Why My New Relaxed Hair Regimen Won’t Include SheaMoisture

SheaMoisture has been a part of my healthy relaxed hair journey since close to the beginning. Admittedly we did have a rough start but over time it started to get along with my hair. I’ve used and shared several SheaMoisture shampoos and deep conditioners over the years that my hair has really, really liked and a few that my hair hasn’t. Even during those down times, I didn’t think it would come to this. I didn’t think that I would feel the need to break up.

So what is leading to this break up? It’s something that’s been building for a little while so it’s not one thing but really a multitude of things.

I know I’m not alone with breaking up with SheaMoisture. In fact, there have been calls on Twitter for a while now to cancel SheaMoisture for various reasons which I’ll talk about but I’m not really going that far. My reasons for breaking up with SheaMoisture are more personal.

So why have people been canceling SheaMoisture?

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There have been a few reasons over the years. Back in 2017 SheaMoisture released a commercial that caused some backlash because a black-owned brand for black hair featured several white women and only one black woman who was more on the lighter side.

Then later that year people have said that they “sold out” when they sold themselves to Unilever.

It seemed that after a while people got over or forgot about those two instances and had moved on. Then something that had surfaced in what looks like 2015 per some google searches I did has resurfaced. It seemed that SheaMoisture formulas had changed.

People were calling SheaMoisture out saying existing products were different and something in the formulas seemed to have changed. SheaMoisture said nothing changed they just created new product lines.

Apparently, SheaMoisture wanted to make their hair products that were originally for textured hair to also work for non-textured hair. So essentially they want white people to be able to use their products too. So for their new products they moved shea butter down a few places on the ingredient list.

Why is this significant? The higher a product is on the ingredient list the more concentrated the ingredient is and the more of it is in the product. Shea butter was one of the top three ingredients for many if not all of SheaMoisture’s hair products. Now it’s moved down to number five or more. In this tweet, The Sweetest T shows how in one product she uses shea butter went from being the third ingredient to the fifteenth.

Shea butter is a great product for textured hair because of it’s moisturizing and conditioning properties. So if this was done for existing products, having less shea butter would mean the product isn’t as moisturizing and conditioning as it had been.

This didn’t impact me as much because I was using mostly newer SheaMoisture products that were created under the newer formula so I didn’t notice a difference.

While all of the above is bad and did give me a bit of pause, the products I was using were working for my hair so I kept on my relationship with SheaMoisture.

In fact, the relationship grew when I became a Sheabassador and was getting several full-size products from them to test out and share with my followers. Unfortunately, that’s where things started to go off the rails.

Most of the products I received were new products that SheaMoisture was or had just released. Some of them were older products that SheaMoisture was most likely trying to re-introduce people to. What I didn’t realize, but should have, is most of those products had protein ingredients.

So after using those products several times along with other SheaMoisture products I was already using that had protein ingredients as well, I was putting way too much protein on my hair. Even though I had high porosity hair that liked protein my hair couldn’t take this much. I now had protein overload and my hair started breaking. You see all about my hair setback from protein overload in this video.

While SheaMoisture products played a large role in giving my hair protein overload they also were helping my hair recover. I started using products from the SheaMoisture low porosity line and other products that were protein-free and they helped my hair to soften up and shed the extra protein.

Due to the protein overload, my hair regimen needed to change and several of the SheaMoisture products that helped me get over protein overload were part of the new regimen I was building. And then I found out that several of those products were being discontinued by SheaMoisture.

Not only is SheaMoisture discontinuing the products I was planning to have a part of my new hair regimen, but others as well. Here are the product lines being discontinued that I could find (there are also skincare products as well but they aren’t listed)

• Argan Oil & Almond Milk Smooth & Tame product line which included a shampoo, treatment masque, conditioner, blow out cream and hair milk.

• Fruit Fusion Coconut Water product line which looks like it included shampoo, hair masque, styling mousse.

• Peace Rose Oil product line. This included a shampoo, conditioner, and leave-in conditioner. I loved the shampoo and would have liked it to be part of my new hair regimen.

• The low Porosity product line which included a shampoo, conditioner and leave-in conditioner. I was planning for the shampoo to be part of my new hair regimen.

• SuperFruit Complex product line. Some of the products in this line were shampoo, conditioner, frizz-taming smoothie, and leave-in conditioner.

• The medicated African Black Soap line which helped people with eczema and psoriasis and had a shampoo and conditioner.

• Raw Shea Cupuacu product line. Some products included in this line were shampoo, conditioner, hair masque, and gel cream.

There may be more but these are the ones that I could find SheaMoisture recognizing as being discontinued in the customer service section of their site.

For me, this is the last straw. So many of the hair products I use and like are going away meaning I’ll be back to square one when I run out of what I have. And if I decide to replace the discontinued products I’m using with other SheaMoisture products that they won’t discontinue those.

No, I think it’s best that at this point SheaMoisture and I part ways. particularly where my hair is concerned. I don’t have the time nor is it good for my hair to constantly be searching for and testing new hair products to replace ones that are going away.

There are some SheaMoisture skincare products I’m using but knowing that they’re discontinuing skincare products as well I’ll probably need to make sure I find alternatives for those as well.

So I’ll continue to use the SheaMoisture hair products I have until they’ve been all used up and then work to find replacements from other brands that have more stable product lines.