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Dirty Secrets The Beauty Industry Doesnt Want You To Know · We Are Spiraling

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_05: This is Priya Anand, and we are spiraling.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_05: In this show, we talk about curly hair to learn more about our culture.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_05: From our personal identity to how the world sees us.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_05: I haven't quite introduced myself since episode one, and so many of you have joined us since then.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_05: Almost two years ago, I quit my job reporting on Silicon Valley to investigate curly hair.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_05: This show is the kind of thing I've always wanted to listen to, and I'm obsessed with curly hair and see it as a window into who we are.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_05: I don't want anyone to feel like they have to be secretly curly.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_05: If you're wondering what I mean, go check out episode two.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_05: It's one of our most popular.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_05: And I'm building a hair care line to make the kinds of products I've always wanted for myself.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_05: Nourishing, effective, a great experience to use.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_05: Meaning simple, no longer routines, and beautiful.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_05: It's called Myra.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_05: That's Sanskrit for Peacock.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_05: Peacocks are distinctive and captivating, and I believe curly hair is too.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_05: Starting Mayura has been my biggest investigation to date, and I promise to take you on that journey with me.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_05: And many of you have asked for updates, so that's what this episode is about.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_05: Building a hair care line involves a lot of moving pieces.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_05: Formulating, designing the brand and packaging, shipping, logistics, distribution.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_05: Of course, costs down to the cent, but the center of it all is a good product.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_05: I'm customer number one.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_05: I want my stuff to be good because I want to use good stuff.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_05: It's why I changed my whole life in the last two years.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_05: Every investigation starts with a question.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_05: Today's is how do you make a good hair care formula?
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_05: Like everything in life, you need to know what you want out of something to be able to assess whether or not it's good.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_05: So we have a handy checklist.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_05: Clean ingredients that are nourishing for your hair.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_05: That's baseline.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_05: Next, effective.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_05: And effective should also be baseline, but disappointingly, I have not found it to be the case with many products I've tried, and a lot of you have told me that you feel the same way.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_05: Third, buildable.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_05: Curly hair is a vast genre, and I'm hoping we can meet people who are wavy where they are, those who have a more coily texture where they are, and everything in the middle.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_05: This third criteria is certainly going to be the most challenging to achieve.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_05: This episode takes you with me as I investigate how to make a good product while designing my Euros first or hair oil elixir with my chemist team.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_03: I always compare formulating to food because it truly is cooking.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_03: You can give someone the same ingredient list and it could be a completely different dish.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_05: That's Jane Sweet.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_05: She goes by Jane the Chemist on TikTok and Instagram, where she breaks down the science behind skincare and hair care products.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_05: Her video about Costco skincare finds has more than a million views.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_05: And Jane's recipe analogy really stuck with me because I love cooking.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_05: And anyone who's tried to recreate a family recipe knows it never tastes quite the same.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_03: Two products can have the same ingredient list, but be so different in terms of texture and performance.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_05: One of the values I have is buildability and layerability for certain products that I'm developing, right?
