I have a love/hate relationship with coconut. The love part is obvious: it smells like summer and beaches and tropical drinks and my favorite after sun lotion. The hate part is 11 years in the making: when I was 16 I had an unfortunate experience with Malibu Coconut Rum. To this day, I have never forgiven rum. Coconut and I, well, we are on frenemy terms.
Which is why I was hesitant when I kept seeing coconut oil hair treatments popping up everywhere. But the ladies of my various social media networks raved on and so on my last trip to Trader Joe's I grabbed a jar. Now, I have never cooked with coconut oil, but I frequently find myself mumbling "DAMMIT!" when trolling Pinterest recipes for dinner only to find that Coconut Oil is the only ingredient that we don't already have in the house. So I'm sure it will come in handy for other things, which is how I justified dropping the $5 bucks on some natural beauty remedy I wasn't sure I'd ever end up trying.
Flash forward only a few days (!) to Superbowl Sunday morning when I had tons of homework due and therefore an endless amount of free time to take care of "all the things I have to do before I can concentrate on school." (Life tip: if you really want to make it through your Pinterest To Do list, go to grad school).
If you have never opened a jar of coconut oil before, it may surprise you to find that it is a hard, seemingly dry substance that you have to warm up with your hands in order to get the oil. This took a little bit of fumbling and lot of coconut crumbs on the floor, so first make sure to protect the floor beneath you in case you're a spaz like me. I caught on quickly and started to use smaller pieces (much small than the chunk pictured above and more like the one below) to warm up in my hands, then rubbed the oil through my hair. All in all, I probably used 2-3 tablespoons of the stuff.
I spent a lot time focusing on my ends and made sure those were a bit more saturated than the rest of my hair. When I finished applying the oil, it appeared wet like in the picture above but actually felt kind of dry. I threw my hair in a top bun and then attempted homework for a couple of hours before taking a shower to wash it out and see the results.
I had to shampoo three times before it felt like it wasn't greasy and then my hair just felt really dry. Getting out of the shower and brushing my hair was even worse: the ends were all tangled and knotty. I put in leave-in conditioner just so I could brush it. As I combed it out, whether or not it was my imagination, it looked like I had all new split ends.
It's safe to say that my first coconut oil hair treatment was a complete failure... but I'm not giving up just yet. What did I do wrong? Have you ever tried putting coconut oil in your hair?
