Product Review: Shea Moisture Deep Treatment Masque

I have upped my deep conditioning game and now instead of doing it when I remember, I make a point to do one every 7-10 days. I'm now all about the DCs and that's all I have been buying and trying recently. This masque was top of my list and I couldn't wait to use it.

Price:

This is one of the few products readily available locally and I bought it for KES 1,590/-. I thought this was quite a reasonable price seeing as it retails on Shea Moisture's website for $12.99 (or approximately KES 1,200/-) so factoring in overheads and profit, it is only a modest markup. It is quite dense so you can probably get three uses out of it, four or more if you mix it with other products so it is good value for money.

Appearance:

It is a very thick butter, cream in colour, with a mild/medium sweet scent that I can't quite put my finger on. It is water-based so it is moisturising and it has decent slip, although it can be a little sticky if you use too much, probably because of the glycerin.

Ingredients:

- Deionized water 

- Shea Butter

- Argan Oil

- Vegetable Glycerin

- Emulsifying Wax

- Sea Kelp Extract

- Panthenol (Vitamin B-5): 

- Essential Oil Blend

- Avacado Oil (that spelling mistake is on their website, lol)

- Honeysuckle and Japanese Honeysuckle Extract

- Tocopherol (Vitamin E)

- Hyssop Extract

- Sage and Horsetail Extract

- Soybean Oil

- Carrot Seed Oil

Nothing bad in there. In fact, pretty good EXCEPT that it has no conditioning agents. Yes, OK, it has Panthenol, which doubles as a humectant and moisturiser, but that's it really.

What It Says On The Tin:

Our all-natural intensive treatment deeply moisturises and repairs dry, damaged or over-processed hair. Perfect for transitioning chemically treated hair to natural.

How to: Apply generously to clean wet hair and leave in for 5 minutes or, for deep treatment, 30 minutes with moderate heat. (I'm paraphrasing)

My Experience:

1. Deep Conditioning

A friend of mine had already warned me that this product had no conditioning agents but when my mind is set on something, it's in one ear and out the other so I bought it anyway.

I first tried it straight out of the jar without mixing it with anything. I used it on wet, freshly shampooed hair, as directed. It had decent slip and went on easily and after leaving it on 30 minutes with my heat cap, I rinsed it off. My hair felt OK when it washed off, not noticeable softer though, and I towel dried, applied my leave-in, then Qhemet Burdock Root Butter over and finally sealed with my Mandarin Whip Butter. I two strand twisted it and let it dry... 

OMFG! My hair was Rock. Hard. It was so dry and hard that I had to read the ingredients again to see if I'd missed something my hair doesn't like. Nada. Someone suggested sea kelp as the culprit but I couldn't find anything on Dr. Google to corroborate this. 

A few weeks later, I tried it again, this time mixed with Tresemme Naturals conditioner, honey and avocado oil but I still got the same result. I then tried it on cowashed hair mixed with my homemade DC and the results were much better this time but I have to give my DC all the credit.

2. Twist Outs

People who had found this product didn't work as a DC suggested using it as a twist-out cream, which, quite frankly, doesn't make a jot of sense to me, I mean, if my hair is hard when I wash it off, won;t it be harder if I leave it on? But hey, I'm a blogger, I'll take a hit for the cause. I have to admit though that I was too afraid of having a head of hard-ass twistouts so I only tried it on one. I applied it to dry hair and it felt instantly moisturised. It felt nice going on but again a little sticky if I used too much. My hair dried crispy, but I partly blame this on the fact that I didn't use an oil over to seal in the moisture so I didn't really give it a fighting chance. If I'm feeling brave enough, I will try this again as part of my LCO (in place of my Qhemet) and update this review. 

Conclusion

I don't understand why this product went so left but there are lots of testimonials online from other naturals who experienced similar outcomes, reporting dry, brittle hair, so I know it's not just me. On top of that, I think it's a bit cheeky to call this a DC when it isn't, which is a shame really as Shea Moisture has quite a good reputation generally. Bottom line, it doesn't work for me and I definitely won't be buying it again.

Have you tried this masque? How did it work out for you? I'd be interested to hear of other people's experiences.