Who Approved This Beauty Budget?

I’ve recently moved out and begun living alone. As fun as it is, something comes with it. Now, to you all the girls out there, you know what this means. Every month, I tell myself I’ll spend less. And then, somehow, there’s a eyebrow appointment, waxing that I’ve been putting off, a shampoo that’s run out, sunscreen I need to replace and that one hair appointment I’ve convinced myself is absolutely necessary. None of it feels like a big expense when I pay for it individually, but I am terrified to open my banking app and see what I’m actually spending. And the strangest part is, I don’t even think of most of it as spending anymore. It’s just the monthly cost of being “put together.”

The Bill No One Talks About

At the start of the month, we start with eyebrows, then wax and some root touch up. This is the rough cost of basic grooming women carry. Then there’s skincare, which never really has a fixed number because it keeps growing. A cleanser, serum, sheet mask, SPF- these are things you repurchase regularly. There are a million reasons we buy all this: your dermatologist recommends these products, or you just need it for yourself. If you want your hair coloured, a balayage, or a sculpting treatment chunck before we even open our phone bills or other routine bills we have to pay.

Here’s why we do it and how to fix this if you feel like you’re spending a bomb on your skincare.

The Fact That It’s Labelled As Optional

Here’s the part that really gets me. None of these is optional the way people pretend it is, which is why you get annoyed when someone tells you it’s unnecessary. “Technically”, you can skip the parlour. You can show up to your cousin’s sangeet with unthreaded brows, visible peach fuzz, and undone hair, but try it once, and you’ll notice a swarm of people asking, “Are you unwell?” or worse, “What happened to you?” 

Somewhere along all of this noise, you remind yourself that grooming is meant for you, the kind that makes you feel neat, settled, like you’ve got your act together.

The Cost That Hides In Plain Sight 

​We have an entire 18-page front-and-back list before we can get ready for an event. Along with beauty services, we face a million other things, like getting your nails and toes done, workouts, yoga, and wellness practices.

At some point, all this spending becomes invisible. No one can add a tabular column to their expense sheet named “being a woman.” It shows up as 100 small, reasonable-sounding purchases or one large purchase, and our mind tells us, “it’s okay to treat ourselves.” That’s exactly how the cost gets normalised: it becomes part of the routine, even when it never really disappears. 

What’s The Fix?

There isn’t a five-step solution here. But a few small things you can start doing now would definitely help. 

Research, identify and understand homegrown skincare brands at an affordable price point that do the job just as well. Try buying 1-2 items that visibly make a difference for you. This practice goes a long way.

This is a small, personal but effective fix. Start by figuring out which of these expenditures are genuinely for you and which ones you inherited. Buy the expensive kajal your mom uses if it truly makes you feel like yourself. Skip the monthly facial routine that your parents paid for earlier if you don’t have major events to attend that month. Skip the hair treatments you learnt about on Instagram if your hair feels fine after a wash, and save them for the bigger days of your life. However, you don’t need to skip everything to make a point. Just understand the difference between the upkeep you choose and what you learnt about.

But these are steps we need to take on our side. Being a girl isn’t expensive because we’re high maintenance; it’s because the world decided our baseline should be “put together” but never really understood how we got there.

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