greenouillee

[greenouillee]

“ Madison, who works a customer service job at an airport spa, has an employee handbook that says “makeup should be well maintained” and “hands and nails must be well manicured.” She says the few men she works with just ignore these guidelines “because they’re meant for women but [it] doesn’t explicitly say that.” Her wages ($13.25 per hour + 15% retail commission) do not include additional pay to purchase manicures or makeup. During her interview, her now-boss commented on how nice her makeup looked and how well her shoes matched her purse—comments that make her feel like she needs to keep up that kind of appearance even though she already has the job. 

It’s well known that a persistent wage gap exists for women workers in the United States, a gap that becomes even wider when race, industry, age and geography are taken into account. But less frequently discussed is the often silent expectation around appearance imposed on women workers, which has its own financial costs—known as the “grooming gap.” The grooming gap refers to the set of social norms regarding grooming and appearance for women, including the time women workers must spend to conform to these norms and the material consequences it has on their lives. 

We’ve all heard the common advice to “look the part” at work. For men, that can often just mean business casual clothing and a short haircut. For women, it can mean hours spent each week on makeup, hair styling and curating an outfit that’s both attractive and professional. 

The rules are usually unspoken; even when employers do not explicitly require workers to wear makeup, for example, women workers often feel required to wear it anyway. 

They’re not wrong: Sociologists Jaclyn Wong and Andrew Penner found that physically attractive workers have higher incomes than average-looking workers, but that this relationship is eliminated when controlling for grooming in women. In other words, if you purchase the right clothes, makeup and haircut, higher wages are more within reach. It’s true that men need to abide by certain grooming rules, too, but they are less complex, less expensive and less time consuming. Men’s haircuts, for example, often cost much less than women’s haircuts—regardless of hair length. The grooming gap essentially constitutes a pay cut catch-22: If women don’t conform, they are paid less; if they do conform, they’re expected to use those higher wages on beauty products and grooming regimens. 

Grooming costs for women can be extremely expensive; the global beauty industry, valued at $532 billion worldwide, directs aggressive advertising toward women to convince them they need to purchase a whole host of products to have a chance at being beautiful, well-liked or successful. The industry relies on maintaining impossible expectations around women’s looks so it can continue to rake in enormous profits. One 2017 study found the average woman puts $8 worth of product on her face each day; another found the average woman spends up to $225,000 on skincare and makeup during her lifetime. And then there’s the “pink tax”: Studies confirm that, 42% of the time, products marketed to women are more expensive than comparable products targeted to men. 

The grooming gap also results in a loss of free time: 55 minutes each day for the average woman, the equivalent of two full weeks each year. Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFACWA), says that, in her industry—a workforce that is 79.3% women—the expectation around appearance literally “interrupts your sleep”: Flight attendants get minimal rest between flights, and that rest time is further shrunk because they are expected to appear “perfectly coifed” before their next flight. Nelson says that all of her grooming tasks took 30–40 minutes each day (more than two hours in a five-day work week). Madison agrees: it takes her 45 minutes to do her makeup and style her hair before her 7 a.m. shift—and she wakes up at 5 a.m. to get it all done. Prior to this job, Madison says she worked at the beauty department at Target, where she spent $200 on products every other week. 

Restaurant and hospitality workers are perhaps hardest hit by the grooming gap, as they rely on tips to survive. When I was a barista in 2010–2011, the only official dress code rule was to wear closed-toed shoes, for safety. Still, I knew I had to show up looking pretty to pay the rent; I made less than $10 an hour and I needed the tips.

Katie, 36, a veteran bartender and server in Fort Smith, Ark., says at her current job, it’s “understood” she should wear makeup. At a previous restaurant, a manager even told her and her coworkers they would “make better tips if [they] wore makeup.”

“Based on my own appearance—weight fluctuations, makeup versus no makeup, jewelry versus no jewelry—there’s a definite difference,” Katie says. She adds that she was passed over for the most lucrative bartending shifts at her previous job after overhearing her managers say they wanted “cuter girls” to bartend instead.

Multi-billion dollar industries also market fad diets and anti-aging products to women. Both Katie and Jeeva, 24, a bartender and member of UNITE HERE, the union representing hospitality, hotel and airport workers, worry about aging. “As you get older, as a female bartender, your tips can go down,” Jeeva says. Katie says she “hope[s] to leave [the service industry] in the next 10 years, before I get too ugly.”

