Cocoa Butter

Despite being around for thousands of years, many beauty consumers do not even know it exists, much less how many uses it has. After all, consumers probably feel more excited about using a product that feels like a luxurious spa experience rather than a cooking demonstration. Raw cocoa butter looks like an ingredient used to make chocolate fondue (partly because in a manner of speaking, it is). It is a stable fat rich in antioxidants and emollients and cheaply obtained in solid, unaltered form, making it a perfect option for beauty supply owners looking to cater to customers seeking more organic forms of moisturiser.

Cocoa butter (Photo credit: joana hard)

Cocoa butter comes from the same place that chocolate bars come from: the cacao bean. It is a byproduct of the chocolate-making process that could just as easily be combined with other ingredients to make white or milk chocolate. It was an empolyee of the Ghirardelli Chocolate factory that discovered that cocoa butter is what drips away when a bag of ground cacao beans is hung in a warm environment (the remaining product in the bag is turned into cocoa powder), a practice called the Broma process. When the dripping butter solidifies, it turns opaque pale yellow. At this point, the butter is considered pure and unrefined. If it is further processed by removing the colour and scent, it is considered refined; the colour and scent of the final product depends on how much refinement takes place.

Before  this discovery in 1865, the Mayans became aware of the power of the cacao bean, so much so that they even wrote the cacao tree into their creation story.  They drank it, ate it, gifted it and generally held it in very high regard. Cocoa butter as a cosmetic originatres in Africa, where it was used to keep skin moisturised, and it has been popular within the African-American community ever since.

In its raw, unrefined form, cocoa butter is a dry solid, not greasy at all, which helps with quick absorption into the skin. Many other moisturisers leave an oily film  that is supposed to be moisturising; cocoa butter‘s dry quality allows it to leave skin feeling fresh, light, yet still norished. It stays solid at room temperature but melts at body temperature, making it ideal as a solid moisturiser. For it to be spreadable within a lotion at room temperature, it must be combined, often in miniscule amounts, with other butters, oils and emulsifiers to create a finished product. In other words, if it comes in a pump the product likely contains a negligible amount of cocoa butter. Luckily, there are cocoa butter sticks available  that are hundred per cent pure cocoa butter and melt on contact with skin, making it very easy for application as a lip balm, eye moisturiser, spot treatment for hyperpigmentation and dry areas all over the body. Unfortunately pure cocoa butteris just too rich – and often pore-clogging – for most people to use on the face; only those with extremely dry skin should attempt to use the pure solid as an all-over facial moisturiser.

English: Roasted cocoa (cacao) beans (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of the reasons cocoa butter is so popular is because only those with sensitivities to chocolate or nuts have had allergic reactions to it. Every person is different, of course, but the likelihood of customers having a reaction to cocoa butter is extremely low, making it safe for most people to use. Soaps containing cocoa butter, depending on the specific formulation, have a slim chance of causing contact dermatitis or irritation, widening its appeal to those with even the most sensitive of skin, including babies and children.

It is impossible to talk about cocoa butter without talking about its inextricable connection to stretch marks and/or scars. Though it has been said for decades that cocoa butter helps fade scars, there are no solid scientific studies that definitively prove this. In fact, in a study done by American University of Beirut Medical Centre, there was no discernible difference between stretch marks treated with cocoa butter and with a placebo. Still many people swear it was cocoa butter that softened, if not all together eliminated, the appearance of their stretch marks. As with any pervasive beauty claim, take it with a grain of salt.

Still, cocoa butter has many other benefits that have nothing to do with making scars disappear. It is popular as a hair moisturiser for African-American women who seek a more natural way of adding oils to their hair without weighing it down, especially for women who are moving away from wigs and weaves towards growing out their own natural hair. Even for women with finer textured hair, it can be used as styling aid to keep hair in place, smooth down fly-aways, or as a deep-conditioning treatment. Hair products are easiest to work with in pomade or cream form, not solid. Therefore, be sure that cocoa butter is high up enough on the ingredient list that there will be noticeable results.

It is also very popular ingredients in hand and body lotions, body butters, eye creams, face moisturisers and many other topical moisturising creams. It even makes appearances in bath products; in its solid form, it melts in the hot water of the tub, surrounding the skin with soothing emollients when the skin is most receptive to absorbing moisture. Along with avoiding dry skin and hair, cocoa butter also serves as an excellent moisturiser for nails. Massaging cuticles with cocoa butter a few times a day is key to growing long, strong, hangnail-free nails. It is also an excellent base for a body scrub since it nourishes the skin while sloughing away dead skin cells.

HairToBeauty

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400 Years Without a Comb

Prior to the invasion of European in Africa, women of the Senegalese tribe five hundred years ago, had a tradition of spending time together after the days work was done. They would sit around AHIH to talk and comb each other’s hair. During this time, hair would be often times dyed red and then combed with a wooden comb. These wooden combs were primarily made by the tribe chief. Many times the family tree was engraved in them. Each comb was a symbol of that particular tribe and or clan. The combs were passed down generation to generation – father to son, mother to daughter. There is nothing more sacred than having your hair done by a family member. Usually this is a time to talk and relax. Like the wooden combs, the act of hair combing has been a tradition that is passed down from generation to generation – grandmother to mother, mother to daughter.

The indigenous people of Africa have always loved and honoured their hair, and assigned it great social, aesthetic and mystical powers. Hair grooming and the crafting of ceremonial or art objects made for (and from) hair was an integral part of family and spiritual life in thriving villages. But when the slave traders appeared, hair care rituals, aling with so many other sacred customs, were lost. As the people were kidnapped and taken away without even the clothes on their backs, they had to leave behind everything precious and familiar to them, including their highly revered hair care tools. For the next four hundred years, the people who would come to be known as African Americans struggled with their hair, deprived of their traditions, their tools and their dignity.

Slave owners discouraged the practice of African traditions. A slave found with an African pick comb could be severely punished. Many of the tools and the rituals managed to survive, and most of modern hairstyles and styling techniques can be traced back to early Africa.

Many years after slavery, there was pressure on for mothers to try to get their little girls’ hair to look as close to the white version of Barbie as possible. The most white they looked the more people would respect them. As a way of survival, many African women took  to the notion that straightening their hair was the only way to move up the corporate ladder and be accepted in society. Many of African American mothers and daughters moved completely away from traditional hair styles from their native lands.

The ‘denigration’ of natural African hair began with the idealisation of straight, smooth hair during slave times, a value perpetrated by the white upper class. In the book ‘400 Years Without a Comb,’ Dr. Willie Morrow, a historian, inventor and author who owns more than hundred hair-related patents, points out that modern tools such as straightening irons were not created by African people, but by white Europeans with curly hair who brought these tools to America. The curly-headed settlers wanted straight hair so that they would not be mistaken for having African blood in their ancestry.

While white people struggled to remove their kinks and curls, the slaves had no means at all of managing their hair, and resorted to covering it with scarves or tying it in rags. This was the ultimate degradation. This stripped away pride of self and culture.

“The hair is considered to be the most elevated point of the body, which means it is the closest to the divine. In Africa, they braided with coconut oil, and sometimes weaved in spanish moss from the trees or animal hair to give it lift,” Morrow explains. “Really big hair was important for wedding and special days. They took thread and wrapped the hair in small braids and brought the braids up to the top or back of the head to make a little basket-looking thing. Then they would cover the shorter hair with mud and draw designs of animals or other symbols, depending on the occasion.”