geek!

[cos]

Often when I am visiting someone and use their shower, they say that I should use their soap but I don't think to ask which bottle, specifically, is their shampoo/soap. I don't think to ask because these things are labelled, right?

Except that many times when I'm looking for bottles that say "Shampoo" or "Soap", I instead find an assortment of bottles labelled "Body Wash", "Bath Gel", "Bath & Shower Cream", "Bubble Bath", "Herbal Treatment", and host of other names. Some of these are soaps, some are conditioners, and some are neither (moisturizers, scents, bubbling substances). There's a code. I don't know the code.

Instead, I recently noticed that what I almost absentmindedly just look at the ingredients. I haven't taken an organic chemistry class or test since the 90s, but I can still spot names of compounds that seem like something with a lipid (fatty) tail and a polar head of some sort. If one of the top few ingredients in one of these frilly-named bath products is one of those compounds, then I can use it as soap. I can't read the marketing code, but I can read enough of the chemistry code to find what I'm looking for.

Edit: Conditioners seem to have a lot of fatty alcohols. I don't know why that never threw me off. Maybe because conditioners are labelled "conditioner" so consistently, I got used to it.

Comments

[wendolen.livejournal.com]

I'm just amazed to see how many people actually put real soap on their actual skin every day!

... I'm a sufferer of eczema, so if I put that stuff on my skin, I'd dry up and blow away. I use shampoo on my hair, and friction+water on my body, and sometimes one of the bars of cocoa butter &c that they sell at Lush (with or without scratchy bits) to make sure I'm extra-greased. The shower gels I keep around, I keep because they smell really good. I usually make sure to grease especially well after using them. ;)

[feuervogel]

I can only use liquid soaps (body wash type things) because bar soap makes my skin very dry and itchy. Even the baby bar by Burt's Bees is too soapy for me.

[gayathri.livejournal.com]

I have eczema too, and use mostly dove if I'm going to use a 'soap', but when it gets bad (like right now in winter on Long Island, I am a fan of friction and water for most places.)

Cetaphil rocks tho. With or without water.

[electrictruffle.livejournal.com]

I just started using Cetaphil on my hands, because they really dry out. Cetyl alcohol plus some other stuff. I like it.

For cocoa butter: I love Mycryo, which is a powdered cocoa butter sold for confectionery work. Cheap by cosmetic standards, expensive by food standards, about $30 for 1.5 kilos of the stuff.

It is pure cocoa butter that they manage to grind up without destroying the temper, which is why they use it for confectionery...but the nice thing is that you can just sprinkle it on your skin and rub a bit. Lots easier to deal with than a big chunk of cocoa butter. Works great for massage.

-ETR

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, I have seborrhea, which is more or less the opposite of eczema. If I don't use actual soap on my face, I break out from clogged pores.

[tisiphone.livejournal.com]

I'm allergic to cocoa butter, so this strategy doesn't work for me :( Which stinks beyond belief, because I loved using Lush's cocoa butter whatever it was that looks like a giant pink cake.