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_03: I've had multiple people come to me with the same question of like, I can't find something that really works for my curly hair.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's either too stripping, too, you know, heavy.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_05: Hearing that is validating.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_05: It's not just me.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_05: Other people also feel like products are either too little or too much.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_05: They fail to be buildable.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_05: And that means they're also not effective.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_05: And then Jane clues me in on something that makes me want to scream.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_05: She says most brands test their products on straight hair.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_03: Curly hair tresses are harder to source than straight hair tresses.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_03: Like there's an abundant amount of straight hair tresses.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_03: We're not getting like the super curly hair tresses, either because, you know, not as many people donate curly hair to testing facilities, or, you know, we're just not looking in the right places.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_03: I know it's more expensive to source curly hair for sure, because there's just an abundance of straight hair in the market.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_03: I think the curly hair space was just not steadied enough, or just it was unfamiliar, uncharted territory where we didn't know how to approach it.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_03: This is truly maddening.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_05: I also interviewed Franz Wortman, who's published many research papers about curly hair in episode one, and he told me that much of the research about curly hair actually focuses on how to straighten it without damaging hair as much as the current chemical and heat processes do when you straighten.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_05: And by the way, Franz and his wife do much of their research together.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_05: She has curly hair and she straightens it.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_05: So, yes, some of the premiere researchers who study curly hair are, number one, highly focused on how to straighten it.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_05: And number two, straighten their own hair.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_05: I don't mean to rant, but this is why I made this show.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_05: It's why I'm making my ura for my curlies and wavies by a fellow curly.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_05: This is about us and for us.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_05: I feel like everything I learn on this journey is only reinforcing my conviction and how much this mission matters to me.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_03: To know your demographic in your community and really lean into it and design a product for them.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_03: Because I feel like, you know, there are certain communities of hair types that just don't feel seen or heard or represented in the hair care space.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_03: And if you walk into a Sephora, you walk into Ulta, it's like very apparent with before and after pictures or like who they're testing on.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_05: I take Jane's input to heart.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_05: After all, I start by testing every product myself for weeks and sometimes months before even distributing to my curly friends, acquaintances, former colleagues, people I meet in restaurant bathrooms, and get their number so I can bring them a sample.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_05: If you'd like to be a sample tester, sign up on our wait list at myurabeauty.com and DM us on social media.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_05: Our handle is we are spiraling everywhere.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_05: The investigation continues.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_05: Next, I'm calling up Dr.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_05: Julian Sass.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_05: He's a cosmetic chemist who has called out wire cutter, owned by the New York Times, for claiming that their favorite sunscreen didn't leave a white cast.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_05: He tried it and he posted a video looking like Casper and noting that their review made absolutely no sense.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_05: So I know Julian's gonna be honest with me about what he thinks most people get wrong when they try to formulate new products.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_05: Dr.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_05: Julian Sass, firstly, thank you for doing this interview in your lab.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_05: So what's behind you?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_05: I see so many products.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: Oh gosh, yeah, there's a lot of ingredients behind me.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I feel back is behind right behind me is all of my boring stuff, like my preservatives and antioxidants, like right out of frame.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like I have a bunch of actives over here.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: All my hair care products are all over here.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm dealing with a lot of things right now.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_05: Working with an RD team and a formulation team on this stuff, and I am constantly reading, learning, catching up.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_05: I've been doing so much research and trying to figure out what is good for curly hair, what is not good for curly hair, kind of like fact-checking a lot of my assumptions and my learned lived experience as a person with curly hair on this earth.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_05: And the other piece, which is like a lot of marketing stuff is bullshit.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_05: And I don't want to be marketing to be bullshit.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_05: It's true, you know?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like there, there's so much misinformation that happens about beauty in general, but simply about hair.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: Because I feel like people have a really strong connection to hair, and it is really easy to convince people.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's just like, hey, by the way, your hair isn't behaving like you want it to.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: This ingredient, that's why.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: But instead, buy this product, and this is what's gonna really solve your solutions, and then you try it, and then you know, you're still having the same issues with hair.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a really complicated space to be in without question.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_05: Like food labels, ingredients on a product are listed from highest concentration to lowest.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_05: I tell Julian, my biggest great.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_05: Sometimes I'm reading ingredient lists for products, and I notice that the highlighted ingredients that they're marketing are like literally last ingredient in the ingredient list, which means it's all at the bottom.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, barely, like in some cases, is that even enough to make a difference?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: It depends.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: It depends.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: I it's so many of these questions I know are gonna be, well, sometimes maybe.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: If you think about some ingredients, like let's say, like different kinds of oils, for example, for the hair.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, there are brands who kind of have built an entire product line out of putting like 0.001% of this oil in their product, you haven't on the ingredients.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, oh wow, we have a whole line based on this specific plant oil because it's a good story for the product.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: But is it really doing a lot for your hair?
