Husbands, have you ever had to tell your wife to dress more modestly? How did that go?

[Xantippe]

Yes, some moms have special or high needs kids and do not sleep or shower regularly for years. The hard cases do not prove that women who care about their personal grooming are somehow ignoring the important things in life.

What I meant is that resources being limited, time and money used for keeping presentable are time and money unavailable for other family needs.

Not that it’s wrong to do so, but people need to be aware that it doesn’t happen magically–resources have to be expended that could be used elsewhere. If it’s important for mom to look good, then the family has to be willing to spend on mom.

And yes it is a zero-sum game–$20 spent on mom is $20 that the family doesn’t have for other needs.

 

[TheLittleLady]

Of course, if there is not an extra dollar you buy food before you buy hairspray.

For frugal shoppers, you can spend $20 and have cosmetics enough to last for at least a year.

 

[Xantippe]

For frugal shoppers, you can spend $20 and have cosmetics enough to last for at least a year.

I haven’t worn makeup beyond concealer for years, but if I did start using more, my mistake purchases would eat up a lot of that $20.

But I can believe that if you know exactly what you want and never experiment (which is where mistakes get made) and don’t use it everyday, that it would be possible to keep the annual budget down to $20. But daily? That’s hard to believe.

Then there’s the issue of shelf life. Mascara is supposed to be tossed out after 90 days because of the risk of eye infection, so a woman who wears mascara needs to buy 4 a year–which is really going to eat into our $20 annual budget.

How Long Should You Keep Your Make Up? - dummies

How many months or years you should hold on to your eye shadows, blushes, lipsticks, and other cosmetics depends on several factors. Among important considerati

www.dummies.com

So I guess we’re not buying mascara…

 

[TheLittleLady]

I’ve bought name brand mascara for $1 per tube.

If you want to wear more expensive mascara, the way to extend the shelf life is to swap out the “swirly” brushes. You use one and clean one. This keeps the bacterial from building up inside the mascara tube.

 

[Xanthippe_Voorhees]

Of course, if there is not an extra dollar you buy food before you buy hairspray.

For frugal shoppers, you can spend $20 and have cosmetics enough to last for at least a year.

I don’t mean to be rude here, but $20 in cosmetics is going to go much faster for a white person with a typical complexion and straight or wavy hair.

I have “ethnic” hair. I do the bare minimum. Shampoo, conditioner, relaxer, curl-friendly product and I braid my hair. I use the cheapest shampoo and conditioner becuase it seems to make no difference, but the relaxer can run about $5-10 a bottle for the bottom of the barrel stuff and the curl friendly gel $2-5. The hair ties alone cost about $10ish or more a year because I can’t really reuse them for more than a week or two becuase they get so tangled with hair that even cutting it off doesn’t help.

I don’t do makeup. I can’t afford to add something so frivolous to my budget. Things that work on my skin tend not to be the ones I can purchase from a $1 store. Well-matched foundation is important and often cheaper foundations don’t work on my skin anyway.

I do tend to wear khakis rather than jeans/sweats because they look better, although I do admit, I’ve sometimes walked around for weeks with a stubborn kid-fault stain.

 

[Lea101]

Where on earth do yall buy cheap makeup?

If we want to be annoying it would all depend on where you live, whether the products look good on you or how much makeup you wear.

Ultimately it all comes down to whether you are a natural beauty or not. The unfortunate ones would have to try a lot harder (to avoid looking frumpy as a whole). Hard truth.

 

[Allegra]

I call BS. I spend more than $20 a year on soap alone, and I use coupons. In a month, I usually have to buy a bottle of shampoo and cream rise that will come to $10. I need toothpaste, floss, deodorant, shavers etc for basic hygiene. That doesn’t even include the cost of a semi regular haircut, styling products, cosmetics, hosiery, and even minor updates in shoes, clothing, and accessories that even a woman who could be described as “frumpy” requires so people won’t wonder if she’s living out of her car.

I watched my mother do herself up everyday for my entire childhood. It wasn’t cheap and it was terribly time consuming, especially for a single mom with limited time with her kids, but she believed it was an investment in her career because she didn’t think she would be taken seriously in her line of work if she wasn’t done up professionally. I’m grateful that I don’t feel that kind of pressure that I have to spend my last dollar on nail polish and other silly stuff like that. I can wear weather practical clothing that I can move in and shoes that won’t give me a lifetime of plantar fasciitis and I don’t have to walk around in a perpetual cloud of cosmetic odors. I can show up clean, comfortable, practical, and concentrate on doing my job well instead of looking good. I can save my money to spend on more important things. (Basically anything else short of booze.) Most importantly, I save 20 to 30 minutes more every morning to snuggle with my babies before I go to work and I don’t have to go to bed with those stupid curlers in my hair!

 

[Tulitas]

That 20 dollar post made me laugh
Even Oil of Olay moisturizer will spend half of that “budget” and no way would I put $1 mascara on my eyes. I want to see for years to come.

 

[1ke]

How did we get from modesty to make up? I don’t even wear makeup 90% of the time. Just moisturizer on my face.

 

[stpurl]

It certainly is becoming clear that one woman’s ‘frump’ is another woman’s ‘clean, modest, and simple’.

And of course there’s always the one-upmanship with "I can spend $X a YEAR and be stylin’ so all you women that I’m calling ‘frumps’ have no excuse not to look great, unless in addition to being clueless in style you’re also clueless with money management, time management, and general knowhow’.

