Products grouped into various classes. The major classes are cleaners, conditioners, moisturizers, oils and stylers.
Cleaners are futher subdivided into shampoos and soaps. Co-washing sort of blurs the line between cleaner and conditioner, but most conditioners also contain surfactants. A surfactant is "A shortened form of "surface-active agent", a surfactant is a chemical that stabilizes mixtures of oil and water by reducing the surface tension at the interface between the oil and water molecules."
Non-curl friendly shampoo uses things like SLS, ALES, and other sulfates for surfactants. Detergents work by breaking the surface tension of the water and allowing them to carry away things like oil and dirt. You can see this in Dove shampoos for example. The "Frizz Control" formula -
Curl friendly shampoos use a variety of other surfactants. Usually these are derived in some form or fashion from coconuts. Occasionally, they come from other sources. They tend not to foam (lather) as well the sulfates, so they're not used as much. Cocamidopropyl Betaine (Coconut Derived), Sodium Coco-Sulfate (Coconut Derived), Decyl Glucoside (Sugar Derived), Polyquaternium-7 (Coconut Derived)
One of the more "green" and curl friendly solutions is to use "bar shampoos". These solid bars of shampoo are technically (chemicaly speaking) not shampoo but soap. Soaps, in the chemcial sense, are a bit different in that they work by having the soap molecule bind to oil or dirt and emulsify it so that it can be carried off. They tend not to bond to everything in sight, like SLS, which will actually strip protien out of your hair, so they're a lot gentler than "regular" shampoo.
Conditioners are classed according to "slip" or the slipperiness of the product in question. High quality conditioners like MOP Glisten, Miss Jessie's Creme De La Creme, Jessicurl's Too Shea are all classed as "high slip" conditioners because when applied to hair they really get things sliding around and work out the tangles. Drug store conditioners like White Rain,Dove, and even our much beloved Suave Naturals are are low slip conditioners because they just don't have the higher end ingredients required to get that "sea weedy" feel going.
Moisturizers are a very important class. This is NOT oils or any oil based products. Oils have their place in hair care but they are NOT moisture. I can't say that often or loud enough OIL <> MOISTURE.
Moisturizers are things that supply water to the hair. These fall into two major classes - water (in some form) and humectants. The first includes things like misting, aloe vera gel, etc. and the latter includes things like glycerin, honey, agave nectar, etc.
