The constant maintenance of womanhood

[MrsTerryPratchett]

Another thread about the pill got me thinking. Taking a pill every single day is tedious as well as a health issue.

But there are so many things women are supposed to do to 'maintain'.

Health is the pill as the obvious one. I know biology is a bastard so smears too. And breast exams.

Body. Waxing or trimming, hair being coloured and styled, face free of random hair.

Life. Wife work and house work and presents and school and appointments. Occasional DIY isn't like that.

I don't do 70% of the above BTW but I know women who do. And I know men would argue shaving but beards are now everywhere. A woman's work is never done I suppose.

And I think the body stuff is actually regressing for women. With more expectations of perfection requiring enormous cost and commitment. And it's worse for certain women. The expectations on black women and older women, plus teens is immense!

@KayKayWat

I'm not aware of any male equivalent to a WAG.

For starters.

Be brave and let some of it go. I realise now that whether I shave my legs every other day (as I would “need” to) or not, my life will still be the same. It doesn’t achieve anything to shave them as I’m wearing autumn clothing, my legs are not out so why am I doing it?

Also, instead of pretending everyone is beautiful-accept that beauty is subjective and not that important. Instead, invest time in improving things like your mental well-being, being relaxed in your own skin, doing hobbies or whatever it is that makes you pig-in-shit-happy

Babs Windsor
Madonna
Sure plenty more.

Certainly women with a lot of money + much younger/ better looking/ man is not uncommon.

Joan Collins

And like I say not much good on slebs so if I can think of a few examples then that says something!

@Holidaytan

This is nonsense. No one is forcing you to buy eye cream and make up. I use a basic moisturiser, flannel and water for my face and never wear makeup. I’m never short of admirers and have 17,000 followers on my Twitter who are mainly men (just to show, that if you’re saying we have to do these things for men, we totally don’t!)

I’ve not been on the pill for years, I ensure the chap I’m with takes precautions.
Tights etc can be expensive, but again, they’re a choice to buy.
Men traditionally pay more for dates etc so it’s swings and roundabouts……….

I'd put money on you being above average attractive.

@NiceGerbil

Footballers? Plenty are with partners they met before Megabucks.

And I'm not that up on celebrity gossip etc. But I've got a feeling many settle down with women who are famous and rich themselves.

Lol at next bit. Come on which clubs you said it lets hear it.

Love the idea that no way would anyone on here know places young women go to pick up wealthy men!

Can't be arsed to Google but they exist. 'Seeking Arrangement' is a very well known website. I'm not aware of any male equivalent.

@NiceGerbil

Babs Windsor Madonna Sure plenty more.

Certainly women with a lot of money + much younger/ better looking/ man is not uncommon.

It's massively uncommon. 😂

I'm not even going to bother arguing that women prioritise money more than men. Its only in recent years that women have worked like men, and even now it's much less common for women to be the main earner.

All else being equal, of course most women will pick the richer guy. Some make it a career choice. This is old news.

Its only in recent years that women have worked like men, and even now it's much less common for women to be the main earner.

I've been doing it for decades.

When you say 'like men' do you mean paid employment, possiblity of high pay etc?

Well yes. Here we have been barred from more positions with more power/ influence/ etc for ages. Variously though in (historical terms) pretty recent history.

No university
Barred from academia eg Mary anning
Lower pay for same job legal
Had to give up work when got married/ Pg
Women and children used to go down the coal mines- banned on modesty grounds
Pulled into work when needed and pushed out when not (eg munitions for war)
Our theories inventions discoveries have not been recorded/ learnt about like men's were
We weren't allowed credit in our own names until ?70s I think

We only recently are 'working like men' because we were stopped in the past. By male run government etc.

And we always worked. In all sorts of ways. For pay.

And then there's the unpaid work we've always borne the brunt of, for free.

