Your Curls Don’t Read Rule Books

We’re often told our shampoo bars aren’t “Curly Girl approved.”

Curiously, nobody seems to have told our curly-haired customers.

We get emails all the time from people with curly or wavy hair, and they tend to open the same way.

“I’d love to try your shampoo bars, but I’m following the Curly Girl Method…”

Then comes the problem. They’ve run our ingredients through one of the online Curly Girl checkers and discovered that our bars contain a lathering agent that isn’t on the approved list.

So, apparently, their curls aren’t allowed to use them.

There’s just one awkward little problem with this.

Our curly-haired customers keep telling us how much their curls love them.

So what’s going on?

Where the rule book came from

The Curly Girl Method began with a perfectly sensible idea.

Curly hair tends to be drier than straight hair. The natural oils from the scalp don’t travel as easily down all those bends and spirals, and vigorous washing, harsh shampoos and too much heat can make matters worse.

All perfectly reasonable.

If you haven’t come across it, here’s the short version… The Curly Girl Method comes from a 2001 book by the New York stylist Lorraine Massey, who had spent years watching curly hair being treated as though it were straight hair that had misbehaved. Her argument was that curls might do rather better with a routine of their own.

In practice, the method asks you to give up a fairly specific list of things. Sulphates, on the grounds that they strip the hair. Silicones, because they build up and then need sulphates to shift them. Drying alcohols. Heat styling, mostly. Brushing your curls when they’re dry. In their place comes co-washing, which means washing with conditioner instead of shampoo, leaving conditioner in rather than rinsing it out, and a set of techniques with names like squish to condish and plopping.

Much of that is sound. Then the internet did what the internet does, and the list became the method. Ingredient checkers appeared, which let you paste in a label and receive a verdict.

Where we part company is when good advice hardens into a rigid list of ingredients that curly hair supposedly must never encounter.

Particularly surfactants (lathering agents).

A lathering agent isn’t automatically a nasty ingredient. It’s simply something that helps water lift oil, dirt, sweat and product residue away from your hair and scalp. And there are a great many of them, ranging from extremely powerful cleansers (harsh Sodium Laureth Sulphate) to newly developed very mild ones used in the gentlest of shampoos, like ours. Putting them all in one basket marked “avoid” is a bit like refusing to eat anything containing salt.

We should be clear about our own, since they’re the reason we get the emails. The surfactant lathering agents in our Bee Smooth Shampoo for Curly or Frizzy Hair and Dry Scalp are coconut-derived, and they’re printed on the label in plain language, right alongside the rosehip, argan oils and the Leatherwood beeswax. We’ve never hidden them. We’d simply rather you judged them on what they do than on which list they appear on.

Dermatologists, for what it’s worth, still recommend washing curly hair. The American Academy of Dermatology suggests that thick, curly hair doesn’t need washing daily or even weekly, but should be washed at least every two to three weeks for the sake of both scalp and hair. It also points out that people who style with gels, oils, creams or pomades may want to reach for a clarifying shampoo now and then to shift the build-up.

So perhaps the question shouldn’t be:

“Does this shampoo contain a surfactant?”

Perhaps it should be:

“What does this shampoo actually do to my hair?”

So we asked the people who’d know

We could sit here in Tasmania and tell curly-haired women what their hair ought to like.

We’d rather not.

Instead, we went back through what our curly-haired customers have been telling us over the years.

There was rather a lot of it.

“I have the thickest, curliest hair around. 6 weeks of using the shampoo bar now and my hair has never been in better condition. Finally knot free!”

~ Elizabeth H.

Alison had already tried the eco-friendly route and given up on it. As she put it, none of the bars she’d tried had worked for her fine, wavy, curly hair, and ours was very much a last attempt before she went back to bottles.

“My purchase from B and the B was my last try… It does work for me!”

~ Alison O.

Then there’s the thing we hear more than anything else, and never quite expect: people tell us their curl comes back. Not that it’s tamed or flattened into submission, but that it turns up more clearly than it did before.

“I have curly hair so it’s always knotty, can’t actually believe how soft and defined my curls are now using these products, amaze balls!”

~ Vicky F.

“I gave the shampoo and conditioner bars a go and from the first wash onwards my hair felt so smooth and the curls returned. I couldn’t stop touching my hair!”

~ Arcadia L.

That’s the sort of thing that makes us pay attention.

So what would we actually reach for?

If your curls are misbehaving, here’s where we’d start. Not because it’s a system, and certainly not because it’s a rule book, but because these are the things our curly-haired customers keep coming back for.

Start with the shampoo. Bee Smooth Shampoo for Curly or Frizzy Hair and Dry Scalp is the one we’d hand you first. Rosehip and argan oils that sink straight into the hair shaft, cocoa butter, comfrey, and Tasmanian leatherwood honey and beeswax, all pH balanced to seal the cuticle and settle the frizzies. No greasy residue, and clean from the first wash.

Then a conditioner, and honestly, any of them. All four of ours suit curls, so it comes down to your scalp rather than your curl pattern. Honeycomb Conditioner For All Hair Types is the everyday one, deeply moisturising without weighing curls down, with nothing but the soft scent of honey. 

