Stripping away the excess

There’s a shampoo my family uses that you can get only via network marketing . . . it’s called Monat—not gonna link to it, don’t “ask me how,” none of that is the point. The point is how their products clean and nourish your hair compared to what other shampoo does. (Man, there is no way this is not going to come off like I’m trying to sell the stuff. Trust me, there is a point that has nothing to do with how you can become independently wealthy selling shampoo.)

I’m going to put this in the most non-salesy way I can just to be painfully clear I’m not trying to sell anything.

According to the marketing narrative most shampoos and conditioners coat your hair with . . . something. Think of it like waxing your car or sealing your deck or putting fabric softener on your clothes or seasoning your cast iron skillet. You coat the main thing with an additional thing that makes it look and/or feel even nicer and smoother. The idea is, most shampoos do the same thing with your hair, creating an artificial barrier or coating around each hair that feels smooth and looks shiny but suffocates or starves your hair from getting anything it might need.

Basically, no matter what healthy hair-restorative nutrients you try to put in your hair, it’s never going to reach your actual hair; it’s just going to sit on top of the outer coating and rinse down your shower drain.

The shampoo I’m not trying to sell you claims to be a) full of hair-replenishing nutrients, b) able to strip away the artificial coating on your hair, and c) free of any elements that will artificially coat your hair. The claim is truly healthy, uncoated hair feels even softer, is more manageable, and looks so much better than what you’re used to.

Here is the two-pronged point, one prong which sounds salesy and the other one that most definitely does not: 1) this line of thinking makes you doubt what is really your hair and what is just chemical coating; 2) stripping away the chemical build-up on your hair can be absolutely nasty.

Please let me go on about the nastiness. Have you ever removed a particularly tenacious price-tag sticker or label from a new mirror or vase or plate? You try to peel it, and it tears apart in fragments. You use soap and water, and it gets all gummy and even stickier. You can’t use a razor blade or it will scratch up your nice new decor, so finally you break out rubbing alcohol or nail polish remover and slowly, in several rounds of stripping and cleaning remove all evidence of the gunk?

Yeah, that’s what using this shampoo is like for a lot of people when they first start using it. It can feel like you’re washing gum out of your hair, but not in one clump. It’s like the gum is distributed evenly across every single strand of your poor tortured locks. People who sell the shampoo call this “detox,” but I think it’s more like paint stripper. Either way, it’s not a fun thing, and that process will turn a lot of people off from using this new shampoo, especially because people often find that the coating on their hair was the only thing keeping it attached to their scalp in the first place. Many customers will notice an increase in shedding when they switch shampoos.

Ultimately, I’ve liked the change. I rarely put product in my hair anymore because my hair rests so much more naturally and manageably without all the gunk in it. I like how it feels, and I like how it makes me feel (sorry, I had to go into sales mode just for fun).

So what does that big long infomercial have to do with deconstructing? I think you might know all too well. The longer you spend in the church, the more you can start to wonder how much of the faith is really faith? How much of the benefit of being a Christian is just the advantage of belonging to a community? Or the benefit of belonging to the in-group? Or the privileges of power? How much is nostalgia? How much of believing is just the power of positivity?

Part of deconstruction is the need to know what is substantial and what is just cultural fluff. The other painful part of deconstruction is what happens when you strip the extraneous and superfluous away from what you believe and practice and how you associate with the group.

Some of the gunk is internal (you). Some is external (other people). And it’s really hard to know what’s what (skdfjsaodvaodfme). Sometimes you can’t see what’s going on in your life any better than you can see the microscopic goings on in your hair. Sometimes you have to deconstruct your own deconstruction.

The thing is, being a part of a community isn’t gunk. It’s not simple, but it’s pretty damn essential. Not gonna lie, a sense of belonging has been the hardest thing to replace or repair.

It wasn’t the stuff they were selling I miss at all . . . it’s the network that sold it to me.

Reaching out to your friends, coworkers, and family is how you grow your network—Share this post and share the love.