How Soap Went Wrong (And How to Find the Real Thing)
That bar in your shower probably isn't soap.
Pick up the packaging. Read it carefully. Chances are it says "beauty bar" or "cleansing bar" or "moisturizing bar." Not soap. There's a reason for that. The FDA has a legal definition of soap, and most of what fills drugstore shelves doesn't meet it. What you've been rubbing on your skin every morning is, technically, a synthetic detergent shaped like a bar.
This wasn't always the case. Soap used to be one of the simplest things humans made.
A Very Short History of a Very Simple Thing
The chemistry of soap hasn't changed in thousands of years. You mix fat with an alkali (ancient people used wood ash; we use sodium hydroxide). A chemical reaction called saponification happens. You get soap and glycerin. That's it. The Babylonians figured this out around 2800 BC. The basic recipe carried through Roman bathhouses, medieval European soap guilds, colonial America, and all the way into the early twentieth century.
For most of human history, if you wanted soap, someone in your community made it. Your grandmother might have done it in her kitchen. Emily's grandmother did.
Then two things happened, almost simultaneously, and soap was never the same.
What Changed
World War II created a shortage of animal fats and vegetable oils traditionally used in soap. Chemical companies, already producing synthetic surfactants for industrial use, saw an opening. They could make something that acted like soap using petroleum-derived ingredients. It was cheaper to produce, didn't require natural fats, and could be manufactured at enormous scale.
By 1957, Lever Brothers launched Dove as a "beauty bar," not a soap. That distinction wasn't modesty. It was legal precision. Dove couldn't call itself soap because it wasn't. It was a synthetic detergent bar, and the company knew it.
The rest of the industry followed. Why wouldn't they? Synthetic bars were cheaper to make, had longer shelf lives, and didn't require the slow curing time that real soap demands. There was another bonus, too. When you make real soap through saponification, glycerin forms as a natural byproduct. Glycerin is a humectant; it draws moisture to your skin. Commercial manufacturers figured out they could extract the glycerin, sell it separately to lotion and cosmetic companies, and leave you with a bar stripped of its most skin-friendly component.
Think about that business model for a second. Sell you a bar that dries your skin out. Then sell you a lotion to fix the dryness the bar caused.
How to Tell the Difference
| Real Soap (Cold Process) | Synthetic Detergent Bars |
|---|---|
| Made from saponified oils (olive, coconut, palm, shea butter) | Made from synthetic surfactants (sodium cocoyl isethionate, sodium lauroyl isethionate) |
| Glycerin retained naturally in the bar | Glycerin removed and sold separately |
| Can legally be called "soap" | Called "beauty bar," "cleansing bar," or "body bar" |
| Ingredient list you can actually read | Ingredient list that requires a chemistry degree |
| Needs 4-6 weeks to cure | Produced in hours on a factory line |
The label tells you everything. If it doesn't say "soap," it isn't.
"People come into the shop and tell me our soap doesn't dry out their skin. I have to explain that it's not because we added something special. It's because we didn't take anything away. The glycerin is still in there. That's what real soap does when you leave it alone."
-- Emily Whitlock, Founder & Formulator
What We Do (And Why It Takes Six Weeks)
Every bar we make at Em'z Blendz is cold-process soap. Saponified oils of olive, coconut, sustainably sourced palm, and organic shea butter. The glycerin stays in the bar where it belongs. We superfat our formulas, which means we leave extra oil in the recipe on purpose so your skin gets conditioning, not stripping.
The trade-off is time. Cold-process soap needs four to six weeks of curing. The saponification reaction has to complete, the water has to evaporate, the bar has to harden. There is no shortcut. We make every batch by hand in our Medford studio, and we've been doing it this way since 1998. Not because it's trendy. Because it works.
Our Oatmeal, Milk & Honey Soap has had the same formula for over twenty years. Saponified oils, goat milk, oats, honey, shea butter, phthalate-free fragrance. You can read every ingredient and know what it is. We think that should be normal, not notable. But here we are.
The Point Isn't Purity. It's Honesty.
We're not going to tell you that synthetic detergent bars are poison. They're not. Plenty of people use them every day and their skin is fine. What we will tell you is that you should know what you're buying. If a company won't put the word "soap" on the label, there's a reason. If the ingredient list reads like a chemical supply catalog, that's worth noticing.
Soap is one of the oldest and simplest things we make. It doesn't need to be complicated. Fat, alkali, time. The recipe that worked for the Babylonians still works today. We know because we use it every single day, right here behind the golden curtains in a 135-year-old building in downtown Medford.
Next time you're in the shower, flip the bar over. Read the back. You might be surprised by what you find. Or don't find.
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