bob, accidentally wandered out of the whole arrangement.
He spent one summer on Nantucket swimming in the Atlantic every day. Afterward, he would go home and shower. At some point, he stopped putting shampoo on his hair. He still rinsed it thoroughly, but he stopped covering it with soap and products.
His hair became thicker. It became shinier. It looked healthier. After an adjustment period, it also stopped being oily.
As far as I know, he never used shampoo again. I have not seen him in twenty years, but that summer was more than thirty years ago, and from then on he simply wet and rinsed his hair.
I thought that was courageous.
Think about that for a moment. The man stopped buying shampoo, and I regarded him as brave. That tells us something about how thoroughly I had already been trained.
So I went looking for the rule. I wanted to know whether there is actual scientific proof that people should wash their hair every day or every other day.
Anyway, if you like the idea of questioning the old rules you’ve been carrying around for decades
And you don’t want to keep living by instructions that may not fit your life anymore
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