The grooming gap’s effects are compounded for women of color. According to Restaurant Opportunity Center, restaurant owners look for workers who are “clean-cut, [have] good hygiene or a professional appearance, all potential code words for race.” For instance, Black women spent $473 million on relaxers, weaves and other hair care in 2017, in part because of racist ideas that natural Black hair is not professional or attractive. Black workers annually spend nine times more on hair and beauty products than other workers. 

For transgender women, too, there can be an added layer of work, stress and self-consciousness. Autumn, who transitioned while at her current publishing job in Washington, D.C., says she quickly realized how much time and energy it takes to perform femininity for work. She used to spend 20 minutes to get ready in the morning, but now takes at least 45 minutes. Autumn adds, “I have to do things that cis women don’t have to… [but] it’s gotten easier with time and practice,” like tucking and dealing with facial hair. Because she presents extremely femme, Autumn says she hasn’t dealt with enforcement around her appearance, but other women workers around the country have been disciplined and even fired for appearing insufficiently feminine. Women workers have sued—and won—over gender discrimination that manifests as attractiveness discrimination.

Nat, a trans woman who works at a union in the Washington, D.C., area, says, “I didn’t feel like I was allowed to be a woman if I liked masculine things. It delayed any kind of self-reflection” about gender and identity “for such a long time.”

At work and in the world, all women—cis and trans—feel the pressure to conform to normative standards of femininity and attractiveness. But the solution to this problem isn’t to throw away all the eyeshadow or take out a new line of credit for weekly manicures. The solution is to organize together.”

Continued in the link to the article, but uh

TL;DR: There’s a significant wage gap between women who conform to traditional feminine beauty standards by, for example wearing makeup and heels and using a lot of hair and beauty products, and the women who don’t. Meaning women are financially punished for not conforming to femininity or beauty standards. The gap is worse for women of color and trans women because there’s higher beauty standards for women of color and trans women.

And when women do get those higher wages by playing the game and conforming to beauty standards and femininity, they have to spend 2x-3x+ more on grooming and their appearance than their male colleagues, so those high wages just disappear and go right back into keeping up their looks, making it difficult if not impossible to keep up financially with men, this isn’t even mentioning how much more time women lose each day to having to keep up their “professional” appearance compared to male colleagues.

[greenouillee]

everyone trying to own trump about the "he doesn't know sex isn't determined at conception" thing really fundamentally does not understand what the point of that was, and learned basically nothing from his first term. he is not invested in scienve, biology, or any rational discussion where his provably false beliefs would be subject to scrutiny. he is signaling to everyone in the country that it does not matter what you say, he will never care and he will take every action to enforce these views and embolden his followers with the same rhetoric. you cannot logically talk to a person like this when they are reasoning with emotion, not logic. you cannot dunk the transphobia away. someone post the vonnegut quote.

[greenouillee]

If this reaches 1 note, I will draw a frog.

If this reaches 10 notes, I will draw a bigger frog.

You can figure out the math from there

[greenouillee]

i'm the guy who writes the books that the protagonist in supernatural horror movies frantically reads somewhere in act ii. job's pretty easy. lot of "legends of vampires have recurred all throughout human history" and "demonologists agree that the quickest way to un-summon a demon is to trap it in a cursed object". no citations of course; they don't pay me citation money. i had to learn html back in the early aughts when everyone started seeking their supernatural info on websites they found via top search engines like FINDLER and WEBSIGHT but that's died down now which is great because i didn't have it in me to pick up css. currently working on a new book about horses that are evil. it's called HORSES THAT ARE EVIL in all caps so the protagonist can find it quickly to yank off the library shelf. it will be published 35 years ago.

[greenouillee]

Bigfoots gay nephew and a mad scientist who just figured out the Frankenstein doesn’t have to be finished for him to fuck it

[greenouillee]

Also btw trump recognizing only "the two biological sexes" harms intersex people too. I am a researcher of sex and it's affects on disease, and sex is far more complicated than "two sexes" and it always will be. Sex is multifaceted and there are far more than two binary sexes. Keep that in mind too. Don't fall into bioessentialism as you fight for trans people and intersex people.

