The Great Skincare Swindle

How many cosmetic and cleaning products are you using on yourself? Do you know what they all do? We're becoming increasingly aware of what we put into our bodies, but not really thinking about what we put onto them.

The billion-squillion dollar cosmetics and skincare industry is genius. It offers a panacea to youthfulness and beauty and we throw our money at it, slathering our faces and bodies in beautiful smelling chemicals, without a clue what they do. This isn't new - from the Ancient Egyptians onwards we've been slapping on dubious products - lead, arsenic and belladonna have all been used in the pursuit of beauty.

I looked at the products I use on a normal day, and I recalled what I used 10 years ago, when I was 30 years old, and 10 years before that. It doesn't look like I use that many things, until you think about the fact that I'm putting all those things on my skin every day. And this is without the moisturisers, foot scrubs, face masks, hair dye and foundations I might want to use occasionally, when I actually make an effort...

A typical day in the life of my bathroom cabinet when I was 20 (basically just kept clean), 30, and then 40.

I think I'm reasonably low maintenance, but I've gone from using four products a day to 16. At this rate of increase (doubling every 10 years) I will be using 64 different products every day when I'm 60!

What do we want from skincare and cosmetics?

Women are complex always-changing creatures, so I can only speak for me, now. At 40, I want to look pretty, smell nice and preserve my attractiveness for as long as possible. I also want to do these things within my means and without damaging myself or the planet.

What do these things actually do? I still remember the time I went into the Body Shop and a sales woman started telling me about the special particles in something or other - sales patter masquerading as science.

We know that make-up works, because we can see the results immediately. Applied correctly, it makes us more attractive. We know that soap, shampoo and deodorant make us less smelly. Conditioner makes hair softer and easier to brush. What about the other things? I have no idea if the moisturiser I put on my face is actually protecting it, or what it's supposed to be protecting it from - damage and dust from the outside world, or the effort of holding up my face for 40 years?

Nine steps to loveliness

I looked up what the beauty gurus recommend I should be doing to my face every day, now that I'm 40. I found The Ultimate Skincare Routine for your 40s (written by two people who make a living from selling and writing about beauty products). It's pretty typical - there's a lot of stuff like this out there. You're supposed to do all these steps twice a day, with variations for morning and evening. I've paraphrased them for you:

1. Cleanse - wash your face with chemicals
2. Cleanse again - with some different chemicals (in case you missed a bit)
3. Tone (rub some kind of alcohol on your face)
4. Exfoliate (scrub in case the cleansing wasn't good enough)
5. Antioxodise with serum - very concentrated moisturising stuff that no one seems able to explain
6. Retinol - helps regenerate old skin cells or something
7. Eye cream - because you're probably feeling a bit sore now
8. Moisturise - put back the grease that you just took out
9. Face oil (apparently different to moisturiser) - gives you something to cleanse off tomorrow

Do normal people really do all this every day? I do just three of these and it feels like a lot. When are you supposed to find time to do anything else? And it must cost a bomb!

There is so much written about skincare products, it's almost impossible to find any proper answers about what these things are - when you try, you are just deluged with articles claiming they are the best things ever without really having any explanation of what they do. Where 'research' has been done, it seems to involve giving a bunch of women a cream and asking them if they like it. I haven't yet found anything to say whether or not any of this stuff actually works.

Destroying the planet

Perhaps my biggest concern about all this consumerism is the toll it takes on the planet. There's the packaging for starters - a lot of plastic. Of course I recycle, but it would be a lot better if I didn't buy these things in the first place. If I want small bottles to carry around, then I buy large bottles and decant them into smaller reusable ones. I have switched to shampoo bars which cuts out plastic bottles and I use soap not shower gel, which is much more economical on packaging. But there's still a lot of plastic.

Then there's the products themselves. The ones with the exfoliating beads wash into our water supply and damage plants and animals (avoid them). Then there's animal testing. I Google cosmetics that don't test on animals before I buy, but invariably these brands aren't available on my small-town high street. I want to buy this stuff in a shop, not online, because that way I can try it on and see what I'm getting, and also save the ridiculous amount of packaging it's apparently necessary to post this stuff.

