Dear Aunty Kells and Mama Zo: I can never seem to find the right shampoo for my hair. How do you choose the right one?

Dear Aunty Kells and Mama Zo: I can never seem to find the right shampoo for my hair. How do you choose the right one?

Doing the weekly flat shop is at its absolute worst when you’ve run out of conditioner and shampoo, your flatties are trying to get through the check-out, you’re still looking at shampoo, having an existential crisis “AM I NORMAL, IS MY HAIR NORMAL?!” figuring out what shampoo you need.

To understand your hair type, just sit in a room with some spiritual music playing and let it speak to you. You could also try brushing it; if all your hair is snapping off you have fragile hair. If your hair never sits flat, it’s frizzy. If you’ve recently dyed your hair, it’s ‘coloured’. If your hair is utterly gorgeous and hot looking all the time, you have normal hair. If your hair is curly it’s curly – if there is no curly specific shampoo, use whichever shampoo is most hydrating, better yet, try not to use shampoo at all.

You might think that understanding what hair type you have is the most important thing to know when you’re buying shampoo. You’re wrong. It’s actually your lifestyle. For example, if you want to be a surfer, don’t wash your hair. Surfers don’t wash their hair because the salt bleaches it. However, you can use coconut oil if you want to put something in your hair that matches your surfer lifestyle. A tub is like $8, and you can also cook with it. Perfect for taking to Bali.

To get that highly desirable bogan hair, you’ll need to adopt a totally dry lifestyle. What this means is you forgo showering, wet wipes and damp clothing altogether. For the chicks, regardless of body shape or skin tone, you want to get the blackest dye and get the longest hair and mush it into your scalp. If there is leftover dye, smudge it around your eyes. Don’t worry about the burning, red scabbing is part of the look. A huge part of bogan hairstyles is the cologne that accompanies it. This is reasonably cost-effective method, all you need is a car. What you do is you turn the car on, have it rev pretty hard while you’re stationary, and then let the engine idle in a high gear. Now you get out and stand in front of the exhaust pipe and steam in the fumes. It’s called a dry shower. Sexy as.

If you are seeking a got yourself together, vaguely adult, ‘I don’t need mummy to tell me to clean myself’ lifestyle, then showering minimum twice a week is all you really need to do. You could start with a bar of soap and work your way up to conditioner. Now tip for beginners, don’t wash your hair every day, the max number of times you wash your hair a week is four times.

If these advices don’t help you complete the flat shop without an existential crisis, nothing will. 

Aroha nui kiddos,

Mamma Zo and Aunt Kell

This article first appeared in Issue 14, 2018.
Posted 9:38pm Thursday 5th July 2018 by Zoe Taptiklis-Haymes and Kelly Davenport.