How did they care for their long hair?
In pictures, Native Americans seem to have long and nearly perfect hair. Now, most of them today probably use modern styling products, but I notice that even the ones that live in remote areas also have long and nearly perfect hair.
The women of tribes that live in remote areas of Panama, Colombia, Brazil still have long and nearly perfect hair. Their hair is not frizzy, matted, tangled or even in dreadlocks. I’m not sure whether the ones that live in remote areas have access to modern hair products or not, and if they did they would need to use the products on a frequent basis in order to maintain.
Native American men also use to have long hair.
Hair actually does better if you don’t strip the oils out of it every day. Cecil Adams wrote in an article that the hair for most natural hair wigs is sourced from areas where people wash their hair less often. It’s from 1978, but it still seems to fit.
“Modern styling products” and frequency of shampooing is actually pretty damaging to hair. Frequent washing strips the oils out of hair and damages the shaft, which is what leads to split ends and frizz, which contribute to matting. Blow drying and curling irons contribute further damage.
“Primitive people” wash their hair less frequently. They don’t bleach, color, or perm their hair. They don’t use gels or mousse or other stuff in it. They do sometimes oil it, with real oil, which keeps it from drying out and frizzing. They comb it out, and frequently for daily wear keep it braided or otherwise confined while working, only letting it down and “perfect” for special occasions.
Indeed. There is this very fascinating book called How to Be A Victorian: A Dawn to Dusk Guide to Victorian Life that has a chapter about personal grooming, including hair. She explains that if you rarely wash your hair, then it is important to do daily brushing. (Women should be familiar with the “old sage advice” to brush your hair at least 100 strokes every day.) Brushing pulls the dirt out and also distributes the oils which makes the hair lustrous. As others pointed out, our daily shampooing habit dries out our hair, so if we stop doing that, the scalp overcompensates with excess oil for a week or so. Once things stabilize to a natural state, the hair/scalp doesn’t look greasy anymore.
(One of the reasons the book is so fascinating is that the author actually does the things she talks about (wearing the clothes, using the home-made products, doing the grooming and personal hygiene) and reports her first-hand experience.)
If I remember correctly, in the early 1900s, there was a lot of marketing in the US for hygiene products. Soaps, shampoos, etc. Before then, people didn’t use a lot of soap. They didn’t wash themselves as frequently as we do today. But soap companies changed our habits. People began to wash more of their body more frequently with more soap.
That’s not what I’ve gathered - “primitive” people frequently coloured their hair (often red with ochre) and I think the various stiffening agents listed in my cite count as “other stuff”. Or see the Himba in Namibia…
I’m not the one who first used the generic “primitive people”…
I have a cite (that itself cites 4 source books) that says different. Not just red ochre: “Bear grease was not used among tribes in the Southwest or California, but these Indians did other things to beautify their hair. Some blackened their hair with various recipes, painted their hair with red paint at the part or the ends, painted white horizontal stripes on their hair”
No, because I don’t always have time to pursue every detail in a thread down to the bitter end. There is this thing called “work” I have to go to every once in awhile to obtain money.
Also, you seem to care a lot more about this than I do.
Hey, great if you find all sorts of exceptions to the rule, but the people in the Americas were divided into hundred, if not thousands, of different cultures. I’m sure there are all sorts of “exception to the rule” cases among them.
It is obvious that for the vast majority of human history people got by with out shampoo (or even soap), But I do not think hair care was simply an issue of combing for folks with long hair.
I have long hair (part native so it is black and straight) and have done quite a few expedition type activities, often in winter where a snow ‘bath’ was the only option. Long hair gets very hard to manage and starts to tangle very easily as it gets more oily and the natural oils trap the dirt. I am pretty sure there was more to it than just combing.
We have likely lost many techniques that seemed too trivial to record before the advent of modern conveniences.
I personally haven’t used any shampoo or conditioner for several years. I just wash my hair daily with warm water in the shower. My hair has never been better. It looks good, doesn’t get oily, is manageable, no dandruff, and no, it doesn’t smell.
There’s a whole ‘no shampoo’ movement, just google it. Some people seem to use baking soda or apple cider vinegar, but I don’t think they’re necessary. Just warm water is fine.
When you first stop using shampoo, your hair may get a bit oily for a while, because your scalp is used to producing excessive oil, since the oil is always being washed off. After a few weeks it will settle down.
Might as well ask why my hair doesn’t get curls (no frizz, no matting; when I have it long, braiding it while still wet is enough to avoid tangles), or why the hair of black people is likely to have tiny ones. IOW, a big part is simply hair type.
Broomstick, this is GQ, where we strive for accuracy in our answers. If you are going to answer questions off the top of your head, it doesn’t behoove you to be snarky to posters who have provided cites that you didn’t bother to read. If you don’t have time to give accurate answers, then surely you don’t have time to give inaccurate answers either. And let’s refrain from personal remarks about other posters. No warning issued.
Were you braiding it? Keeping it braided or in a knot most of the time avoids a surprising amount of tangles, isn’t terribly complicated and it’s something which people with very-long hair used to do a lot. My grandma’s hair reached below her hips, as I found out the only time I saw it out of a knot, and she basically combed it out of custom (no tangles after the first combing).
After all it’s the same as with cables: those which are rolled up properly won’t go into those amazing tangles that the ones thrown together willy-nilly do. Or even a single cable by itself.
Spent the day with two Nepali girls in a middle of no where location near the Everest Base Camp. They seemed to spend the entire day brushing each others very long hair. Their place was far above the tree line at around 14,000 ft. so there was no wood to burn to heat water. The only way to heat water to wash their hair was to burn yak dung which was rather expensive. It was the middle of winter so they probably hadn’t washed their hair for months, but their hair looked great.
(Turned out the place was a brothel that serviced the local Sherpas carrying goods through the mountains, but how the hell was I supposed to know?)
