In case you missed it, earlier this week Grimes caused a huge stir by posting about her 'daily routine.'
Famed for her idiosyncratic tech-pop and whispery vocals, the musician listed things like infrared lighting, sword fights and deprivation tanks in her 'daily regimen', which she shared to her almost one million followers on Instagram.
Whether or not Grimes is joking about her routine is up for debate, but given that she's in a relationship with Elon Musk, we can't rule anything out. She wouldn't be the only Californian with a strange daily routine.
Jack Dorsey, Twitter's founder, uses saunas and ice baths from 5am, fasts and meditates, while Mark Zuckerberg once went through a stage of only eating meat he'd killed himself. This sort of lifestyle doesn’t just make for big social media wins (the post, promoting Stella McCartney x Adidas’s new activewear line, has got 138,216 likes and almost as many headlines), but big money.
Rather than send some poor sod to go and try what Grimes is shilling because, come on, this is a woman who took so much speed she stayed awake for nine days, and that was when she was being serious about life…Grazia decided to instead cost up the procedures Grimes is doing, to work out exactly how much money it takes to live that life.
Grimes's vitamins
**Grimes says: '**I first maintain a healthy cellular routine where I maximize the function of my mitochondria with supplements such as NAD+, Acetyl L-Carnitine, Magnesium, etc.'
Where to get it: You can buy 60 capsules of NAD+ on Amazon for £72.99. According to some scientists, this 'fountain of youth' pill only really works if you’re a mouse.
As for Acetyl L-Carnitine, you can get 30 500mg caplets for £6.99. According to the scientists it’s an amino acid that some people with Alzheimer's are recommended. The NHS has guidelines, too, on its use for patients with, um, male infertility…
Magnesium can be bought at your regular Holland and Barrett, with 100 100mg capsules setting you back just £6.99. It's said to contribute to the maintenance of healthy bones and teeth.
Daily cost: NAD+ is £1.21 per pill, Acetyl L-Carnitine is 23p per pill and Magnesium is 7p per pill.
Grimes's solitude
Grimes says: 'I spend 2-4 hours in my deprivation tank… this allows me to “astro-glide” to other dimensions - past, present, and future.'
Where to get it: A deprivation tank is a big human sized egg-pod filled with saltwater solution that is so dense that humans float in it. It’s heated to humans' resting body temperature, so that, in the darkness of the pod, you feel as if you’re simply floating in mid-air. Unless you go in with any cuts on your body or hangnails or sores, in which case, prepare to feel agony.
The London Floatation Centre advertises one hour sessions for £50, and offers discounts for regular users, so you can get 20 sessions for £500. A spokesperson told Grazia that, luckily, 'There are no limitations on how often you can float and how long your float lasts. It all depends on your personal availability. In our centre we have overnight floats, where people can float approximately 6-9 hours'. Although that sounds ridiculous, because what if you roll over in your sleep?, the spokesperson conceded that 'The wellness regime of Grimes sounds intense to me.'
Daily cost: buy 20 sessions for £500 and two hours’ deprivation tankage a day will set you back £50, with four hours costing £100.
Grimes's sword-fighting
Grimes says: 'In the afternoons I do a 1-2 hour sword fighting session with my trainer, James Lew'
Where to get it: Grazia contacted the agent of James Lew, Hollywood stuntman and actor, from films such as Inception, Tropic Thunder and Planet of the Apes to find out how much he charges for personal appearances, but we got no reply. According to the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), though, of which James is a member, low-budget productions must pay SAG members $825.50 every four hours of off-camera video game work. Which is the closest thing we can find on SAG’s list of payment rates to 'swordfighting for a bit'.
Daily cost: One hour with James Lew is £165.37, and two is £330.73. Of course, one to two hours a day of sword fighting, in perpetuity, might be a tall order for a Hollywood stuntman who might want to spend his life doing other things, so there’s always London Fencing Club, which offers £66 per hour one-on-one training sessions, rising to £132 for two hours.
Grime's hike
Grimes says: 'I spend 30-45 minutes on an inclined hike at roughly 4-4.5 miles per hour, arguably the most efficient workout.'
Where to get it: to do this, you either need a treadmill costing £399.99 for life or you can get a gym membership for about £14.99 a month, if you’re lucky.
Daily cost: If you got the treadmill and used it, let’s say, every day for a year, it would cost £1.10 per day. If you want to pay to access a gym only to do the boringest activity in the gym apart from staring at yourself in the mirror and grunting, then the cheapest monthly fee imaginable would set you back 50p a day.