It's hard to find soap that doesn't contain palm oil. This stuff is an environmental disaster that has led to epic deforestation with species like chimpanzees losing their homes and therefore their lives. I don't want to kill chimps so I'm trying to find products without palm oil. It's almost impossible and made even more difficult because palm oil masquerades as other things on packaging (palm kernel, palmitate, palmate...)

All the mainstream brands of soap that I have found contain palm oil. I ventured into Lush (for the first time) to buy a bar of palm oil free soap. It cost me £6.70. That is ridiculous. I just want to wash my body without orphaning any chimps. Does that really involve paying nearly £7 for a bar of soap? What did we do before they invented palm oil?

Destroying my body

So I'm tripping along smearing moisturiser into my face and then I see something on Facebook about cosmetic products linking to cancer. Because what are these things made of? Chemicals. So we're smearing chemicals all over our faces and bodies. And thinking this is a good idea. Far from giving us the appearance of eternal youth, they may actually be hastening death.

If we follow the nine steps above that so many skincare gurus are telling us then we are smearing no fewer than none types of unknown chemical into our faces every day, probably more if we use different products in the morning and evening. On top of that there's the washing products - shower gel, shampoo, deodorant, and of course the make-up, made of more chemicals.

What the great skincare swindle means for all of us

To summarise, if you are a woman then you are probably spending a lot of your time and money smothering your face and body with chemicals that could not only damage you, but are very definitely damaging the world around you. I want to be beautiful. You want to be beautiful. But maybe we need to be more sensible about our pursuit of beauty. And apply a healthy squirt of scepticism to the skincare and cosmetics industry, before we hand over all our hard-earned money.

Gender pay gap

Are women worth less than men?

All companies with more than 250 employees had to report what they pay men and women this month. The figures show that eight out of ten organisations of this size in the UK have a gender pay gap. I still haven't decided if this is just depressing, or if making the information so public is a sign of change. 

What the numbers mean

This means that women are generally paid less than women, but the figures highlight where the biggest inequalities lie, both in terms of sectors and companies. It isn’t about paying men and women different amount of money for doing the same job – that’s illegal. What it is about is that if you're a woman in all probability you take home less money than most of the men you know. It's not that your employer is paying you less than the men, but it could be that it's harder for you to get to the top-paying jobs. 

The Guardian explains the data in more detail, describing it as ‘a blunt tool’. The figures are good at giving a sense of the kind of pay gap between men and women, and how that is expressed across different organisations. But you can’t use them to say that any one individual is being paid less than they should be because of their gender.

The Guardian also has a fun game: 'When does your company stop paying women in 2018?' It's used the figures to convert the gender pay gap into the number of days women effectively work for free. You can type in the name of your company and it will tell you from what date in the year you stop getting paid. It's funny now, in April. Come the fag end of the year, when most of us are effectively working unpaid in comparison to the men we know, I expect it will be more depressing. Did I say fun?

Photo by Hamza Butt via Flickr Creative Commons

The figures are across men and women in all roles. That means if a company only has men at senior level then it will come out as having a big gender pay gap. A small number of companies have a gender pay gap in favour of women - usually because they have more women than men in the top jobs.

Working out what we're worth

The landscape of work is vastly complex. It’s hard to work out whether I am paid less than a man for doing my job, because nobody else does my job. And there are millions of people out there like me, who work in companies that employ a single person to do a unique job. Comparing these jobs to each other is hugely difficult. 

Salaries are decided based on lots of factors, including:

• Geography – where you are in the country
• What the organisation pays other people at this level  
• What the sector pays other people doing this or a related job
• What’s available in the budget
• How much you asked for (you're supposed to negotiate)
• Manager’s discretion (including much they want you and how good they think you are)

What reinforces this culture, is that we’re not supposed to talk about how much we earn. A combination of Britishness and contractual obligation prevents us from discussing actual numbers. And it’s in our employers’ interest to keep it this way. So like most other workers in the UK, I have no idea how much the people who sit around me make. They could all be on six figures, or getting half my salary, for all I know and they will think the same of me.

