My All Natural Body: round and loving it (or trying to!)

About 9 months or so ago I made the switch away from using traditional body care products. Part of the motivation for this was anti-consumerist/anti-beauty industry; partly it was health concerns/eco-consciousness; partly it was frugality. Much of my artwork has been critical of consumerism and advertising and the beauty industry. These things make me sick in a lot of ways, but especially when I look at the far-reaching effects they have on our culture and society. And especially when I am walking through the little girls section of Target or wandering around campus. I am always striving to fight against the seduction of advertisements and the lustful desires they seek to create within me. Sometimes I am successful. More often, I have to fight to keep my brain active and conscious and to stifle the unnecessary want. (On a side note, I've been working very hard at distinguishing between want & need... a much more difficult exercise than one might think!). And honestly, as a public we seem to be determined to keep our heads in the sand, ready to accept what someone has told us that we want (not need, need is rarely brought up in advertising because it reminds of poverty). We appear satisfied to pay the highest price for the lowest quality in order to maintain whatever image is most popular. We are happy to do it. In choosing to wash my hair using baking soda and apple cider vinegar and to wash my face with honey (raw, local honey!) I am refusing to accept what some unknown corporate entity has determined I desire. I am agreeing to (try) and accept who God made me and the beauty with which He endowed me. I am refusing to line the pockets of anyone who perpetuates an unreal standard of beauty.

I am also trying to honor the body given me by treating it as kindly as I can. A lot of the ingredients that are poured into the products we use are very unhealthy even toxic. Parabens and sodium lauryl/laureth sulfates are among the most common of the nasty ingredients (to learn more about ingredients that may be in your specific products, go here). The goal of using these ingredients is to fill the products with inexpensive ingredients (often while marketing using the more expensive ingredients: lavender, oatmeal, shea butter, etc) thus keeping the cost of the product low. Honestly, though, even if many of these ingredients weren't questionable I would still be doing what I am. Even the purest of the mainstream products tends to be rather harsh and overkill for what our bodies need. And, let's face it, I enjoy being nonconformist!

So, what is it I do exactly? How does one wash with baking soda? It's actually pretty easy! The goal is allow your body's chemistry balance out with the belief that, if you are in good health, it will be what it needs to be.

Shampooing the No-Poo Way
disclaimer: this is very much a personalized thing. below is a good starting point, but it takes a bit of time and patience and experimentation to find exactly what will work for you! There is also a normal de-tox period where your scalp will continue to over-produce oils like it does for commercial shampoos/conditioners.

1)First, comb/brush your hair well. This loosens up the dirt and grease in your hair.

2)Then I take 2 Tbs of baking soda and dissolve it in about 16 oz of warm water. (The basic ratio is 1 Tbs/8 oz water-if you need more for long hair or really dirty hair, maintain the proportions and double the recipe or wash twice. Too much baking soda will cause your hair to dry out and matte together).

3)In the shower, I part my hair into 4 (2 down and 2 across). I pour about half of this mixture onto the part lines and work it in. No-poo is like a good scalp massage. You cannot do this without it and just rubbing your fingers into your hair will not suffice. I start at the crown and massage out and down a couple of times. The idea is to massage into my scalp the baking soda. Then I pour the rest of the solution from my hair-line down to the rest of my hair (looking up). I work this is in the same way.

4)I let the baking soda sit while I wash my face. This is pretty simple too: just take a glob of honey and massage it in. Let it work a moment, then rinse.

5)Rinse, rinse rinse! And I rub my fingers through my scalp again to be sure I've rinsed well.

6)Condition: I mix roughly 1 Tbs of apple cider vinegar with 16 oz of water. I pour most of this on from the ears down, reserving about 1/4 to pour from the hair line down. The vinegar restores the pH of your hair and makes it nice and shiny! Then I rinse well.

Review:
scrub, scrub with baking soda solution, rinse, rinse with apple cider vinegar, rinse! Presto, beautiful hair!

This is so simple and so frugal! I spent $4 on my 5lb bag of baking soda at costco and roughly $5 on my 16 0z jar of vinegar (I use Bragg's Organic Raw Unfiltered). These last me for months and months and months and months and so on!