Selecting products for your hair

Of course, we all know that there is so much variety available when it comes to hair products. Every lady and her mama had an idea of what hair products to buy for her hair; whether they buy the right thing or not is the main issue here.

There are many reasons why we buy the particular products that we buy; and the suitability or otherwise of these products for our hair-type cannot be one of them. If it were, then we would pay more attention to the information given on the pack as a way of deciding whether or not the product is ideal for us.
So why do we buy what we buy? I have been running a hair studio for over ten years and from all the reasons I have been given by clients, I have narrowed this down to 5 major ones.

AESTHETICS:
We love a good-looking product and the manufacturers know this. There is nothing as reassuring as a really ‘fine’ girl on the pack. It gives you hope that just maybe if you use this product, you too will be ‘fine’ like the girl. If the packaging contains some bright colors like sunny yellow, luminous orange or blood red, then it will also look good on your dresser, won’t it? We are ignorant of the fact that most of those photographs that appear on the pack feature professional models with extensions put in their hair to add length and volume.

NAME:
We also love double-barreled names or names that we can call with a foreign sounding accent. Have you not noticed that you have truly arrived when you start using ‘Soft and Beautiful’, ‘Soft and Free’ or ‘Dark and Lovely’? I even like the way we bend our neck when saying the ‘dick-and-duck’ name, as if we don’t know that every other lady in the salon is watching us strut our stuff.

NATURAL:
We seem to be reassured by the presence of certain words on the pack. These include [but are not restricted to] words like natural, gentle, mild, for children, exclusive and herbal. In fact, if the herbal is qualified with nice-sounding scientific jargon, even better. So we go crazy for names like botanicals, nature’s something or ‘at-one-with-nature’. We believe sincerely that even though chemicals damage our hair, if we stick to ‘nature’s-own-formula’, then we are somehow ‘protecting’ our hair from damage.

PRICE:
We love a bargain and so we rather go for quantity than quality. This is despite the fact that we know price is synonymous with good quality. Some of us will even argue that the hair does not need neutralizing shampoo, and it is a scam to make us pay more for relaxing cream. So, we would rather buy a relaxing cream without shampoo for as little as N60, while ignoring the one that comes complete with all the after-care products you will need to ensure hair does not break.

AVAILABILITY:
Of all the reasons I have encountered, this is the only one that makes sense to me. You may know the right things to buy for your hair and you may be able to afford them, but there is not much that you can do if the products are not available. This is especially true if you do not live in an urban area, where demand for hairdressing products is low, which would in turn encourage retailing of such products. In other words, we will buy what is affordable and available if our preferred option is not in stock, irrespective of whether the product is compatible with our hair or not.

WHAT TO CONSIDER
We can choose the right products for the right reason; and this has to do with knowing our hair and scalp type. If you make a list about the characteristics of your hair and scalp, you would go a long way to determining what exactly you can use successfully. The pertinent questions to ask are: is my scalp dry and itchy most of the time?; is it normal but sensitive when I apply relaxing cream?; do I burn easily when I have a touch-up?; is my hair ‘thin’ or fine in texture?; and, is my hair hard and brittle?

The answers should help you narrow your choice from the wide variety of products available today. Suffice it to say that I would prefer for you to get your hair and scalp analyzed professionally to save you the stress, then your stylist can make recommendations. The most important thing left to say is that when you find the perfect product that seems to make your hair look fantastic, please, please, do not change because a new product is 'reigning'. It can be so difficult to find the products that best suit you; so when you find something that works, stick to it and don’t feel tempted to change a winning formula.