A History of and a Commentary on Shampoo and Society

That title sounds like an essay in the making. I'll try not to go too scholarly on you, but it is midterm time yet again and so my mind has been in school mode lately.

I wanted to take a post and really look at shampoo. As a strict CG-er, shampoo, which I will here define as a commercial shampoo which contains a harsh sulfate (sodium laurel sulfate [SLS], sodium laureth sulfate [SLES], ammonium laureth sulfate [ALS], etc), has not touched my hair since November 1st.

First, let's look at where the impetus for the creation of commercial shampoo comes from. The first recognized cleaning agent other than simple water is soap. Some people believe that the first soap could have been invented as early as early as 4000BC in Babylon. It is believed that Babylonian people discovered that when cooking animal meat, the fat and lard could be mixed with potash (wood ashes) to create a hard cleaning substance. The earliest soap recipe known appears on a Babylonian tablet dating from around 2200 BC (the recipe called for water, alkali, and cassia oil in case you were planning to make some ancicent Babylonian soap!).

Soap diffused from Babylonia through history into Egypt, the vast area that became the Roman Empire, and the Middle East. The Romans took soap to a new level. The Latin word for soap, sapo, appears in a text called Historia Naturalis, in which a recipe calling for tallow and ashes is given, and the resulting substances is described as a "pomade" for hair. Most soap historians agree that the Romans were fairly ignorant as to soap's detergent properties because they preferred to use a strigil (a small, curved, metal instrument) to scrape dirt and sweat from the body. Thus, at the famous Roman baths, you would not have seen bubbles of animal soaps, but rather, cold metal curved scrapers being used to clean. That doesn't sound very relaxing.

A first century Roman strigil

Modern soap emerges in Islamic history. It is in the Middle East that the detergent properties of the soap were fully appreciated, and the concept of adding scents to soap emerges. Our modern soap recipes have not changed much from the recipes used by Islamic chemists, who made soap from vegetable oils, fragrant oils, and lye. Castile soap was introduced in Europe in the 1600s, and is still popular today. Soap production levels soared with the Industrial revolution, and names such as Andrew Pears, William Gossage, and Robert Hudson appear as the soap industry giants of the modern age.

During the early 1900s, Western chemists sought to create a new product that could be cheaply manufacture but provided highly effective detergency. People found that using soap for hair care had the disadvantages of being irrating to eyes and incompatible with hard water (because it left a dull residue on hair).

The word "shampoo" first appears in the Western world after British contact with colonial India. In Hindi, the word "champo" means "head massage" (usually with some form of hair oil). The English usage of the word "shampoo" dates to 1762

The first synthetic, commercial shampoo, Drene, by Proctor and Gamble, was introduced in 1934. This was the first non-soap shampoo specifically targeted toward hair care, rather than total personal care.

An advertisment for Drene Shampoo from the 1940s

Modern commercial shampoo, containing the now sometimes controversial sulfate formulation, came on the scene in the 1960s. This is when the detergent technology we use today was formulated.

Interestingly enough, the 1970s saw a reaction against the synthetic shampoo industry. Companies began marketing "natural" shampoos, containing ingredients like eggs, jojoba oil, wheat germ oil, honey, herbs, and flowers. Labels started to make use of the worlds "natural" and "organic" and "botanical" in advertising. I find it singularly interesting that only 10 years after the introduction of mass marketed sulfate shampoo, people began to react against it (I betcha they had curly hair!)

An ad from the 1970s, when a reaction against synthetic shampoos occured, and a revial of the desire for "natural" took place

Of course, then the 80s hit, and everyone just went out dancing! Actually, from the 70s on, the only things that have really changed in the shampoo industry are the sort of trends that the indsutry goes though, like the lean toward natural, and the technology available. For example, silicones are synthetically created and are being tweaked everyday. Every so often, a new one appears and we are left to wonder about its solubility.

I find it quite telling that my grandmother was very open to my going CG. She was born in the 1930s, so her mother had lived in the era before the commercial shampoo. My mother, on the other hand, born in the 1960s, has been very much against my going CG. She agrees that there is improvement, but she sees not using shampoo as being "dirty" and she insists my scalp smells, even when I tell her how many times I've been complimented on how good my hair smells. I think it's interesting that my mother grew up in the times when shampoo was being launched into the mass market and being researched and modified, whereas my grandmother had a close connection to the time before shampoo. My mom insists you need shampoo to be clean, and my grandmother thinks it's wonderful that I'm going more natural with my hair care.

It's an interesting commentary on the way that people forget things quickly. People were clean before shampoo, but because it's become rooted in our collective conscious that shampoo is the only thing to clean hair (through the masterful advertising of shampoo companies), people just one generation away from the time before shampoo have forgotten that there was a time that was clean before shampoo.

Sham poo = fake crap