Munitions

'They were the unsung heroines of World War II; the wives and mothers and teenage girls who clocked in daily to work in vast munitions factories, helping to make explosives, bullets, shells, bombs and war machines that would ensure victory. It was dangerous, dirty and exhausting work. They worked round the clock, often exposed to toxic, lethal chemicals. A factory accident could mean blindness, loss of limb - or worse. Many went home with acid burns, yellow skin or damaged hair, others were forced to leave their loved ones and move to live with strangers in unfamiliar surroundings. Frequently, their male bosses were coarse and unsympathetic.'

Mines

'As part of an investigation into working conditions in mines, Sub-Commissioner Samuel Scriven went into a Staffordshire, Great Britain shaft in 1841 expecting to find a place of work. Instead, he descended into hell. Following reports of women and children being killed in coal mining accidents at work, commissioners like Scriven headed into mines to see for themselves, and were appalled by what they found.

Quite apart from the children who labored in dangerous conditions, men and women worked side-by-side, stripped to the waist and sweating furiously in the heat. There was “something truly hideous and Satanic about it,” Scriven said—not least because some of the women, if they weren’t completely naked, were wearing trousers.

This, along with their bare breasts, was an affront to Victorian modesty. These young women would be “unsuitable for marriage and unfit to be mothers.” The Labor Tribune, which called itself the “Organ of the Miners,” went further still: “A woman accustomed to such work cannot be expected to know much of household duties or how to make a man’s home comfortable.”

Trousers were shocking. The Manchester Guardian called them “the article of clothing which women ought only to wear in a figure of speech,” the Daily News claimed that the “habitual wearing of the costume tends to destroy all sense of decency,” and even the miners union’ said they were a “most sickening sight.”'

So they banned it. The lost income was disasterous for families and communities.

Working like men = can you say what that means?

Women have worked like men, as NiceGerbil has blisteringly demonstrated.
But men have never laboured like women.

All the womansplaining is unnecessary. I'm basically saying that because men have historically been the main earners it has always been in women's interests to find a rich one. This is still engrained in our culture.

The joys of middle age.

DH: ooh, legs a bit prickly.
Me: Aye, your chin is rough, too.

One of the most robust findings in evolutionary psychology is the observation that men and women differ in the characteristics they prefer in potential mates. In study after study, in country after country, psychologists consistently find that men strongly prefer looks over resources, whereas women value resources over looks.

www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/talking-apes/201907/do-women-really-prefer-men-money-over-looks?amp

Women used to have to marry for money. With limited ways to make their own living and, at times, no legal ability to hold and inherit property, partnering up with a wealthy man could be the only way to find financial security. (Just listen to Amy’s speech in the new “Little Women” film adaptation.)

That was supposed to change as women entered the workforce in ever-greater numbers and became more educated than their male peers, in theory meaning women wouldn’t need to seek out higher-paid mates.

Except evidence suggests that they still do.

As Kay Hymowitz writes in an article for the conservative think tank the Institute for Family Studies, a recent study of heterosexual couples in Sweden shows that while women have become more likely to marry men with lower education levels than them, they still tend to marry men in higher pay grades.

What’s going on? The researchers thought the gender wage gap might be at work: If men make more than women, then you’d expect husbands, in general, to earn more than their wives. But when the researchers used a simulation to randomly create couples from the general population and compared those unions to the real couples they studied, random matching predicted that well-educated women would be the higher earner in the couple more often than was the case in the real couples they studied.

This suggests that “highly-educated women appear to have an especially strong preference for men who out-earn them.” (The researchers studied couples before they had children to rule out the effect of having children on work hours and income.)

www.politico.com/newsletters/women-rule/2020/02/07/why-do-women-prefer-richer-men-488275

I'm not sure it's even a bad thing. I just feel that too many people try and pretend reality is what they want it to be and ignore all evidence pointing to the contrary.

I don't think it's rocket science why women often prioritise looks more than men, and men prioritise financial gain. It's quite clearly what attracts the opposite sex.