Do people take me less seriously because I’m a woman? Am I supposed to ask for more money at some point? Has my gender pushed me into making career mistakes?

Why in 2018 do women still earn less than men? 

This is the million dollar question (literally). 

Sometimes I'm sure it's about the employers, valuing women less than men and expecting less of us, sometimes it's the employees, lacking confidence to negotiate on salary or go for the top jobs that we're just as capable as men of doing.

But the two biggest reasons that most research throws up are type of job and child-rearing. 

Women predominate in sectors that pay less - care work, teaching, charities, the arts, while men predominate in better paid areas such as finance and engineering.

And women are more likely than men to step back from work when they have children. Whether by going part time or taking time off, or just keeping their career where it is for a while, while our children are young, we're not progressing all that much. At the same time our male peers are continuing to move forward, and so leaving us behind. For this reason men are much less likely to be in jobs for which they're overqualified than women. And while our salaries are stagnating, theirs continue to grow. 

It's not about the money...

For a lot of us, work isn’t entirely about the money. Where I work, it definitely isn’t. I've wondered if I could get paid loads more money using my skills in a job I hated. But what would be the point of that? If I’m going to spend that many hours of my life doing something, I’d rather it was something I enjoyed. If I have enough money to live comfortably – pay the bills, go on holiday and keep myself in lipstick and literature, then I’m pretty happy. I don’t want a massive house and I don’t want to buy loads of unnecessary stuff to fill it.

But where the money does come into it is value. It puts a price on my head and tells me what my company think I’m worth. And so if I’m badly paid, I feel that they don’t value me very much at all – either because they undervalue me, or because I’m really not worth very much.

I would never take or leave a job for the salary. But I have been in a job where the salary was much lower than I'd come to expect for my skills and experience, and I'm sure the lack of financial value placed on my contribution to the company contributed to my overall sense of dissatisfaction. I didn't stay long. 

Where next?

If women are getting paid less than men, our employers are telling us they don’t value us as much as men, and that we’re not worth as much as a man. We need to find the confidence to go for the top jobs, and ask for the top salaries because we know we are worth them. We also need to educate our sons and daughters, teaching them that there is room for them both in the arts, sciences, caring, teaching and financial professions. If we're stuck with pay inequality, there's no reason our daughters should be. 

Lipstick to success

The real reason women spend so much time and effort getting ready is that we are more likely to succeed if we look attractive, whilst for men it makes little difference. So says an article in the Washington Post this week.

It's not what you've got...

The article is based on a research paper. It showed that:

• Pretty people (men and women) earn more money (no surprise) than not so pretty people
• Grooming has a bigger affect on women's salaries than men's
• Less attractive but more well-groomed women earned significantly more, on average, than attractive or very attractive women who weren’t considered well-groomed.

So it's not just what you've got - it's what you do with it. So long as what you do with it is expensive clothes and mascara. It's a sad finding. But it probably doesn't come as much of a surprise to most of us.

Bad Hair Day by Shena Tschofen via Flickr Creative Commons

I'm not the kind of girl who can't answer the door without three coats of mascara and a full manicure, but I do wear makeup, every day. I want to feel I go out of the door looking my best. As I put on my eyeliner before heading out to Tesco, I joke (to myself) that you never know who you're going to run into in the frozen veg aisle. Prince Charming could just be waiting for me to pick up my peas, and I want to look my best, as our eyes lock over the Mexican beanburgers, and our finger brush across the Quorn. But enough of my supermarket fantasies.

Creative self expression?

I think there probably are women whose main aim in life is to be beautiful and stylish, who love nothing more than shopping for new clothes and beauty products, and piling them all on. And there are some women who feel happiest in jeans and a fleece, with no interest in makeup, who don't want to be bothered with worrying about what to wear every day. Like most of my sisters, I'm somewhere between the two.

This research into the links between personal grooming and success poses the question, is the greater effort, in time and money, that women spend on their appearance a form of 'creative self expression' or is it something more sinister - that women work at looking attractive if they want to succeed, while men can just focus their efforts on the work?

