My hair.  Fine.  Wavy.  If it's humid,  it's crazy, frizzy, curly.  If it is dry,  it's flat and wavy.  Every day,  I just hope that I can get out the door without looking like a sheepdog.  Sheepdog with dreadlocks.  In other words,  I am always on a mission to find things that actually work with my hair.

Enter Deva Curl,  a line of products formulated to work with curly and wavy hair.  There are also Deva salons, and the Curly Girl workbook -- basically, an entire philosophy aka marketing machine devoted to the curl-friendly lifestyle.  Fine with me;  it's nice to see curly hair get some love.  Deva Curl products have no phosphates,  sulfates, or parabens,  and they are formulated to hydrate.  That's good, too: anyone with curls or waves knows that dry means more frizz.  I have had fairly good luck with several Deva Curl products (specifically,  One Condition and Be-Leave In).  Deva also makes a diffuser attachment that keeps my blow dryer from turning my head into a ball of fuzz.  So, when I began to run out of my old, non-Deva shampoo,  I thought I'd try the "No Poo" and see if it improved the frizzies.

"No" and "Low" Poo:  what this refers to is lather.  "Low poo" has minimal lather;  "No poo" creates zero lather. The Deva Curl line is that lather comes from detergents,  and detergents strip moisture from your hair.  The idea is that a shampoo without lather should help your hair retain even more moisture. 

My little bottle of No Poo came with a pretty green label which claimed that it would provide "maximum cleaning and hydration" without lather or sulfates,  and that it was gentle enough for daily use (some people with curly hair find that daily shampooing creates dryness and frizz).  No Poo is supposedly scented with peppermint and Turkish rose, but the fragrance is not overpowering and didn't remain on my hair after washing.   Among the ingredients listed on the label are glycerin, grape seed oil, wheat, oat and soy peptides,  and various extracts (balm mint, hops, lemongrass, rosemary, yarrow) and peppermint oil,  along with typical cosmetics stuff (cetyl alcohol, propylene glycol).  The consistency of No Poo is thick and creamy, so much so that it is difficult to distribute it through your hair.

The instructions said to do pretty much what you'd do with any shampoo:  wet hair thoroughly and apply to the scalp.   That part worked fine,  but when I tried to rinse it out,  it just wouldn't go.  My hair felt waxy.  Not conditioned,  but waxy.  Not a good feeling.  It's good that this stuff doesn't stink -- it's not coming out.

Day one:  I decide that waxy must be a good thing.  The Deva cult could not be wrong! So I conditioned and styled my hair as usual.  Big mistake.  The waxy residue was disastrous:  my hair lay flat against my scalp. No volume, no body.  It looked dirty.  And it wouldn't dry.  I got out my trusty Deva diffuser to try to boost it a bit,  with no luck.  What a mess.  It looked somewhat better after it dried,  but it did not look good. 

Day two:  I try again, thinking I must have just done it wrong on day one.  Hair again feels like wax.  This time, I had had enough --  I grabbed the almost-emtpy bottle of That Other Shampoo and rewashed. 

Maybe this is better for people with coarse hair.  All I can say is that No Poo didn't live up to its name for my fine and wavy hair.  If you want your hair to look like, um, Poo,  this is the stuff.  But honestly,  you'd probably do as well if you washed your hair with mayonnaise.  Or olive oil.  Or motor oil.  Or Poo. 

Recommended: No