[greenouillee]

You know, rivers catching on fire used to be a regular occurrence.

[greenouillee]

See, our first mistake was trying to have a civilization in northern Europe between October and February. The darkest three months of the year should be for staying home under the blankets, midwinter festivals, and getting blind drunk when the sun goes down at 4 pm like the bog gods intended.

[greenouillee]

focal point (music video)

(youtube) (spotify)

[greenouillee]

I wish we had every single game on DS

Not 3DS just DS

[greenouillee]

So, I realise I should probably clarify that oh god my Magic Story takes are absolutely going to be coloured by the fact that Jace is, basically, Keir Starmer[1], and I, alas, live in Keir Starmer's Britain.

Seriously:

Arrogant presumption of that his way is Correct?

Propensity to do the galaxybrain thing over the obvious course of action, even where that is blatantly worse?

Also that, but for the high-status/masculine thing?

Being weirdly iconoclastic and radical in terms of the need to remake society?

Willing to embrace reactionary rhetoric to fulfil some grand notion of the greater good?[2]

Also just... absolutely incredible levels of "horny wife guy" going on?[3]

Footnotes under the readmore.

[1] Modulo the transphobia. Granted, I could see current Jace being one of those "okay, sure it sucks that he said this stuff about trans people, but have you seen how much he hates NIMBYs?" 2024 Labour voters, even though I vibe with the interpretation that Jace is trans people. (granted, I think it's more likely he voted for Rishi Sunak's Tories out of accelerationism, on account of not having twigged how stupid the Labour government would be and thus the accelerationism being unnecessary) [2] Jace is, I think, less sincere, but also, like, his utopian visions are straight up "Thanos after he realised that The Snap wouldn't actually leave behind a grateful universe", and I think the 'order' side of authoritarianism is increasingly his thing.

[3] Jace would absolutely let a billionaire friend buy Vraska designer clothes, and, like, for some reason Labour sources outright briefed that Keir and Victoria Starmer spent a good chunk of election night making out on the sofa? Heck, after Keir's first big conference speech as PM there were multiple front pages with it illustrated by the post-speech PDA. As much as there's clearly some sort of underlying same sort of mindset issue, this is lowkey the thing that really solidified the comparison to me.

[greenouillee]

You're obsessed with the rotting bloated corpse. It's like your Jungkook. Embarassing!

[greenouillee]

Need to introduce everyone to the humble Bierock. You like pierogi? You like savory filled bread? You look at a calzone and go, mm, yum? Meet my beautiful wife

This bitch will feed you, your family, your neighbors, your dog, your livestock, all in one batch. Have you ever made food and gone holy shit that was so good I wish I had more? Never fear. Bierocks will save you. This shit multiplies better than. A molecule that multiplies, fuck, I don't know. Glycolysis? Anyway. It's got sweet, it's got savory, it's got bread. It's most certainly German but it's so severely Old German that the river it's associated with is in Russia.

She'll never steer you wrong. You need to proof it twice. It's been in my family for generations. Not even vegan yeast from trader joes can fuck this baby up. She's invincible. You can have her any season. She loves you. You'll crack it open and start crying and you will love it back. Heats up in less than 30 seconds. Will inevitably cause you to pace by the oven like a panicked mother multiple times during the recipe. There is nothing better than having more filling than you do dough and getting to eat the filling with a spoon for lunch because baby this is a 3 hour labor of love and you fucking woke up at 12:35 P.M. in a panic. You will feel something ancient possess you while you bake. It's my grandmother, so sorry. No not your grandmother MY grandmother. It's ok. Let her cook. You are the ratatouille boy now and you're going to eat so fucking good for the next week believe me

[greenouillee]

saw this thread and really loved it but what i liked most is that it taught this kid that if a book isn’t for you, even if you really want to like it, it’s okay to stop reading it and come back to it another time when you are ready. there were so many books i slogged through as a kid because i felt like i had to prove that i could read them since i *loved* reading so i simply had to finish this book or i didn’t actually love to read. silly, really. the more kids who don’t ascribe to that thinking the better. really great of both the dad and the librarian for allowing the kid access to the stephen king book and allowing him make the decision on whether or not it was for him by himself.