A lot of women, myself included, really enjoy the act of getting ready for a night out, putting together an outfit and painting our faces to project a particular image of ourselves. Are we doing it because we want to feel good about ourselves, to look younger, to compete with other women, to look alluring to men, to look pretty, sexy, rich, smart, successful, or even a bit dumb?

Behind the lipstick

I've heard all sorts of theories about makeup, including that putting on lipstick makes our mouths look vulva-like and put men in mind of sex (as if men need reminding of sex). And I've written before about beauty product manufacturers blinding us with bad science, telling us we need more "particles" (seriously).

I think the truth our compunction to beautify ourselves is vastly more complicated, incorporating a range of social, cultural, personal and genetic factors. And what's true for one woman isn't necessarily true for all of us. The motivations behind these acts of personal grooming are complex. And wearing more or less make-up isn't the key to shattering the glass ceiling.

What would happen if we all threw away our lipstick and went to work with full facial nudity? For years I went to work slap-free so the thought doesn't bother me, but it's unthinkable that women as a group would do this, makeup is such a central part of feminine culture.

There's no panacea, and wearing more mascara certainly isn't the answer, as it's only likely to perpetuate the problem. Our challenge is to wear as much or as little as we want, and still succeed at whatever we want to succeed at. It would be good for female success to be about success, and not just looking pretty.

Read The real reason that so many women have to spend so much time getting ready.

Accepting single mums (and Madonna)

"Papa don't preach, I'm in trouble deep... I'm gonna keep my baby" sang Madonna, in 1986. A defiant song of a young woman who got pregnant and decided to keep the baby and become a single mum, standing up to pressure from her family, friends and community.

It's really hard being a single mum, but now that we accept them, our society is in a much better place than it was 30 years ago.

Broke, lonely, tired and a bit crazy

Being a single mum is pretty shit in a lot of ways:

• We are likely to have less money than our loved-up buddies
• We can be lonely because there's no one to talk to once the kids are in bed, and it's harder for us to go out than mums in two-parent families (partly because we have less money)
• We constantly have to make tough decisions on our own
• We're probably even more tired than the other tired mums, because we're one person doing a two-person job

All this means that we're also more likely to experience mental health problems. Broke, lonely, stressed, knackered and a bit crazy - that sums it up.

Madonna By Olavtenbroek (Own work)
[CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

Where did the single mums come from?

These are problems shared by a lot of people - there are around 1.8 million single mums in the UK.

Not very long ago there weren't many single mums (the numbers crept up steadily from the 1970s to the 1990s). That wasn't because people were holding off having sex until they were married. Nor was it because couples were better at staying together through thick and thin. It was for the chilling reason that they weren't allowed to keep their babies. They were pressurised on all sides, by family and society, to give up their children. Because being a single mum was seen as a really bad thing. If you wanted to adopt a child, it was much easier to get a baby then that it is now, because of all these would-be-single-mothers. We know now that it's better for children to stay with their mothers if they can.* And now they can.

Papa Don't Preach has less resonance today than it did in 1986. It's still a tough choice for any young woman who finds herself unexpectedly pregnant and alone. But it's a choice they're allowed to make, because being a single mum is acceptable. It's not an easy road - it can be pretty shit. But we're not outcasts (even if the Daily Mail want us to be). The fact that so many of us exist means our society is better, in one way, than it was 30 years ago. It has become so acceptable, that some women, who don't have a partner, choose to embark on parenthood alone.

Impact on children

All parents worry, I know they do. But as a single mum (and Grade A worrier) I constantly worry about the impact of our living situation. How will it affect my daughter, living with a parent who is constantly broke, lonely, tired and a bit crazy? What will happen when she gets older and I can't afford to give her everything her friends have? Will she be lonely, just living with me? Do I make the wrong decisions about her upbringing because I don't have anyone to help me decide? And my worst fear - what if I die in the night and she wakes up and there's no one there?

It's not helped by the fact that if the child of a single mother does anything remarkable then the media will depict them as struggling from a deprived background against the odds. The implication is that if you just live with your mum, then it's remarkable if you ever get anywhere. And if you do stray from the path of virtue, well that's just to be expected of a child from a broken home. No wonder Madonna's dad wasn't impressed.

