Personal Care Spending, Happiness, and the Young/Single/Fabulous Woman

I'm baffled by the results of this survey on personal-care spending, ranked by city. By "personal care," the study included dollars spent on fitness, cosmetics, toiletries, salon/spa visits, and the like.

The study was aiming to see if there was a correlation between dollars spent on personal care and levels of fitness among its residents. For the top and bottom cities, that was true: Austin spends the most money per person per month on personal care ($143) and is one of the fittest cities in the U.S.; Detroit spends the least ($18) and is also one of the unhealthiest cities. But then, as pointed out by The Hairpin, Portland, OR (always Portland, throwing a kink in the system! viva la revolucion!), is one of the healthiest cities in the U.S. but spends about the national average on personal care items.

Really, they couldn't have come up with colors other than red and blue for this?

How does this relate to beauty and women? A few ways:

1) The study's very premise is that spending on cosmetics and fitness are in the same category. And sure, they both fall under "personal care," but there are about a zillion reasons people work out (mental health benefits, lower cholesterol, stress relief, medically directed weight loss, rehabilitation--plus, sure, "those last five pounds" and the glow that working out gives you) and not that many as to why people wear cosmetics (my dissection of lipstick subtleties aside, but of course). I've always been sort of irked by the connection of beauty and health departments in women's magazines, even though the skin, after all, is an organ. And in this survey, in which both men and women responded, it skews the results: A man or woman buying, say, rock-climbing equipment isn't in the same headspace that a woman buying eyeshadow is.

2) No secret that self-esteem and happiness are complementary, right? Looking at the personal-care spending in the light of the happiest and unhappiest cities in America reveals that the people who are spending more money on personal care are also happier. Not all of the cities in the happiest/unhappiest cities rankings are listed in the personal-care spending chart, but of the top 10 cities that are: The happiest cities spent an average of $86.50 on personal care; the unhappiest, $68.70. And this is where I really wish that there were a demarcation between cosmetics/spas/salons and fitness, because of the antidepressant effect of regular exercise. But I wonder if happier people are also spending more on self-care that might relate to their happiness in less scientific, more aesthetic ways?

3) Four of the top 12 cities for personal-care expenditures are in Texas. Texas women also earn 81.4 cents on the (man's) dollar. I can't find all the data to bear this out, but I wonder if there's an inverse proportional spending on personal care to women's earning power--that in places where women earn considerably less, they need to increase their "net worth" by investing more in their looks. It's possible, but in looking at the cities where young, childless women outearn men, the average spent on personal care is actually slightly higher than the national average ($68.50 for these cities as compared to a national average of $60 on personal care).

Thanks to Beauty Schooled for the initial tipoff!

Retail Therapy: My Maiden Voyage to MAC

I literally haven't bought makeup since 1999, until last week. I wear it every day, but one of the perks of working in women's magazines is the phenomenon known as the beauty sale, in which the products companies send to the beauty department for consideration are put in the conference room and sold for a dollar. It's a snarling, savage madhouse of magazine staffers—but one that means that if you work there you can walk away with dozens of products for a sliver of cash. I don't use tons of products but for the past 12 years I've been grabbing every brown eyeliner, black mascara, concealer, and fair-tone powder off the tables. And even though I haven't held a steady job at a ladies' mag for the past two years, my stockpile has held out nicely. (I do buy tinted SPF moisturizer, because I'm picky about that.)

Besides the obvious benefits, this also shapes how you perceive makeup. When a $95 face serum is priced the same as a Wet'n'Wild nail polish that would fetch $2 at Target, your evaluation of a product's worth shifts. You can only base your reaction to a product on how well it works (or how it looks on your shelf), not what investment you put into it in your hopes of achieving greater beauty. I don't care if the name on the package is Chanel or Maybelline; only rarely have I found something that worked so well I'd happily buy it at its retail value.

But last week was a hard week--cramps, back pain, general stress. And after my bombshell makeover I decided I wanted to try wearing lipstick on a daily basis for a while, just to see how I felt in it--but because I never wear lipstick, I don't own any except a singular beauty-sale leftover called Rum Raisin, which makes me resemble a kindly retiree, so off to the MAC store it was.

As a copy editor, I'm more annoyed by the missing period after the "C" than I should be.

What's that? you ask. MAC? I thought you said drugstore stuff was just fine! That's exactly it, though. It didn't cross my mind to go into Duane Reade and pick up some Cover Girl lip liner; I specifically wanted the experience of walking into a nicer store and spending nicer money on a nicer product, even though  the effect on my face would wind up being roughly the same. (By all accounts, though, MAC really is the leader in lip color longevity and rich pigmentation, and they're reasonably priced.) Wearing lipstick was about one thing; buying lipstick was about another.

