I can’t stand body maintenance.
I am so tired of tweezing and plucking and pulling and washing and shaving and destinking and blotting and covering and moisturizing.
It’s even worse in the summer. I’m the kind of person who works up a sweat just getting a glass of water, so heat and humidity are very taxing on me. The last thing I feel like doing on top of all the other routine maintenance is adding an extra shower and deodorizing session just so that I can walk among other members of society.
It frightens me how much I’m beginning to empathize with hippies.
I feel ya, kid. Womanhood blows. Pic by 'jasonbolonski'. Click image to check out his Flickr PhotoStream
Men – when you look at a woman, no matter how attractive, it’s likely that she’s failing miserably at at least one of the above tasks. There just isn’t enough time in the day to constantly monitor every one of them. Think about it.
Once we’ve traded hair for grumpiness and discomfort, we have to moisturize. Because we don’t want to get flappy or saggy or ashy or wrinkly. So we moisturize. We do it at our desks, we do it after the shower, and we do it at night. Serious followers will even wear booties and mittens to bed with lotion all inside them. Because magazines and TV and adultery make us absolutely crazy and we sometimes feel like if we don’t wear lotion mittens to bed, no one will love us.
Lord, I would have appreciated being a boy.
The next step is a good high maintenance routine. Hair, face, fingernails, toenails. All of it has to be shellacked with something or other or we will wander the streets as pig beasts, frightening all those around us and causing us to remain indoors until we have enough layers of Spackle on our faces to negate whichever few natural beauties we had when we began.
We have to sleep enough. We can’t cry before bed or our eyes will be puffy and we’ll wake up looking like Senator Palpatine. We have to drink lots of water. We can’t eat things we enjoy without regret and constant talk of self-hate.
And the real kicker is that all of it wears off. All of it. Moisturizer, makeup, hair removal – everything must be repeated. Over and over and over again until we die. Women are crazy, yes. They’re out of our minds. Absolutely. These are all the things we have to do simply because we were born women. Personally, I can’t take it anymore. I might throw in the towel.
Call the hippies. Tell them I’m coming. ♣
The Jackie Blog 
I empathize. But count me in as a pig beast with mascara.
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LOL
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The only bright spot in the high-maintenance legacy that we keep inheriting and passing on to our daughters, is that now men have to join us, at least in part.
Now that they are expected to be metrosexual, they have whole counters of manly beauty products devoted to them at the bigger department stores.
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True – perhaps one day soon they’ll feel bogged down by all the constant maintenance that we are and then we can all unite together in ceasing all maintenance forevermore.
Le Sigh
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I’m with you girl. I don’t do manicures or pedicures. I do wish I had the money to get my eyebrows waxed because I’ve got no skillz of my own in that department. I don’t have the patience for make up or hair styling (ironically I just posted about that in my blog for today too.) I’m a pretty simple gal who can’t stand all this maintenance! lol
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It would be so much easier if we could just pay people to do these things for us with Monopoly money. 🙂 When I was in high school and trying to fight through my awkward phase, I took it upon myself to tweeze my eyebrows. I had a severe case of eyebrow anorexia for a long time, but when college ruled around, I started to get the hang of it. Manicures and pedicures are pretty easy to do on your own too – but a big pain in the butt. I say if men expect this of us, they should fund it. 😉
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I’m trying to spread the gospel of man-scaping, if it makes you feel any better…
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YES. Please do. If every man wore a Speedo ( no thank you ), they would understand the pressure of constant maintenance in the summertime.
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hahaha… senator palpatine!
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So glad for a reader who gets that 😉 I refused to put a link for it. haha
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Hair removal. Evolutionary FAIL. How long do we have to rake blades, spread hot wax, or pluck over our tender skin before God gets the picture and says “Abra-cadabra, you’re done with that crap.”?
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Maybe it’s supposed to be the other way around and we should stop getting rid of it? 😛
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I have devoted several posts to this topic (one is: http://gogreygirl.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/the-beauty-hype/) The only reason these are rituals of womenhood is because an entire industry tells women this is the way it should be. Opt out if you have the balls… so to speak.
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If we had the balls, we’d be expected to shave them, too.
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AHAHAHA! This totally made my day.
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LOL nice. very nice.
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I checked out the post – thanks for sharing. And I suppose it is a bit shallow – sometimes it’s just difficult to endure criticizing like that regardless of how many times you tell yourself it doesn’t matter 🙂
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Lovin’ the star wars reference. 10 gold pieces for you!.
Also, I won’t stop. Sell all your stuff and do the Appalachian Trail already, Yah HIPPIE!
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I might. I really might. *sigh*
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