Personal maintenance is expensive. A manicure here, a few highlights there, and before you know if you’re looking at a bill totalling hundreds by the end of the month. And in the latest instalment of Reddit’s favourite discussion forum, Am I The Asshole, one woman has been questioning whether she’s in the wrong for asking her boyfriend to pay for these pricey treatments and the time she spends having them.
‘I’m a woman in a career field which really doesn’t care about appearances,’ she began the thread. ‘My boyfriend is in a job where looks matter more, investment banking. He wears suits and has to present himself as more wealthy to look good at work. My boyfriend wanted me to come to some work events…But he said that it was something we had to dress up for,’ she said.
The original poster [OP] then explained that although she’d offered to wear a nice dress, her boyfriend said this wasn’t enough. According to him, all of his co-workers’ wives and girlfriend had designer clothes, manicures and blow dries. So, his girlfriend needed these indicators of wealth, too. He offered to pay as he considered this a ‘professional expense’ but the OP still wasn’t satisfied.
‘I’m not responsible for his professional expenses,’ she wrote. ‘I also asked him to compensate me for my time getting “presentable” for those events. Additionally, if he wanted me to act a certain way during these events, which was different than my usual behaviour… it should be treated like work, I’d expect to be paid for my time.’
At first, her boyfriend put up a fight and said it was ‘weird’ to charge him for attending an event. But, as the OP pointed out, this wasn’t a family wedding or a friend’s dinner that she was attending as herself. Instead, she was putting on a front and presenting an image for the purpose of his career and, as she put it: ‘that’s not socialising—that’s labour’.
The couple then devised a list of all the things the woman would need to attend her boyfriend’s business events. ‘Designer dress, designer heels, jewellery, hair done, nails done, makeup done, handbag…’ The total came to almost $2000.
The event passed uneventfully, and the OP reported that barely anyone paid attention to her. It was only afterwards that the drama started, when she told her boyfriend she needed the nails he’d paid for filed down before she could work. He then claimed she was ‘milking him for money’ even though she makes the same salary as him and lashed out saying ‘most girls’ dress themselves and do their own makeup—which is true but doesn’t make it right.
From the emotional labour to the cosmetic costs, the entire debate just highlights the financial and mental cost of being a woman. Whereas a man may have spent $2000 on a suit for a work event one time, a woman could do that every time she went networking in high maintenance a business scenario.
As the OP points out, primping is time consuming: All of the tailoring and cosmetic appointments she went to took a total of 10 hours to complete. To have them done, she took a day off work. As a consultant who bills by the hour, she obviously deserves to be paid for her time.
It’s hilarious that the woman’s boyfriend was frustrated by the logistics and money it takes to maintain beauty standards because it's something women have been contending with their entire lives around him without his notice. This man is going out with a woman who is happy removing herself from the never-ending chores of beauty treatments. So, he can’t complain about having to foot the bill when he asks her to alter her life to do otherwise.
Women’s labour is underrecognized and undervalued. From childcare, to housekeeping, to social engagements, its time men stop considering their partners efforts as a duty designed to bolster their existence and recognise it for what it is: work.
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