Now, I've gone my whole life without buying lipstick. In fact, the only time I've procured lipstick (besides the aforementioned Rum Raisin) was when I uncharacteristically swiped a tube from the drugstore at age 15, which I've since learned was sort of a rite of passage for a lot of girls. The sticky-fingered Daphne Merkin, in her essay "The Shoplifter's High," writes:

Ours is a culture in which women, more than men, are dominated by the ruthlessly depersonalizing ethos of materialism... We are, in other words, the face—and clothes—we put on in the morning. ... Seen from this angle, shoplifting can be viewed as a means, however misbegotten, of managing the tension induced by being at the beck and call of the marketplace.... Once money is not the issue, how much is too much to spend on a new lipstick? And behind that valuation lies a more lift-threatening barter: How much am I worth?

Now, I didn't shoplift the MAC pencil, of course (though I don't think it's just the size and portability that makes lipstick a frequent target for shoplifters; I'm certain there's something specific to the purpose of cosmetics that's behind it--if anyone out there is a habitual makeup swiper, pipe up as I'd love to chat!). But what Merkin is saying here applies nonetheless: The actual price paid, the actual 1,415 pennies, wasn't the issue. My budget allows me to drop $14 when I'd like (though not habitually). It's more that by assigning MAC-value to my time, effort, and cash instead of CVS-value, I elevated myself--back pain, landlord tensions, cramps and all--to a higher worth.

I'm not sure where lies the line between treating myself to a small, colorful, pricier-than-it-needs-to-be pleasure to boost my mood, and plain old American retail therapy, foolishly spending on MAC in order to join the legion raspberry-lipped girls who pepper the halls of places I work. I'm pretty sure a $14 lip pencil isn't crossing that line. But I'm still questioning the whole idea, and I continue to be surprised by the pleasure I feel when I find the sleek pencil in my bag and spend a moment giving myself some lip service.

Mani Mania

I swore off manicures when I was in pastry school--it was forbidden in classes, but one girl wore it anyway, and I remember seeing the smallest bit of bright pink polish flake into our brioche dough. I became disgusted at that moment by the thought of having semi-permanent varnish put upon one's body--on your hands! your hands touch things! things people might eat!--and didn't look back.

But in the past few weeks, three separate people have offhandedly (heh) mentioned to me that they love getting manicures--that they feel it gives one that extra little polish (okay, I'll stop). I quit the professional kitchen life several years ago, and my home cooking consists of little more than defrosting precooked chicken strips, so after person #3 today mentioned manicures, I went in for one.

 Snap decision: today's $8 manicure.

It's not hard to see why manicures top many women's lists of beauty musts. It's frivolous, meaning it's for pleasure only; it's affordable (or at least it is for women who live in cities with plentiful "pink collar" immigrant labor, at a rock bottom of $7 a pop); it creates at least half an hour of forced lassitude, time in which you can literally do nothing--not even read, unless you've brought along a servant to turn the pages of Us magazine for you--other than sit there and let yourself be treated. Part of the New York manicure ritual (which has been the same at literally every salon I've visited, which has been a good handful despite my seven-year hiatus from fingernail polish) is the miniature back rub, which comes, unasked for and free of charge, from the manicurist. (Virginia Postrel argues here that the economy can't afford to scoff at nail salons. That was in 1997, and time has proved her right: Spa visits went up in 2008 and 2009, presumably the $12 pedicure kind, not the $200 massage kind.)

And sure enough, it felt good tonight to go in and let myself be treated--and, of course, my bitten nails look much better than they do when left solely under my guardianship. Still, I feel weird about the whole thing. When I put on my coat, an aesthetician came around to help me button it lest it mess up my nails; it was a practical move on her part, ensuring that the just-performed labor wouldn't be for naught, but still--I felt in that moment like she was my servant, not someone I had merely paid to do a service. (Is there a difference, though?) This was compounded by the race/class intersection at the salon: Like 80% of all New York-area nail salon owners, she was Korean. The steady flow of Chinese labor has actually diminished that percentage, just as it has in California, where 75% of all nail salons are Vietnamese-owned. Asian women are often depicted as being passive, and a demure sensibility is indeed considered a feminine asset in many Asian cultures. As I sat there while this woman bent in front of me to button my coat--after, of course, washing my fingertips, rubbing my arms and back, clipping off the dead skin around my fingernails, and then carefully painting ten tiny canvases--I couldn't help but feel a bit like one of those creepy dudes who frequents Asian dating sites.

Now, if I withdrew from any fiscal interactions involving a race/class disparity in New York, I'd pretty much do nothing but sit in my apartment eating dirt. This is a city of immigrants, particularly brown immigrants, many of whom are on the first step of the great American journey. Indian men drive me home late at night, Mexican men deliver my dinner, Chinese women wash my clothes, Arab men sell me sodas and bubble gum. And I'm paying for those services, and presumably that price has been set by the market and is remotely fair, so I just sort of have to guess that it's all okay after all.

