Some lady did a tweet about what women who do every possible upkeep thing are spending. She qualified it (location, no hippies) and never said it was what all women did. But what a clever post it was, because it snuck in a prompt tweet without announcing one.
You read this post and, if you’re a woman, you make a determination. This seems too high, no, too low! But here’s the catch:
Anything you say publicly about what you make of the costs mentioned is an announcement. It tells the world that you do, have done, or have contemplated the grooming ritual in question. If you’re someone who only ever gets haircuts, I’m sure you genuinely don’t know what it costs to get hair dyed/permed/extensioned/braided, and however many other things, some of which I do and some of which I don’t know the price of, which is exactly what I’m getting at. It’s all so deeply personal.
Do you know what a facialist does? I did not. My limited sense of it was that it lies somewhere outside the realm of for-others beautification, and was more something like a massage, that you’d do to relax. Apparently this is not so, and it is something women (and not just women, presumably) go in for if they have oily skin, and I was therefore announcing either that I don’t have oily skin or that I do and look un-maintained. (The truth: I don’t have oily skin and I look un-maintained.)
Do you know that “med spa” is code for Botox, lip fillers, and other things in the cosmetic surgery adjacent realm? If not, you are looking at this and thinking, how is anyone spending $1k a month on spas, unless the people spending this are men and “spa” is a euphemism. If yes, you have announced you are not an effortless beauty, for you have, bare minimum, heard of such things and made a note of what they cost, you vain crone. (It’s me, I’m the vain crone.)
If you’ve seen nail polish in the drug store and noticed that it costs $8 or maybe once did and has now in Canada at least shot up to $12ish, or $20-something in a non-drug-store environment, you might wonder what this is about nails that could make mortgage payments more challenging. If however you have had your nails done at any time since the advent of gel, you will know that if you’re someone whose nails are always done, it would cost this. Has a man in the history of men ever turned a woman down because she had regular nail polish (shorthand for feminine self-presentation, and not irrelevant) rather than that which salons can accomplish? Very possibly. It’s a wide world with many subcultures, and in some, polish alone yeah maybe wouldn’t seem done.
Fitness, presumably this is one of those things where spending and doing aren’t always in sync, but I suspect if you want to do it right, you need someone telling you what to do, as versus to go jogging when possible and think ‘ I should stretch and do strength stuff’ and then remember the jog itself was 40 minutes you didn’t really have.
Where it gets really personal:
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