Okay, but hold on for a second, because this is a serious fucking question.
Bernie is, of course, right – no one SHOULD be subject to criticism like that. But not being subject to intense scrutiny over our appearance is simply not an option for women in professional environments. It just isn’t.
And the thing is, this isn’t a small issue for women. This is an economic issue, it’s an investment-of-time issue, it’s a quality of life issue.
I’ll give you an example, and for this example, I’ll use myself and a mythical dude named Steve. This mythical dude named Steve would be almost exactly like my husband, who also worked at a bank, except not in the big-and-tall section where suits cost so much money you think they were hand-sewn by magical elves.
Mythical dude named Steve and I are both bankers for a bank. Let’s it call it Wagontrain. Just for funsies. We both make a nice round sum of money, say, 50K a year. (We’ll come back to that in a moment, but for the moment let’s assume we both make the same amount of money.)
Let’s even say that Steve and I spend the same amount of money on suits that I did every year, which, again, in my experience, isn’t going to be the case. But let’s just say we’re spending the same exact amount of money on suits.
Now, let’s say that in order to be considered a promotable employee, we both have to maintain a certain level of grooming. For Steve, that’s going to be getting a decent haircut, shaving, wearing deodorant – pretty basic stuff. And if he is decently groomed, even somewhat slightly slovenly, he’s likely to be judged on the quality of work he does.
But me? I’m going to have to – in a professional environment like that, and again in my direct and personal experience – in order to be taken seriously, I’m going to have to maintain a manicure ($15/weekly), get my hair professionally cut, styled, and dyed (when I worked in banking, the prevailing style all of the women got cost about $60 more than a man’s haircut, every six weeks), wear makeup (let’s be generous and call that $25 a month, but that’s pretty generous). I’ll also need to wear jewelry, so let’s give me a jewelry budget of $25 a month also, just for round numbers.
Oh. And let’s not forget shoes. Where Steve the banker will get two pairs of shoes, maybe three if he really likes them, I’ll need to continually buy new pairs of shoes. I don’t really want to, but I am going to be judged if I keep trying to wear the same pair of shoes all the time. Let’s say I only buy 5 pairs in a year, and he buys 3 every two years. Again for the sake of argument, let’s call every pair of shoes $50. So in one year he’s bought 1.5 pairs of shoes, so that’s $75, and I’ve bought $250 pairs of shoes, so I’ve spent $175 more than he has.
None of this is mythical, by the way. This is all based, again, on my personal experience. I’d get coached at Wagontrain for my appearance not being ‘promotable.’ I got sat down by an upper-level female manager and given a walkthrough on professional dress and appearance at the management levels, what they expected to be able to promote me to management
So at the end of that year, I’ll have gotten my hair done 8 times at $60 more than Steve’s haircuts, I’ll have gotten, let’s say 50 manicures (maybe I made a couple of those manicures last more than one week), I’ll have spent my jewelry and makeup budgets as we noted above, and I’ll have bought those shoes.
(8 * 60) + (50 * 15) + (12 * 25) + (12 * 25) + 175= $2005
Wow! I’ve just spent FOUR PERCENT of my GROSS (not net) income on grooming, and more than that, four percent MORE than Steve, just to meet the basic grooming standards that we’re both expected to meet. The standards just happen to be way different and far more strenuous for me.
Now let’s walk that back a little bit more. Let’s assume that instead of us making the same amount, that I make 40K while Steve makes 50K. That’s about 80 percent of 50K - so pretty close to the national wage gap (for white women - remember that Black and Latina women will make significantly less, on average). My grooming standards haven’t changed for this job – we’re just adjusting for my gender. Suddenly that $2000 is 4.4 percent of my income, and again, 4.4 percent MORE than Steve has to spend.
But wait – there’s more. Women in professional environments spend an average of 55 minutes per day on their appearance. Assuming Steve spends 20 minutes getting showered, shaved, and putting on his suit, that’s 35 minutes more per work day.
At 22 working days per month, 12 months a year, 35 more minutes is… ((22 * 12) * 35)/60 = 154 hours of our lives, or, put another way, 6.41 days.
That doesn’t count the hours spent in the salon, the hours spent getting our nails done – and my time in a salon was nothing compared to the investment of time, pain, chemicals and care some of my Black coworkers have to put in, in order to maintain “professional” appearances. That’s something I don’t feel really qualified to speak further on, but I am completely aware that grooming regimens are far more strenuous and costly for women of color than they are for white women.
So, when that reporter is asking Bernie if he thinks it’s “fair” that news focuses more on Hillary’s hair than his, they’re not asking about an unimportant issue where women are concerned. They’re literally asking about an issue that eats 4 percent - at minimum - of our income, and literally almost two percent of the time out of every year we live. Women are judged on their appearance far more than men as compared to the job performance they actually put forth.
That’s an economic and quality-of-life issue, and it affects women at every socioeconomic level differently, but it definitely affects us all.