The fact is that children of single parents don't grow horns - they look the same as everyone else. Some of them do great things and some of them don't. Maybe it is a little harder for them, but a lot of people have some adversity in their lives. I'm just crossing my fingers, doing my best, and hoping it will be alright.

As far as I know, Madonna didn't follow her anthem to impending single motherhood with any ditties about how the baby turned out, and he/she would be turning 30 about now. Hopefully they're not a total psycho.

* Actually I wrote a PhD thesis showing that we've known for at least 200 years that it was better for babies to stay with their mothers. But it was only recently that we started to act on it.

Do we need International Women's Day?

International Women's Day happened this week. This is how I marked the occasion:

• Woke up in the house that I own (just me)
• Dressed in the clothes that I wanted to wear (and a bit of make-up)
• Drove my own car
• Went to work
• Paid for stuff, using a debit card for the bank account in my name and the money I earned through my job

These are really basic, boring things (sorry if this is a bit dull). But many women can't own their own homes, wear what they want, drive a car, have their own bank account and money, go out alone or make decisions about their own lives.

Photo by Kris Keslak via Flickr Creative Commons

I'm not trying to be smug, honest. I'm just trying to make the point that one reason we still need an International Women's Day is that for millions of women around the world, including some in the UK, the kind of things I did on Tuesday would be unthinkable. 

For women who don't think they are feminists (who are unlikely to be reading my blog, let's face it) or that we need a special Day for women that isn't Mother's Day, I just want to know, did you drive your car today? did you buy something without getting your husband's permission? Because without feminism, and days like these, that wouldn't be happening. 

When you can do all these things, it's easy to think that we've made it, that women have equality, because I feel pretty equal, doing as I please, driving my car and paying for my stuff. But even if you think that we've made it in the UK (and I don't), there's still some way to go. Here are some more reasons why we still need International Women's Day.

Beat discrimination - use your boyfriends' razor

If you always suspected that women were paying more for stuff than men, then it turns out you were right. Research for the Times newspaper has revealed that women are charged more money than men for products that are practically identical. Men pay almost half the price that we do on jeans, toiletries, and even stationery.

Identical razors that differed only in colour are sold at 31p each to men and 19p to women. The difference is that one is orange and one is pink. Pink - especially for girls, see? We wouldn't want to put anything to harshly-coloured next to our skin when we are alone in the bathroom.

This is 'price discrimination' - where identical or largely similar items are sold at different prices by the same provider in different markets.

Photo by Edward Conde via Flickr Creative Commons

Price discrimination for children

The most sinister of these findings was the gender price difference for children's toys. A pink girls' scooter was found to be £5 more expensive in pink than in blue.

Discriminating against children is horrible. As a parent you may choose to buy the cheaper and perfectly scootable blue scooter for your little one. But children can put their parents under immense pressure. If she wants the pink scooter her friends have got, then giving her a blue one just won't cut it.

In the past it was more expensive to have daughters than sons, because when the girls grew up you had to pack them off with a dowry to get married, while the boys could earn their keep. Now we can all pay our way, but again girls are more expensive because their stuff comes with a higher price tag. It's another step backwards in gender equality.

What can we do?

Retailers exist to make money by selling products. They want to make as much money as they can, so they calculate their prices based on:

1. What it costs them to make the product
2. How much the average customer is willing to pay for the product

The price generally will fall somewhere between 1 and 2, preferably as close to 2 as possible, so the retailer makes more money. So the reason that women are charged higher prices is simply that we are apparently prepared to pay more for stuff than men are.

Retailers are discriminating against our gender, by charging us more money for basically the same products. But what makes it worse, is that we are prepared to pay the extra. If we weren't, then no one would ever buy the pink razors. So the shops would either make them the same price as the other ones, or stop selling them altogether.

Stop discrimination one razor at a time

MPs are challenging retailers about price discrimination, and hopefully this will lead to some changes. But as female consumers, we have a responsibility too.

Stop buying the pink razors. They're exactly the same as the orange ones, but by agreeing to pay more for them you are supporting the retailers in price discrimination. STOP BUYING THE PINK RAZORS.

