A few days ago I was taking a shower and per tradition, I was reading the ingredient labels of all of my shower products. I’m not completely sure as to why I do this…curiosity maybe? It’s a nice pass time while I’m waiting for my conditioner to soak in.

Anyways, I’m reading the label of my conditioner bottle and boy did I have a what the fuck moment. I guess I should preface this story with the fact that I use a fancy conditioner that is for salon use only (my mom has connections and I just love how it smells and I my hair is delicate I promise I am not pretentious and I don’t know just roll with it).
So among the list of ingredients is HUMAN HAIR PROTEIN.
My mind instantly goes to the “Fight Club” soap fiasco. After I showered I had to research this suspicious human hair protein and what it was doing in my conditioner. This protein is more commonly referred to as L-cysteine protein and while it serves as nutrition for strengthening hair, it is also used in products far beyond the beauty realm. An article I found on a website called Natural News by Mike Adams made this horrifying statement, “The hair is dissolved in acid and L-cysteine is isolated through a chemical process, then packaged and shipped off to commercial bread producers. Besides human hair, other sources of L-cysteine include chicken feathers, duck feathers, cow horns and petroleum byproducts. Most of the hair used to make L-cysteine is gathered from the floors of barbershops and hair salons in China, by the way.” 

What the fuck. What the fuck. What the fuck. How have I found myself in palm of consumerist culture, paying for overpriced barbershop scraps?

I challenge you to take a minute to read an research some of the  ingredients on the back of one of your favorite products. Especially in the case of an ingredient you cannot pronounce, I’m fairly positive that you will have similarly alarming findings.