Grime's stretches
Grimes says: 'I then spend 45 minutes stretching'
Where to get it: you can, arguably, stretch anywhere. This is an entry-level, accessible sort of workout, the problem is you’d have to be a cat to have the patience to do it.
Daily cost: time is money, and 45 minutes just stretching, per day, will set you back. The average UK full-time salary is £36,611, but as us Grazia readers tend to be women, let’s lop off 11.9% to account for the gender pay gap, leaving us with £32,254.29. Per working week, that’s £671.96, and per day, that’s £134.39. During an eight hour day that’s £16.80 per hour, meaning this workout effectively costs £12.60 in lost work.
Grime's sauna vision
Grimes says: 'I’ve outfitted my studio with the highest grade of red light. It is pretty much 1000 sqf IR Sauna.'
Where to get it: one red light for a photography-standard dark room, from The Imaging Warehouse, costs £159.99. Put one in each corner of the average room and that’s £639.96
Daily cost: Once again, if you have these for a year, it will cost just, um £1.73 per day, which really isn’t that much, unless you wake up one day and realise you’ve spent over half a grand on red lights and don’t actually do any photography.
Grime's yelling
Grimes says: 'Hana then comes over and we do a screaming session for 20-25 minutes'
Where to get it: Primal therapy, where patients are encouraged to scream, might seem simple, but like any therapy, presumably, it shouldn’t just be administered by anyone. If Hana wants to do the right thing, she should train as a primal therapist, and it turns out you can get a diploma for this online for just £263.99 from LearnDirect, if you pay in one lump sum!
Daily cost: Primal therapy is probably a skill for life, but let’s say you only want to do Grimes’s rituals for a year, that would set you back 72p a day.
Grime's tea
Grimes says: 'I slow boil the honey tea that maximizes vocal proficiency'
Where to get it: Waitrose sells some lemon and honey green tea for just £2. Each box contains 20 single tea bags!
Daily cost: 10p per bag, so it’d be 10p per day, unless you have to share the tea with Hana!
Grime's ocular implant thing
Grimes says: 'I have also eliminated all blue light from my vision through an experimental surgery that removes the top film of my eyeball and replaces it with an orange ultra-flex polymer that my friend and I made in the lab this past winter as a means to cure seasonal depression.'
Where to get it: Nowhere!!! Daniel Hardiman-McCartney, Clinical Adviser, College of Optometrists, said in a press statement: 'If Grimes did have a blue blocking, orange coloured filter implanted into her eye, the surgery is not supported by scientific evidence.
'There have been various claims made about blue light, with regards to seasonal affective disorder. A recent gold standard, Cochrane review concluded that there is little evidence overall that light therapy is useful for treating seasonal affective disorder.
'Separately, there have been various claims made about blue light and long-term eye health, but using blue light–filtering eye implants to impart health benefits to the eye is currently not supported by the best available clinical research evidence.'
Daily cost: zero, because you won't be able to convince a medical practitioner to do it. However if you really wanted to, you could buy a pair of blue light blocking glasses on Amazon for £53.
Grime's humidity
Grimes says: 'I go to bed with a humidifier on.'
Where to get it: This humidifier, aroma diffuser and night light costs just £25.99 from Argos!
Daily cost: This works out to just 7p a day for a year.
Which brings us to the grand total!
Pills= £1.51
Deprivation tank = £50-£100
Swordfighting with James Lew = £165.37, and two is £330.73(subject to change if he wants to escape)/Fencing at London Fencing Club = £66-£132
Hiking up the steep incline = 50p-£1.10
Stretching time = £12.60
Red lighting = £1.73
Primal therapy course = 72p
Honey tea = 10p
Eye implant thing = nothing, DO NOT DO IT (but the glasses are £53)
Humidifier = 7p
GRAND GRIMESY TOTAL = £133.86 - £492.19 per day
That’s how much it costs to live like Grimes says she lives, for just one singular day. Because money is at the heart of any daily routine of the rich and bored that Grimes is taking the mickey out of, isn’t it? When the best healthcare advice around is to, according to our tremendous NHS: eat five a day, drink less, quit smoking, move more and stress less, the best way to show you’re somehow elevated from the peasants who try to stick to those basics is to use your money in increasingly inventive, costly and distractingly personalised ways.
Next thing they’ll be putting computers into people's brains in order to turn humans - or at least the super-rich humans who can afford such fantastical technological improvements - into half robots. Oh no, wait,they actually are. Oh brave new world!