We can't be expected to buy men's clothes and perfumes - our bodies are different. But by borrowing your boyfriend's razor you are single handedly making a stand against price discrimination, And he'll never know.

Photo by Billie via Flickr Creative Commons

Using our bodies against us

Back in May I wrote It's All About the Money, on the lack of women on UK banknotes, following the news that Winston Churchill would be deposing Elizabeth Fry - the only woman, on the new £5 notes.

The campaign to reinstate women on our banknotes was led by journalist and feminist Caroline Criado-Perez.

As a result of her campaign she received rape and death threats, via Twitter, and has now shut down her account.

I'm not going to talk about her motivation for doing that - it's not as simple as being chased away, and she explains it herself, here. But I want to talk about the results of the campaign, the nature of the threats and what this means.

The Austen tenner

In July this year the Bank of England announced that the new £10 note would feature Jane Austen.

Since my blog, written in May, provided a random list of five women who might be suitable candidates for the face of the British banknote, and Austen was one of them, I take full credit for this.*

The Bank of England clearly read Rude Nasty Girl and chewed over my suggestions, before remembering that Colin Firth really did look lovely coming out of that lake, all credit to Miss Austen, and so decided to go with her.

Criado-Perez took a more balanced view - she thanked the Bank of England for listening and described the announcement as "a brilliant day for women and a fantastic one for people power".

Is it about feminism?

At its heart, I'm not sure how much Criado-Perez's Twitter harassment is a feminist issue. It's a symptom of intolerance and of the power that the internet provides, giving a public platform to air all kinds of views, no matter how unpleasant.

Feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian had a similar experience when she drew attention to sexism in video games and had to disable comments on YouTube.

It suggests that there are elements of our society who can't accept freedom of thought and views opposed to their own.

You may not agree that Jane Austen is a suitable candidate for a UK banknote, but there are better ways of expressing this than menacing someone who stood up for what they believed.

Sexist threats

However, the nature of the threats Criado-Perez and Sarkeesian received, which covered graphic sexual violence and rape, is a feminist issue because it makes use of her femaleness to harass her.

If you want to attack someone, attack the substance of what they say, not their vagina. You may succeed in as much as you upset and unsettle them, but your argument won't hold a lot of weight.

It's a symptom of a sick and sexist society when a woman who speaks out has the parts of her female body used against her. And it's scary that there are still men in the world who think that this is the best way to 'shut the bitch up' - that she needs shutting up less because she doesn't agree with them than because she's a woman who doesn't agree with them.

It speaks of an innate belief in the superiority of the male body and intellect, and its right to dominate. It's shocking that their are some people - albeit a very small minority - who still retain this belief. Maybe that's something that feminism will never win completely.

* Of course, it's perfectly possible that the Bank of England had planned to do this all along - it seems pretty stupid to me that they would actually bring out an entire new range of banknotes with absolutely no representation of women. Then, in the wake of the shit storm, they brought their announcement forward. But maybe I am giving them more credit than they are due. 

Is feminism for educated middle class women who want to feel important?

Today I read the following comment on the internet: 'Feminism is all about educated middle class women and their need to feel important.' I am considering this comment.

By Iago4096 via Wikimedia Commons

Internet comments

Oddly (I think) the comment was on an article about feminism, on the Guardian's Women's section. It seems strange to me that you would bother reading this section at all if you disliked feminism. Personally, I find it difficult enough to keep up with the sections of the media I am interested in, let alone finding time for those I'm not.

But then, there's something about internet comment spaces that seems to attract an awful lot of detractors, who deliberately seems to seek out people and ideas at which to hurl abuse. 

This comment isn't abusive at all. It's a perfectly valid view, if a bit snide. It's not nearly in the league of the kind of hate that I talked about the feminist video games critic Anita Sarkeesian receiving last week. 

What is feminism for?

Certainly I am educated, middle class and a woman. And I would quite like to feel important (wouldn't everyone?), although I can't say I do. But I have a voice, so I'm going to use it to shout (or at least argue) for the things I believe in.