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe not.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's now on your ingredient list and just call it a day.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_05: Like I said to Julian at the start, a lot of BS.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_05: Now, to be sure, there are certain ingredients that are very active and potent at small levels.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_05: So it isn't a hard and fast rule that if something is at the end of an ingredient list, it's only there in amounts that don't make a difference.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_05: To bring it back to our cooking analogy, just one Thai chili can do a lot when you throw it into a pot.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_05: Totally transforms a dish.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_05: But here's my promise to you: if I'm making something, whether it's a Myura product or an episode of a show, there will be a reason for it and there will be intention behind every element.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of brands a lot of products are kind of developed in isolation from each other and not so much as a system.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: Something that I think about a lot of times when I'm working on products is okay, for the person who's using this product, what are they using it with?
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: What is the like cultural component?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: But it takes time and effort and actual intention both for the formulators but also for the brand as well, because the chemists only know what the brand tells them to do.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why kind of knowing your consumer is so important, especially with things that have a really big culture component, like with hair, like with makeup, is thinking about okay, the people who are gonna be using this product, what are their routines look like?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: What are they gonna be using this for?
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think that a lot of people just think they're like, oh, hair is hair, hair is not just hair, like you get so much different performance in like of just the same product but on different hair types with something like this.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that I like to do is you know, is having a model like this.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, where?
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're only listening to this, this is a like head of hair.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's a mannequin head, but if you can see here how it's divided into four different quadrants, and each quadrant has eight different hair types.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: So what we're able to do is actually take our product and put them on either something like this or on actual hairdresses, and see, okay, how is this performing on different hair types?
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_04: So it is very cool that you have that, but also does this thing give you nightmares?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it stays underneath my lab bench.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like I can't keep this like out because it's absolutely horrifying.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_04: It is a little bit creepy, and I'm not gonna lie, if I had to look at that every day, it would definitely like start populating my dreams and turn them into nightmares.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_05: My conversations with Julian and Jane deepen my conviction and what I want my era to stand for.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_05: I've been testing the hair oil myself for months with rounds of tweaks with my lead chemist Julie.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_05: I call her to catch up.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: Your product is 100% natural.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: And so automatically you're in like a different category, a different field.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_02: It really upset me when I see people on the market where like you don't understand.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: There are 20 ingredients and an oil.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: Most of them aren't oil.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: Most of them are nothing natural.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: You see an oil like toward the middle of the high-end ingredient is sometimes like a very loft ingredient.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_02: And a thing that has 30 different things in it, so you know that there's like trace.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_02: People make an entire brand off one ingredient and it's in at 0.0001%.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's all a lot of it is marketing.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_02: But there are brands that are trying to really make efficacious products, and no matter like the cost and how much that's gonna be, they kind of build their brand about actually having good ingredients in there.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's what you want to do.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: I really want to make sure things are in at efficacious levels, and that I'm not, you know.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_02: I I see those ingredient lists sometimes where it's like, oh, there's this highlighted ingredient, and then I look at the bottle and it's the last thing, and it always makes me wonder how much is actually in here that's actually doing anything.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I feel that's so kind of disingenuous, and maybe I'm too much of like a heart forward person on these things, but I I want to believe in in this, and if I can't believe in it and use it every single day with great joy.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: I really believe in in that being very real.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_02: I also I like to formulate that way too.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: I hate doing small percentages just for marketing.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: Cause it also gets us in a pinch where we might have a lot of excess material on hand.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: And so a lot of like my coworkers here, they like to joke that I write really good formulas because I'm choosing things at efficacious levels.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: When in reality, it's like, no, everybody should be good with myths.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: Like, it's not like a wish list.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: It should be like a required.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_05: Knowing that my partners in designing these formulas share my product values is everything.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_05: Business is, like the rest of life, about the people.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_05: I find our hair oil so absorbable, and I've watched and felt it improve my curls over time.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_05: It absorbs fast, unlike any other oil I've used, and the smell, all from botanicals, no artificial fragrance, no perfume, is floral but also earthy for a delicate balance.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_05: I can experience it while applying the oil, but it doesn't linger for too long after that.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_05: We should all be able to wear whatever perfume we want without worrying our products all during the scent.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_05: So it's time to start distributing to other testers, which is a scary moment because I've spent months just creating this myself and trying to get it right.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_05: So now it's game time.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_05: After all, I need to know what other people think.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_05: Everyone's hair is different.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, I'm gonna go downstairs.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_05: Um, my neighbor Maya has curly hair and offered to test my product when I mentioned it.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_05: So I'm super excited.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_05: Let's go see if Maya is home.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_05: Gotta get my keys.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_04: Hi.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_04: Hi, I brought you a product to try.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_05: Here you go.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_05: So nice.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you so much for being willing to try this.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so excited.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: I can't wait.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, do you have a timeline?
