Feeling Pretty is Hella Expensive
By: Lizzie Woo
Tags: Makeup, Insecurity, Self Image, Skincare, Beauty

My husband and I both have relatively well-paying salaried jobs. We own a house and two vehicles and have the ability to occasionally splurge on a meal out or a weekend away.

But at the end of the day, we don’t have a lot of money leftover to spare, and whatever there is “remaining” is allocated towards paying off debt, and towards bigger expenses like a new mattress or the treadmill we’d been talking about for a couple of years.

I asked a friend recently how it is that other people our age — people with similarly paying jobs — can afford to spend so much money on high-end clothes and beauty treatments.

Her explanation is that people our age — millennials, if you will — are known as the generation of instant gratification, which means that if they want it, they get it. Some argue this is a good thing, that this preference for wanting-it-now has revolutionized efficiency in the realms of business and technology.

At the same time, millennials — often burdened with student loan debt and the reality of ever-rising housing prices — are prone to the believing they’ll never save enough to “get ahead.” So instead, they funnel their resources into more gratifying and immediate rewards, whether that be $500 passes to a weekend music festival or $350 on premium eyelash extensions.

If money were simply no object (ha!), and my husband and I weren’t channelling the majority of our financial resources into our house and other related expenses, then I can bet you I’d have no problem splurging $150 per month on eyelash extensions, $275 every eight to 12 weeks for balayage hair colour service, $40 a month on brow and upper lip waxing, $100 per month on manicures, $200 per session on laser hair removal (I can’t begin to guess the total here, since I’d elect to have my pits, legs and bikini area all well and taken care of) — and hey, I recently saw a poster for cosmetic Botox at my dental office, which was mildly alarming, but the before and after comparison was convincing enough that I figure why not throw that in the mix, too, for a conservative $300 per treatment.

All of this — the thousands of dollars potentially spent — doesn’t even encompass the cost of additional beauty products and keeping atop the latest fashion trends.

Yes, it would be nice to have the luxury of spending the equivalent of my monthly salary on feeling pretty, but this, my friends, is not my reality.

And I think what’s most frustrating about it all is the notion that by failing to have this be part of my reality, I’m disentitled from the privilege of getting to feel pretty.

But beauty comes from the inside, and yes, I know that, and I’ll get to that as well, but first let me also say that I’m not a high maintenance girl. As much as I fantasize about having the disposable income to keep my brows groomed and my armpits stubble-free, I honestly don’t really love spending my time fussing over such things.

For example: I’m prone to seasonal allergies. This means that on more than one occasion last summer, I caught myself absentmindedly rubbing my eyes before remembering I’d paid $150 to have synthetic lashes glued to my face, and that I was in the process of ruining them. There was this, and the fact that the extensions needed to be brushed several times a day, lest they look sloppy and wayward.

Also: I hate wearing make-up.

I hate the time it takes to put it on, and I hate the feeling of having it sitting on my skin.

I still wear make-up, yes, especially since I’ve been suffering a long spell of hormonal acne rivalling that of my teens. And yeah, I don’t mind the ritual of getting myself dolled up for a special occasion — an anniversary dinner with my hubby or meeting up with friends for drinks.

But I also cannot wait to wash it all off when I get home, the same way some people cannot wait to peel off an underwire bra.

It helps that I don’t have the kind of lifestyle that requires me to wear a lot of make-up.

There isn’t much need to apply a layer of foundation before a hike, when it’s guaranteed to all melt off, or to draw on eyeliner before a swim in the lake. Since moving out of the city two years ago, the frequency with which I apply make-up has become increasingly less, and I one hundred per cent do not mind.

It’s a weird thing, though, the fact I enjoy being relatively low key when it comes to my beauty routine, but also sometimes wishing I had the luxury of being a bit more high maintenance, a little more “put together”.

And I think this is where the insecurity comes to play, because this feeling of not being good enough always invariably stems from instances of comparing myself to others.