By Elizabeth Davies
Meeting the beauty standard expected of young women these days is a depressingly costly affair.
I’m a far cry from a high maintenance female, but even I feel the pinch and acknowledge just how much more money women are expected to spend on their appearance in order to be ‘presentable’.
The dollar signs start adding up from a young age, you only have to take a fleeting glance at school ball season to realise just how much people are willing to spend in order to look good and fit in.
A school ball isn’t just the cost of the ticket anymore. There’s the pre-ball, the ball, the dress, the shoes, the hair, the makeup, the jewellery, the clutch, the spray tan, the waxing, the manicure and the hummer limo - a pricey list for which you will sacrifice your bank balance at the altar of ‘cool’.
Ball goers are being compared to bride-to-bes in terms of their expectations and budgets. Those who fall short of physical and social perfection will surely be left ostracised and dateless. Parents who consent to their daughter’s every ball related demand are spending $1500+.
Surely this is the perfect opportunity to teach your child to work within a budget, prioritise her needs and rule out the ridiculous.
Unfortunately this pressure to meet a certain level of beauty doesn’t die with adolescence; it follows women throughout their entire lives.
A friend in her early twenties just started her first ‘real’ job. Her boss quickly suggested she invest more money in her clothing and recommended she get her hair done. Another was told she should really get a manicure at least once every two weeks. Women are frequently told they are expected to wear high heeled shoes in corporate environments.
None of these things are a matter of looking professional, or formal enough, they are all about looking physically more attractive – a subject which is very rarely brought up with male employees.
All of these things send a pretty negative message to women. From school balls to work environments our society is telling us that if we want to be accepted, liked, taken seriously, we must do what we can to make ourselves more physically attractive, and we must spend money doing so.
Women who choose to ignore the beauty standard, by not wearing high heels, designer clothing, not spending money on expensive beauty treatments, or god forbid not wearing makeup, are labelled feminists, man haters, lesbians.
Sometimes I wear makeup, sometimes I don’t, sometimes I wear heels, most of the time I don’t. My point is that choice is mine and mine alone.
If someone demands I meet a particular standard of beauty and maintenance, then by all means they can pay for it. I can’t afford to.
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Elizabeth Davies is a 24 year-old graduate of the Auckland University of Technology post graduate journalism course. She lives with her partner in Epsom and spends her free time refurbishing vintage furniture and attempting to bake while fighting a daily battle against her bank balance. She writes a weekly article for interest.co.nz on money matters and financial struggles from a young person's perspective.
4 Comments
The pendulum swung way out fairly quickly there. Grooming differs from attractiveness and many employers with customer facing positions may require certain presentation standards are met. I have a niggling doubt however that the old boy network is insisting on skirts and heels for women where men are permitted Tshirts and jandals.
I do note that the article very carefully skirts around management gender while intoning that, as an attack on women, it should be assumed to be male.
While this male trait clearly continues, I have observed female intensive and managed workplaces to be some of the worst offenders. Check out the womens publishing/fashion scene to scratch the surface.
Most articles plonk the blame for the oppression of women at the feet of men, in this society that is long past and a casual glance around should allow the honest to see that much of what is described in this article is perpetrated by women themselves.
In real life most men would avoid distraught, "high maintenance" women unless they sought a trophy, preferring instead a confident partner happy in their natural state. If they scrub up well, so much the better. I suspect the same applies for women seeking partners.
Spinach, I actually completely agree with you, I think women are the biggest culprits of this. The boss who told my friend to invest more money in her wardrobe was in fact a woman, the boss who mentioned the manicures was a man. I agree that most beauty pressure placed on employees is put there by other women in the work place. I wasn't taking issue with the way MEN expect women to look, I was taking issue with the fact that society in general, both men and women put this pressure on women.
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