Feminism is about equality, calling for the same rights and opportunities as men. In the cosy middle class UK we're pretty well off in this respect, but this hasn't always been the case, and it doesn't mean we're finished with feminism - there's still a bit of a way to go. Outside the UK, in less well off countries, there's a long way to go. Feminism still has a lot to offer. 

Ch. Chusseau-Flaviens [Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons

Middle class origins

Feminism came from the educated middle classes. Emmeline Pankhurst and her cronies were mainly middle and upper class. Well of course they were, working class women were too busy trying to get by and feed their families, to involve themselves in politics, although as the campaign went on, support across the classes grew. Here's an interesting article about working class women in the suffrage movement.

Feminism in the 20th century developed from a campaign for basic rights into an intellectual movement, albeit one that still campaigns for basic rights. It's proponents - women like Simone de Beauvoir and later Germaine Greer were middle class intellectuals. 

After the 1960s more and more women from all classes have taken the opportunity to embrace equality in more practical ways, having their own bank accounts, jobs, cars - all things that we may take for granted and not consider particularly feminist, but which a lot of women in the world today wouldn't dare to dream of. 

And although these things might have come out of the middle classes, they certainly didn't stay there. Maybe middle class women like me have the luxury of being able to sit around reading, writing and discussing feminism, but women across all classifications are taking advantage of the opportunities it's given us. 

Is feminism middle class?

So is feminism middle class? If you still believe the antiquated class system, then yes, feminism is most discussed, by name, among middle class educated women. 

But its practical impact - giving women rights, freedoms and opportunities, is felt and used across all demographics.

Many women don't consider themselves feminists, but they would find the idea absurd that they should give up their job and car and put any money they own entirely into the safekeeping of their father/husband/brother. But that's where we'd be without feminism. 

Men don't wear bras

The Guardian has done an anecdotal, tongue-in-cheek survey, to see if it's more expensive going through life as a man or a woman.

The (completely unscientific) piece, 'Is it cheaper to be a woman - or a man?', looks at spending on clothes, underwear, shaving and cosmetics, food and drink, and haircuts. It concludes that being a woman costs roughly 6% more than being a man.

The article cites recent ONS data suggesting that on average women spend £588 a year on their wardrobes, while men spend £322. It seems that this is, as you might expect, a mixture of women's clothes costing more and women buying more things, partly because we need to (men don't wear bras) and partly because we want to.

It's interesting, but not really surprising, that some retailers charge different prices for near identical items, depending on whether you are in the men's or the women's sections. Despite more material being required for the men's version, you guessed it, the women's is more expensive.

I don't think we can really blame the retailers being sexist for this - it's basic economics. The same economics that means you will pay £5 for a white T-shirt in Tesco and £20 for pretty much the same item at Boden or wherever it is you shop. After covering the costs of production (usually) the retailer charges you what they think you will pay. If you are shopping for clothes in Tesco, you're probably expecting to get a bargain, so prices have to be kept low. If you walk into a Jigsaw store on the high street, then you're happy to pay a bit more for the way you look, and the shop charges accordingly. They charge us what we, collectively, are willing to pay, and by and large women are willing to pay more than men.

How women can spend the same as men on clothes

If you really object to spending more on clothes than your boyf, you can:

1. Dress in men's clothing (although this won't help with the bras)
2. Get all your clothes from Tesco (very cheap)
3. Become an extremely thrifty and brave sales shopper (personally, I pay more to avoid the sales scrum)
4. Embrace the world of charity shops
5. Become a nudist

'Despite feminism...'

It's all swings and roundabouts really. Men need to eat more calories than women, so it should cost them more to feed themselves, but women use tampons, that type of thing.

The comments, on the Guardian article are hilarious (definitely worth a read), with women boasting about their sartorial decisions that help them save money, and men bemoaning that 'despite feminism, women expect men to pay for at least the big occasions, like Valentines meals, engagement rings'. Well, some women do, some women don't. That's another day, another blog (I love that phrase 'despite feminism' - you always know what's coming).

Whether you're the type of woman who has more lip gloss than Jordan and needs a spare house just to store your jeans, or you're happy with soap, water and one nice outfit for special occasions, don't moan about it. Let's all just strive for equal pay to help us support our spending, whatever it is.