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Or no?
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, I would love that we could try it this week sometime and keep me posted on how it's going.
• 16:05
  unknown: Okay.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_05: It's two weeks later, and I get a text from Maya with a voice note.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_05: Maya is one of the very first people outside of me to test product because we're neighbors.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_05: So I didn't have to go to the post office and send the hair oil in the mail.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, my name is Maya, and I just tried the hair oil.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: I washed my hair with shampoo and conditioner and just applied some uh leave-in conditioner and then a very light jelly gel and let it air dry.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: And once it was dried, I came with the oil and applied.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: So at first, when I put the oil in my hand, I felt it a little bit more greasy and oily than some other oils that I've used in the past.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I was wondering how that would feel on the hair.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then as I kind of kept applying on the hair, I realized that it's actually really lightweight, different than I thought it would be, which I personally love.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Usually I try to avoid any hair oils that will look too heavy or like weight on the hair, add weight on the hair, and this one does not feel like that.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: I kind of like keep flipping my hair to one side to the other because I really like the the way like it still moves nicely and softly.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I actually applied it like maybe three times on the hand, probably like a heavy hand on it, to see if it would get too heavy, and it doesn't, and absorbs fast too.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's not hard to observe.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: And looking at my hair right now, it looks very nourished and uh hydrated.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: My curls look really shiny and hydrated, which I love.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: I had some leftover highlights from last year, and I feel like the oil gave them a little pop of shine, which I like.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_05: I didn't expect Maya to use some of the same words that I've been trying to bake into how this product works myself.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_05: Buildable, nourishing.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_05: It gave me the validation I needed to go door to salons with little salsa containers of hair oil.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_05: Just enough for stylists to try it out a handful of times for feedback.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_05: In a future episode, I'll share how we got from little tester bottles to a final formula and what went wrong along the way because so many things have gone wrong.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_05: I can't even tell you.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_05: I'm really excited for our next episode.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_05: It answers another listener question we've gotten from at least a handful of people in the last few months.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_05: By the way, I told you last time that this would be the last episode of this season, and in a way it is because we're done doing seasons.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_05: We're spiraling will always be here, and we're finding ways to be in your feed even more regularly.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_05: Your support at any level is what keeps us going, and it means everything to me.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_05: So, one last but important ask.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_05: I make We're spiraling out of my savings because I genuinely believe this conversation needs to exist.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_05: Why ancient Greek and Roman statues have curly hair, why so many people are secretly curly, the real reason you don't see curls on screen in Hollywood, what it means to be a comedian with curly hair and use your hair as a tool in your performance.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_05: This show will always be free to listen to.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_05: But if you want to go deeper, more behind the scenes on Helm Building This and Myura, the stuff that we don't publish on the main feed, there's a page tier for our newsletter on Substack, and it would help support the show.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_05: We are Spiraling is produced by Citizens of Sound and hosted by Myura.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_05: You can find the Mayura wait list at MayuraBeauty.com.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_05: That's M-A-Y-U-R-A-Beauty.com and in the show notes.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_05: Theme music by Laughlin.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_05: Talk to you soon.