Honey Silk Fragrance Free Conditioner for Sensitive Scalp is the pick if your skin is easily upset, and it’s safe for coloured or permed hair. Tasmanian Real Beer Conditioner for Curly and Frizzy Hair is brimming with Tassie hops and rainforest honey, and we get particularly lovely feedback on it from curly and fine-haired folk. Voodoo Activated Charcoal Conditioner for Fine or Brassy Hair and Flaky Scalp adds volume and acts as a natural toner, which makes it the one for finer curls or coloured hair.

Here’s the part worth knowing: every one of them can be rinsed out or left in. A lot of our curly-haired customers land somewhere in between, rinsing most of it away and leaving just enough behind to keep the flyaways down and hold the curl. It’s worth playing with.

For definition, the Honey Mud Styling Cream Pomade. A soft-hold styling cream with a creamy fondant texture that defines curls and calms frizz and flyaways while it conditions, made with leatherwood honey, beeswax, jojoba, aloe vera and kaolin clay. No silicones or polymers to clog anything up, and a very little goes a very long way.

“I got my curls back! Soap shampoo and Pomade… Winner”

~ Jillian S.

And for build-up, the Apple Cider Vinegar Hair and Scalp Saviour Gel. This one comes into the shower with you. Massage it through, paying attention to the roots and scalp, leave it a few minutes, then rinse thoroughly. You can use it in place of your conditioner, after it, or just now and then when your hair starts feeling clogged up and flat. The hero is raw, unfiltered Tasmanian apple cider vinegar from Spreyton Apple Orchards, food grade and, yes, the sort we’re happy to eat. Its job is to shift the silicone residue commercial conditioners leave behind, along with hard-water build-up, and settle hair and scalp back to a sensible pH. It was named a finalist for Best Hair Serum/Tonic at the Clean + Conscious Awards 2025, which we were quietly chuffed about.

One honest caveat: it isn’t suitable for coloured hair. Blondes tell us it brightens things rather nicely, but if yours is dyed, give this one a miss.

Build-up, incidentally, is the thing that catches most people out when they switch. Wendy, who describes herself as a curly girl, put it better than we could.

“The first few times my hair seemed a bit dry, but I stuck to it and over time it has gotten more and more softer as the natural products strip the build up of commercial shampoos off my hair.”

~ Wendy L.

But here’s the bit that matters

Not every curly-haired person who tries our products has the same result.

And we wouldn’t expect them to.

We’ve had a customer who liked one of our conditioners but didn’t find it controlled her frizz as much as she’d hoped. Another loved how well Bee Smooth cleansed, but found that particular bar didn’t agree with her scalp, and moved to one of our other options.

That’s precisely the point.

Curly hair isn’t one hair type.

Fine loose waves aren’t the same as dense coils. Grey curls aren’t necessarily the same as young curls. One scalp is oily, another is dry and easily upset. One person uses styling products every day, another uses nothing at all.

Porosity, thickness, water quality, colouring, heat damage, climate and even how often you wash can all change what works.

So why would we expect one internet rule book to know your hair better than you do?

A useful starting point, not a religion

There’s plenty in the philosophy that makes sense. Be gentle with curly hair. Don’t strip it unnecessarily. Condition it properly. Ease off the heat. Pay attention to what leaves your curls soft, defined and manageable.

We’re completely on board with all of that.

We’re much less convinced by the idea that an ingredient checker can look at a formulation and pronounce it suitable or unsuitable for every curly head on earth, simply because a particular surfactant appears on the label.

A shampoo is a formulation, not a collection of ingredients acting independently.

What matters is how those ingredients are combined, how much of each is used, how the finished bar cleanses and conditions, and ultimately how your own hair responds to it.

Please don’t take our word for it

We’re not asking you to throw out your current routine and buy a bathroom full of full-sized products just to prove a point.

Try them first.

Our sample packs are an inexpensive way to try our shampoo and conditioner bars on your own hair before committing to full sizes.

“I tried the sample Honeycomb Bee Smooth shampoo for frizzy hair yesterday and I love it. Absolutely no itchy scalp at all and it helped my curls look more defined. Will definitely be buying a bigger bar of this.”

~ Dina B.

Because that’s really the whole point.

Don’t take our word for it. And don’t take an ingredient checker’s word for it either.

Give your hair a few washes. Experiment with how much conditioner you use, and try leaving just a little in if your curls want it.

Then see what happens.

Your particular combination of curls, scalp, porosity, thickness and styling habits is far more useful information than whether an ingredient receives a green tick on somebody else’s list.

Your hair gets the final vote

If you’re happily following the Curly Girl Method and your hair looks magnificent, we’re certainly not suggesting you stop.

If it works, it works.

But if you’re wrestling with frizz, build-up, heaviness, dryness or an ever-expanding collection of “approved” products, it might be worth giving your curls a little more freedom.

Start small. Try a sample. Wash your hair. Condition it. Let it dry.

Then look in the mirror.

Because after more than thirty years of making haircare and listening to the people who actually use it, we’ve come to favour a rather simpler test:

Are your curls happy?

If the answer is yes, we don’t think they particularly care whether somebody on the internet has approved the ingredients.