We have a gender imbalance in this country – Maintenance.
No, not car maintenance or home maintenance. Boys have the upper hand in the repair department, and I hate it. I could take a class at a community college, improve my knowledge about fixing up my house, but I’m too lazy. I can’t fix things. Boys hammer things and repair sheetrock so much better than me.
But I digress. What I’m talking about right now is personal maintenance. Personal maintenance begins when I wake up, when I give a haggard, crusty scowl into the mirror, and all those fine lines and pores stare back at me. It continues until right before bed, when I slather my face with $60 skin cream, and pray for the overnight miracle that never occurs.
I work in banking, and it bothers me that the men are able to get a $25 hair cut every 3 weeks, wear a clean shirt, and look presentable. For women, it’s a $100 hairdo every 5 weeks, in addition to moisturizers, make up, exfoliations, dermabrasion, Botox, etc.
Women spend many hours a day on maintenance. There’s weekly maintenance, and daily maintenance. There’s the monthly stuff, like haircuts, waxing eyebrows, facials and dermabrasion…
Then there’s the crazy stuff some women do – chin waxing, Brazilians, permanent make-up, surgery…
But the most irritating to me is daily maintenance–
Brush teeth, floss teeth, ACT rinse, scrub face and exfoliate to pull dirt out of pores and fine lines, use astringent, shower – wash hair, shampoo, condition, glaze for extra shine, slather face with moisturizers to bathe fine lines and pores and hopefully diminish them a bit, towel dry hair, stare at mirror frustrated, to blow dry or not to blow dry – that is the universal question, slap on make-up, put lotion all over body, 10 minutes with curling iron – trying to artistically fashion frizz into an organized mess, decide what to wear and change 10 times – why does the same outfit look great one day and like something a homeless person would wear the next?
After this hour-long mess of a process is complete, I must constantly primp throughout the day to maintain the equilibrium. And if I have dinner plans, then I run home, and go through the whole process a second time.
Maintenance is frustrating and time-consuming – If I were to run for 30 minutes a day, then I‘d stay slender. However, two hours of primping, fixing and maintaining, and I still look sloppy.
Nora Ephron, author of several chick flicks such as “When Harry met Sally,” “You’ve got Mail,” and “Sleepless in Seattle,” wrote an essay called, “On Maintenance.” In that 19-page essay, she speaks about personal maintenance, with section topics including hair, hair dye, nails, unwanted hair, exercise, and skin.
My ex-boyfriend used to like it when I spent 30 minutes primping & trying to hotten up before we went out… It gave him 30 minutes to chill and watch TV or play video games or strum the same chord repeatedly on his guitar. While his feet were on the coffee table and he was laughing at Comedy Central, I was frenetically attempting to turn hag into hottie. When it was time to leave, he’d be in a jolly chill mood, but I’m nauseous from hairspray fumes and irritable.
And then there’s cost… cost, cost, cost… – I spend over two hundred a month to be pretty, and it doesn’t always work!!
I can do the exact same process two days in a row, and one day I look like Kate Winslet in Titanic, and the next day I look like Steve Buscemi in a sloppy red wig.
My grandma lived to be 91. Right after she died, my mom went up to her apartment, and she found three Clinique sets waiting will little gift cards for me, my mom, and my aunt. Grandma spent $150 on face creams for me, mom, and aunt, while she herself used Ponds. Grandma always looked spectacular, and she used Ponds. We should all learn from that wisdom.
Wisdom is wise, but I will never give up my personal maintenance operations, because I have high hopes that perhaps, some day, maybe, I’ll get carded again. Or at least I’ll fool somebody at one of those booths at the fair and they won’t guess my age.