I went to a curly hair salon and was very skeptical as they talked me through their seven-step technique, but then my hair looked amazing and now I have to decide whether I want to spend an extra half hour a day on pinning and scrunching. This would be 182 hours a year of hair upkeep.
I have done beauty math before and decided it's better/less expensive to, e.g., never wear makeup and then when you do on that one blue moon everyone is like "YOU LOOK SO NICE" whereas if you wear it all the time then you're basically spending time and money just so people don't tell you how tired you look if you take a day off.
@yaelwrites I guess I would fall more on the side of the level of effort you are willing to put in for your own satisfaction, and less strictly for the benefit/approval of others, but that's just me talking from the privileged male standpoint without the same cultural pressures.
I also tend to think there is a certain point after which exercise is no longer for someone's health and instead is for vanity, and I'm old school (and privileged?) enough I guess, to think that vanity is not a virtue.
@kyle I think we can trick ourselves into thinking something is for our own satisfaction when we’d never do it if we were home alone that week or whatever
@yaelwrites I think that's a good thought experiment to weed it out. For instance I work from home and rarely am on video conferences, yet I still shave somewhat regularly for my own satisfaction in my appearance.
Of course when I know I *will* be on a video conference I ensure I'm relatively cleanshaven beforehand.
@kyle but you don't live alone, right?
@yaelwrites True. That could be a factor too.
@kyle I do remember doing some camping with a friend and we were only embarrassed when we stopped by a McDonalds or whatever on the way back.