How long did you spend in front of a mirror this morning? If you woke up in Zadie Smith’s house, it had better not have been more than 15 minutes. Speaking at the Edinburgh international book festival, Smith shared why she has given her seven-year-old daughter, Kit, the stringent quarter-of-an-hour limit: “I explained it to her in these terms: you are wasting time, your brother is not going to waste any time doing this. Every day of his life he will put a shirt on, he’s out the door and he doesn’t give a shit if you waste an hour and a half doing your makeup.”
Some might find it shocking for a seven-year-old to be aware of makeup at all, but in this brave new world of teenybopper YouTube strobing tutorials garnering views in the millions, it is often reality. As Smith remarked, “From what I can understand from this contouring business, that’s like an hour and a half, and that is too long.” According to a 2016 survey, the average British woman spends 38 minutesputting on her face every day. Over the course of a week, that is just less than four and a half hours; in one year, that makes nearly 10 days (and nights). Over a makeup-wearing lifetime (say, 75 years), that is two years. Two whole years. Just think how many glass ceilings we might have smashed if we hadn’t been so busy with blusher.
This is not the first time the so-called hair-and-makeup tax has hit the spotlight. In 2015, during a Facebook Q&A session, Hillary Clinton answered this question: “Every morning, as my boyfriend zips out the door and I spend 30-plus minutes getting ready, I wonder about how the hair-and-makeup tax affects other women – especially ones I admire in high-pressure, public-facing jobs.” Clinton’s response: “Amen sister. You’re preaching to the choir. It’s a daily challenge. I do the best I can – and as you may have noticed, some days are better than others!”
But with the demand for men’s makeup on the rise, we could hypothesise that this tax disparity is set to shrink – because men will spend more time on their appearance rather than women spending less. Just think of the time it must take Trump to maintain his skin tone and signature coiffure – perhaps he is doing his bit for gender equality after all.
Read more at theguardian.com
