OK, So...Maybe Not

I have been pretty much avoiding the use of Carol's Daughter's hair products. Mostly because of the reviews I've read on various websites. Everyone seems to universally agree that her products were better before she went "corporate" and had celebrity spokespersons. I can't say for sure, because I never tried them before Mary J. and Jada came into the picture.

My staple hair butter for the last 4 years has been Asha's The Mane Attraction. I like the smell and the consistency, and it always has given me great twist outs. The problem? I hate paying S & H. Hate it, hate it, hate it. But I just can't seem to find products locally that work for me the way MA does.

I was scraping the bottom of the last container of MA, and knew I needed to either buy more, or find a plan B. I love shea butter, but the combination of products in Asha's seem to work better for me and give better hold, than plain shea butter.

I decided to try Carol's Daughter's Health Hair Butter. The ingredients didn't seem too bad, although I was a little skeptical about the use of corn oil. Which apparently, she loves - because it's in a lot of her products. I just can't see me whipping out the Mazola corn oil and putting it on my hair. But, I have used olive oil and coconut oil, so I figured - what the heck.

Ingredients comparison:

Asha's The Mane Attraction - Herbal Complex, purified water, shea butter, cocoa butter, beeswax, and a proprietary essential oil blend that includes rosemary.

Seems pretty simple. The smell is herbal, but not too strong...and to me it can have a slight citrus scent to it, depending on the batch.

Carol's Daughter Healthy Hair butter - Water, Soybean oil, Corn oil, beeswax, shea butter, sweet almond oil, cocoa seed butter, jojoba seed oil, wheat germ oil, essential oils of Ylang-Ylang, patchouli, Bay and Cedarwood, fragrance, phenoxyethanol, xantham gum, potassium sorbate and absorbic acid.

OK...a little more going on here. Lots and lots of oils. My hair tends to do better with butters than with oils. But I figured I'd try it because it had shea butter and beeswax, similar to Asha's. The smell is very strong - I think mostly the patchouli and cedarwood. You won't like it if you generally like sweet things.

For those of you that don't know, ingredients are listed in order of their prevalence in the product. I was ok with those last few ingredients in CD's HHB, because they are at the bottom of the list, so there is probably not a lot of each. But, let's have a quick science break, anyway:

Phenoxyethanol = according to www.cosmeticsdatabase.com, this ingredient is a fragrance ingredient and preservative. It scored a 4 for "moderate" hazard.

Xantham gum = emulsifier, skin conditioning agent, and surfactant. Scored 0 on the health hazard scale.

Potassium sorbate = fragrance ingredient and preservative. Scored a 1 on the health hazard scale.

Asorbic acid = a sugar acid, it has antioxidant properties. Vitamin C is a form of asorbic acid.

My review on my use of CD's HHB:
At first, I loved it. It costs $16. Asha's is $15, but of course, there's the matter of shipping and handling. Both prices are for the 8 oz size, which lasts me a pretty good while.

The first time I used CD's HHB, I added a dab over hair that had not been washed...so it already had a little bit of Asha's in it. I put a slight bit of vatika frosting over it to try and mask the smell. When I took my twists out the next morning, they had very good definition and they held for most of the day. I was impressed!

I put some more in on Wednesday night. Small dabs with my finger tip, nothing major. Still had the definition on Thursday morning, although my hair felt heavier and more weighed down. I didn't think much of it. Serenity saw my hair and she said it looked good. I was feeling like I might have found a substitute. Thursday was one of my days to work out this week, so I knew that night I was going to wash my hair. Here's where it sort of went downhill.

I had just shampooed my hair earlier that week, so I did not want to use shampoo. I did a conditioner wash using HairVeda's Moist 24/7. I rinsed my hair really well before applying the conditioner. It felt sort of greasy and thick. Sort of like when you try to mix oil with water, initially. I had to rinse more than I normally would. I put the conditioner on my hair and let it sit while I washed up, shaved, etc. I then massaged my scalp well and tried to comb through the length, with the conditioner in. It was very hard to comb through. After I rinsed, I felt like I still had tons of the HHB in my hair. I've never had this issue with Mane Attraction. That night I was too tired to retwist my hair, so I put it in big flat twist sections, so I could wear an Afro the next day. But if I was going to rewist, I didn't need to add more HHB - it was still in my hair!

Conclusion? I'm not so keen on things that I have to constantly shampoo out of my hair. I did an ayurvedic paste last night with kalpi tone, shikakai, amla and brahmi powders, and I was worried that my hair wouldn't even feel the effects of the powder, because of the HHB. Because I only like to shampoo once per week, the simpler the product, the better. I will have to just suck it up and buy Asha's in bulk, so that I can save on the shipping. I paid my $16, so I will likely use up the HHB that I have, but I don't think I will be repurchasing. I really wanted to like this product, because I loved that I could go to Sephora and pick it up. But, a bunch of build up on my hair is going to cause more harm than good.

I'm going to give it one more try since I still have dang near a full container. I won't re-apply, I'll just spritz my water with hair when I re-twist, and we'll see if that solves the problem. Maybe this is one of those products that you only need to apply once per week.