There is a specific kind of maths that only some women know. If I wash my hair at 7am, it looks clean until about 4pm. If I skip one day, I cannot leave the house without a claw clip. Gym at 6? That decides when I shower. Working from home tomorrow? That is a no-wash day, obviously.
If you recognise that timetable, you have probably also heard every piece of advice that comes with it. Wash it less, they say. Your scalp will adjust. Just train it. You are stripping your natural oils. You are doing it wrong.
Here is the first thing this article will tell you, and it is not what the girls with thick hair say: you were right, and they were wrong. Washing your fine hair every day did not break it. Skipping washes was never going to retrain anything. Dermatologists have said this plainly for years.
But there is a second thing almost nobody tells you, and it explains why your hair is greasy again by dinner no matter which shampoo you buy. It has nothing to do with how often you wash. It has to do with where your scalp's oil actually goes after you do.
You have probably tried the Batiste in your bag, the clarifying shampoo on Thursdays, the expensive bottles and the cheap ones from Boots. Maybe you have stood in the shower reading the back of a bottle wondering if the problem, somehow, is you.
It is not. Here are the seven real reasons, in order.