Why does shampoo take up an entire aisle in the store? Shampoo is designed to cleanse hair, so it shouldn’t be a twelve step process to find one that works effectively at a good price. They don’t all have travel sizes so you can sample them, so the expense to find the right one can be daunting, and it shouldn’t be so.
Dish detergent comes in different scents, which can make the kitchen a more pleasant place to be when washing dirty dishes, and some of them even soften hands at the same time. They only take up half an aisle in the market. Hand soaps come in liquid or bar form, with a few foamy varieties thrown in, and they take up less space than shampoos.
Of course, the argument is that one’s hair is one’s crowning glory, so it has to look right. That involves styling, not what it’s cleaned with. So why are there so many products on the market?
I remember when shampoo was easy: kids had Johnson & Johnson, women had Clairol and men seemed to go for Head & Shoulders. Clairol came in formulas with a letter to designate dry hair, normal hair or oily hair. The letter was scrolled beautifully on a golden bottle. Then there was Prell, which always advertised that their formula was thick and rich, and a pearl dropped into the bottle would sink luxuriously at a slow pace. The bottles never even came with a fake pearl for experimentation, but nobody minded. The folks at Head & Shoulders made their product basic enough for manly hair, with no funny perfumes. Also, in those days, men wore suits and didn’t want to be concerned about dandruff, so that was their two-in-one solution.
Today we have formulas balanced for this problem, fortified for that problem and boosted to do something else. None of us go about our lives looking like the models in the commercials, no matter what we use.
The bottles are getting strange, too. Pantene has bottles in which the shampoo stands on its bottom as usual, but the conditioner (does anybody remember when we used “cream rinse?) stands on its head. The formulas come with terms like “Shine,” “Classic,” “Anti-Breakage” and “Daily Moisture Renewal.” They all cleanse hair, supposedly.
No matter what shampoo you use, the bottles all have the same problem: they slip out of your hands in the shower.
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