Lol at that cnp.

I read it though! Did you read my two? What do you make of them?

Or was 'womansplaining' the sum risk to of your thoughts on those 2 examples that came to mind?

Anyway. Read it. Not impressed sorry.

1. Evolutionary psychology. No further comment needed.

1. Women had limited ability to make their own way, it says. Pretty dependent on men. Whose decision was that? Men. Why? Hmmmmm... The Taliban have banned women working as they did years ago. There must be something going on with this pattern...

1. Huge structural, social, economic norms/pressures/barriers to women in terms of work/ income. Babies of course. The dependence factor is still there. Not overt but entrenched.

1. Why the assumption that if women had good job etc they would follow the same pattern as men re high/ low pay? We're not men. That's a classic male as default/ standard/ norm for humans.

1. Conservative think tank.

1. I've read in news etc. Studies saying while men tend to say they like high earning/ highly educated/ v clever etc women. In practice they don't. Reasons suggested- threat to masculinity/ don't like feeling like the one who is 'better' as it were. I've also read that women who are v high earners are more likely to experience DV.

1. Given that. The article assumes it's the women who choose. All the time. Not the men. That's a bit biased isn't it?

That's what I think of that piece.

@KayKayWat

I don't think it's rocket science why women often prioritise looks more than men, and men prioritise financial gain. It's quite clearly what attracts the opposite sex.

Totally!

And that's why boy bands are made up of overweight middle aged men with expensive watches and their bank balance printed on their shirt

And that's why boy bands are made up of overweight middle aged men with expensive watches and their bank balance printed on their shirt.

I'm not sure what relevance entertainment acts aimed at teenage girls have.

I just don't understand women moaning about societal expectations of beauty when it's women that are in control of whether they're followed. They're only expected because people do them. If women stopped doing them they would cease to become expected.

The reason why we do all this stuff is to raise our 'value' and attract a higher value male, whether that be in terms of looks or wealth. It's still perfectly possible to completely eschew fitness/personal grooming etc and date a fat neckbeard instead (because you're obv not going to pull a Channing Tatum lookalike this way). However, most women don't want to do this.

Admittedly it's easier for men to be overweight and attract a traditionally attractive mate if they have the money, but again this is because we entertain this. The reality is that most women nowadays don't identify as feminists and these are who the complaining minority are really up against, not men.

But I have a feeling we're not going to agree on this.

Funny to take Amy in little women as an example... while that's what some women may have done, it's pretty clear the writer didn't condone that attitude. Jo, and Nan (in jo's boys) are the counter-examples. And Amy rejected Fred, the man she contemplated marrying for his money.

In Jane Austen, (gentle)women did marry for money - but so did men.

' It's still perfectly possible to completely eschew fitness/personal grooming etc and date a fat neckbeard instead'

Eh?

What is a neckbeard?

Are you saying that a beautiful woman with a great figure is rendered unattractive to men if she doesn't do 'fitness' (structured exercise?).. And ignores ALL grooming is it? While the threads about makeup etc not washing!

So I think you're saying to paraphrase.

That fat smelly women will have trouble pulling? Much less trouble than fat smelly men though, surely? A difference that enrages incel types ..

And taking in context of thread. You think a beautiful young woman with a lovely figure (plenty young women have without doing formal exercise). Who doesn't wear makeup or shaves legs etc. Will have trouble pulling? Come off it!

And assuming fat neckbeard means v unattractive. And maybe smells etc.If he's got lots of money. Then he will still have a host of beautiful women trying to share him. Right?

Kay- no I don't think we will agree.

Given that you keep throwing out this and that. Work. Pieces that support your view that are questionable to say the least.

And responses say what about this and that.

And rather than discussing in a back and forth fashion.

You ignore the responses to your points and just move onto something else.

We will never get close to a middle ground even. If you don't bother with addressing the responses to things that you brought into the conversation.