This weekend, one of my oldest, dearest friends got married. She wore purple and looked like Princess Jasmine. It was amazing! Also, it was black-tie, which meant some serious primping was in order.

Now, in preparation for said wedding, I found myself in humid Montreal at my parents’ house lacking certain key things: An appointment for a blowout, for one, undereye concealer, for two, as well as a hairdryer that actually dries hair and my Intelligent Nutrients Volumizing Spray—which is not itself a defrizzer, but plays one in the movie of my life.

Of course, I’d like to say I got crafty and went to the health-food store, bought a spray bottle and some aloe, mixed in a little sea salt and make an amazing spray for air-dried waves. But no.

Instead, I dragged my boyfriend to the closest Jean-Coutu and then spent a good 15 minutes reading the bottles and trying to pick the lesser of several evils.

There was a lot of crap, obviously, so this took some time. It was fun, in a perverse sort of way, reminding me of how before we wrote the book, Alexandra and I believed that looking good—whatever “good” means to you—meant putting your trust in mysterious potions at the drugstore and then hoping for the best.

Maybe it was the whole being-at-mom-and-dad’s-again thing but I did just that: I totally regressed. In the end, I bought a not-clean silicone-filled defrizzer (Frizz-Ease), a not-clean butane-and-silicone-packed volumizing dry shampoo (Klorane), and a not-clean silicone-filled undereye concealer (Cover Girl). I got a weird thrill out of it! I was genuinely curious and confused about what would happen next.

When my hair was sopping wet, I put in a tiny bit of the defrizzer, took one sniff of it and immediately started trying to wipe it off with a towel. Next, I blowdried halfway, things were looking frizzy and I started feeling desperate. “Can you plug in my iron?!” I called, panicked from the bathroom.

I decided to move on to makeup. I found the concealer liquidy in a bad way—it disappeared the second I put it on and was too yellow for my skin. I decided to wipe it all off and improvise with some clean mineral powder and Joy Juice instead. That worked well! Cover Girl was out. I continued to get dressed and was about to start ironing when lo! I looked in the mirror and my hair looked…kind of amazing?

Ugh. I’m sorry but it’s true. Silicone just works. Of course it’s not actually good for your hair, and when I used it regularly my hair looked like garbage when I airdried it—meaning there’s no temptation to keep this stuff in my caddy. As for the dry shampoo, I took one sniff of it on a napkin and threw the stuff away.

Sure, I’d be lying if I said my hair didn’t look perfectly unfrizzy all night and into the next day. But I’d also be lying if I left out the part where the hair stuff gave me a sweet rash on my upper back and chest.

Moral of the story: Conventionals are still, after all this time, crap. And the things I used were 0 for 3.

Have you cheated on your naturals recently with some good old-fashioned drugstore brands? Tell, tell.

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