What makes manicures different; why am I more uneasy with that exchange than I am with others? Part of it is the unseen damage done to the workers: In a 2004 survey of salon employees in New York, 37% report eye irritation, 66% report neck and back discomfort, and 18% report asthma (compared with the 6% general rate in America). I left the salon three hours ago and I can still smell the solvent on my fingertips, even though I've washed my hands--and that was one half-hour visit, not 10-hour days, six days a week. [Edited 4.19.2011: Virginia Sole-Smith's investigative feature at The Nation gets more into the labor conditions in nail salons; I wish I'd known about it when writing this originally!]

But I think the real reason I'm uneasy with bargain-basement salons is not because of labor issues, as left-wing-righteous as I occasionally fancy myself. (And it's not like my friends who love manicures are gleefully exploiting cheap labor. Certainly I'm not condemning salons nor their clients--among whom I count myself--even if some of the labor practices that have garnered protest from the workers, detailed in this Times piece, makes me cringe. Let's all just be sure to tip well.) The real reason is that I still see beauty as being frivolous--and despite what I wrote above about frivolity equaling pleasure, the fact is that I feel guilt over taking those indulgences for myself, even when I know I needn't. I'm slowly coming to realize that what I thought was resistance to beauty culture is actually a deep negative engagement with it--sort of always wanting to explore its lands more but being afraid to, for fear of seeming too frivolous, too girly, too weak, even though I don't look at women who more comfortably inhabit Beautyland in that way (unless they prove themselves through their actions to be so). I'd like to try to engage with beauty culture in a more positive way, on my own terms, without always looking over my shoulder for its folly.

Ponytail Economics

For all my rhetoric about beauty-as-commodity, it's chilling to see an aspect of beauty literally functioning as a commodity. In poor regions of former Soviet states, many blond women turn to their hair as a resource, according to this Times piece. There's a huge market (the largest being in America, natch) for hair--particularly blond hair, which is abundant in the region.

There's a number of unspoken notions about beauty embedded into the human-hair industry, and indeed into this article. For one, the unquestioned notion that long hair is desirable; it's not even worth getting into why women might pay hundreds of dollars to cement someone else's cellular matter to their head. (Personally, I'd rather wear someone else's underwear than her hair--the latter seems extraordinarily intimate, don't you think?) For another, the assumption that light hair is preferable. This is practical in part--blond hair is more dyeable than dark, which needs to be stripped of pigment and then dyed in order to be a perfect match for a buyer's own hair. But as one of the hair czars interviewed, Aleksei N. Kuznetsov, says, "honey-hued" hair that changes color in the light is the most desirable hair--that has little to do with dyeability and more to do with what blond hair connotes (more fun, gentlemen's preferences, etc.).

"Why does one woman sell her hair to another? The person with money wants to look better than the person without money," says Kuznetsov in the piece. "Better," in addition to being long-locked and perhaps blond, also means being transformed after three hours in a stylist's chair instead of the nearly three years it would take to grow a 16-inch braid. The industry transforms the waiting game of the growing-out process--the sort that non-impoverished but non-wealthy women such as myself bemoan and cover up with barrettes and headbands when deciding to grow out one's hair--into either a long, drawn-out, passive labor (for the seller) or a non-issue altogether (for the buyer).

Go on, tell me that a lopped-off ponytail isn't a little bit creepy.

This hirsuit surrogacy becomes particularly chilling when you look at other ways in which the region's women make a living: It's estimated that 2/3 of the world's victims of sex trafficking are from former Soviet nations. In those cases, it's sex that's actually being bought and sold; in the case of a blond ponytail, only the symbol of sex is being trafficked. It's also fertile ground for young models to be exported to wealthier nations--another case of women's beauty becoming a sort of natural resource.

And a precious resource at that. Selling one's hair is describe as "a final resource to tap in times of desperation," and once again it's not spelled out why it's a last resort; we're expected to intuitively know, an expectation that is only a responsible assumption if we get that a woman's hair is so deeply personal, so tied to her essence, that to part with it is a newsworthy sacrifice. In fact, some sellers are consciously switching up their style and are just capitalizing on the opportunity, a notion that's squeezed in at the very end of the piece--consciously or not, the writer is urging us to sympathize with the women who sell their hair. The economic desperation is the point of the piece, but it's the understood psychic sacrifice that adds the poignancy here.

I was 8 when I first read Little Women; as every high-spirited girl reader is encouraged to, I adored Jo. That didn't stop me from being furious at her when she sold her hair, "her one beauty," in order to pay for her mother to visit their ill father behind the battle lines of the Civil War. I gave a glance to her nobility, sure, but also privately thought that surely she could have found another way (chop off that little brat Amy's curls, for one). As a third-grader, I understood that Jo was selling more than a part of her body--she was selling her femininity, a choice that made even tomboyish Jo break into quiet tears in the night: "My...My hair!...I just made a little private moan for my one beauty." Louisa May Alcott didn't need to spell out for us why the hair was valued, nor why the choice hurt even a woman as nonchalant toward her appearance as Jo. In the same way, I'm surprised that this story is even considered newsworthy by the Times (though I'm pleased it is); it's just business as usual, right?