Ugh. I thought that we women had gone beyond undercutting each other and playing the mommy wars, the job wars, etc. Now by hades it’s the ‘frump wars’.

Include me OUT. If people want to be so shallow as to label other people ‘down’ in order to hoist themselves up (and 99% of the time that is the motivation), let them. I’d rather spend my time talking people ‘up’ (and that’s not the fake up but the real up. I am constantly amazed at the stamina, fortitude, knowledge, and yes, style, of the majority of women I happen to hang with, whether they could walk down the runway at Milan or not. So what if somebody else would label them ‘lesser than’? They’re all right up there in REAL style in my book.

 

[Xanthippe_Voorhees]

How did we get from modesty to make up? I don’t even wear makeup 90% of the time. Just moisturizer on my face.

One poster suggested that a man’s slovenly dress was just as bad as a woman immodestly showing her bust.

Then another poster got on how women can be slovenly, too, via what is known as frump.

Although frump tens to be anything but immodest.

It’s just more ways to keep the conversation on how women are obviously the ones who are failing…which is just sexist and gross.

 

[TheLittleLady]

By cosmetics I mean, well, cosmetics. Something that is worn for purely decorative purposes.

Shampoo, soap, deodorant, moisturizer, those are grooming products. They can be found at low cost, they can be made from kitchen products, but that is separate from cosmetics.

 

[Xanthippe_Voorhees]

By cosmetics I mean, well, cosmetics. Something that is worn for purely decorative purposes.

Shampoo, soap, deodorant, moisturizer, those are grooming products. They can be found at low cost, they can be made from kitchen products, but that is separate from cosmetics.

Yeah, no cocobutter nastiness is going to do for my hair what I need it to.

The point is that all of these “cost-cutting” and other methods of “extra” grooming are all going to be very subjective.

What would be a cosmetic for a white woman with straight hair–curl shaping gel–is a necessary item for me. There are women who need skin softeners or moisturizers or grease fighters to look halfway decent. I don’t. My mom had skin like mine, but in her 40’s she needed more. My cousin is in her 30’s and is still as greasy as a teen so she needs products for that.

You don’t get to draw/make the lines. It dosn’t work that way.

 

[TheLittleLady]

Kind of funny that we posters assume we know the ethnicity of the person on the other side of the screen.

 

[Xanthippe_Voorhees]

Kind of funny that we posters assume we know the ethnicity of the person on the other side of the screen.

I didn’t say anything of the sort. You are making assumptions. I said that it’s more difficult for women of color to buy appropriate cosmetics than those who are white. And they often require more specialized products that you can’t go to the $1 store for.

 

[TheLittleLady]

My last one on this thread. Seems to be a good deal of jumping to conclusions. I did not claim to shop for cosmetics “the $1 store”. I said that I’ve purchased name brand mascara for $1.

I’ve never said what my ethnicity is, what the ethnic background of my family is. I did say that I could take a frugal shopper and show her how to spend $20 and buy cosmetics that would last for a year.

It is GREAT that you are happy to go without makeup.

Because of my disabilities, I have to step up my game, frumpy is not an option. I cannot go out of the house without makeup, groomed hair (unless I wear a fashionable hat - that I buy at a high end boutique during their sidewalk sale for, you guessed it, $1!!). Someone above mentioned women of a certain age becoming invisible, compound that with a disability! My husband has a life threatening medical condition. Last emergency hospitalization took place when I was not “prepared”. I was at the ER with no makeup in yoga pants and a t-shirt. The medical staff spoke to my husband, never to me (when he was so ill he could not talk). The nursing staff once he got to his room, they were very unfriendly.

I came in the next day with hair, makeup, well dressed - same nurse came on shift that evening and you would have though I was a different person.

I do not even own a pair of sneakers or sandals because I would never wear them. Waste of money. I wear the same pair of dress shoes 365 days each year. If I am leaving the house, I am dressing for it. Frumpy is not in my cards. My elderly mom still dresses to the nines, red lipstick and just enough mascara even to walk the dogs. We are not “less than”, we take care of the important things, we make a dollar stretch.

 

[Xanthippe_Voorhees]

My last one on this thread. Seems to be a good deal of jumping to conclusions. I did not claim to shop for cosmetics “the $1 store”. I said that I’ve purchased name brand mascara for $1.

I’ve never said what my ethnicity is, what the ethnic background of my family is. I did say that I could take a frugal shopper and show her how to spend $20 and buy cosmetics that would last for a year.

It is GREAT that you are happy to go without makeup.

Because of my disabilities, I have to step up my game, frumpy is not an option. I cannot go out of the house without makeup, groomed hair (unless I wear a fashionable hat - that I buy at a high end boutique during their sidewalk sale for, you guessed it, $1!!). Someone above mentioned women of a certain age becoming invisible, compound that with a disability! My husband has a life threatening medical condition. Last emergency hospitalization took place when I was not “prepared”. I was at the ER with no makeup in yoga pants and a t-shirt. The medical staff spoke to my husband, never to me (when he was so ill he could not talk). The nursing staff once he got to his room, they were very unfriendly.

I came in the next day with hair, makeup, well dressed - same nurse came on shift that evening and you would have though I was a different person.

I do not even own a pair of sneakers or sandals because I would never wear them. Waste of money. I wear the same pair of dress shoes 365 days each year. If I am leaving the house, I am dressing for it. Frumpy is not in my cards. My elderly mom still dresses to the nines, red lipstick and just enough mascara even to walk the dogs. We are not “less than”, we take care of the important things, we make a dollar stretch.

And it’s obvious you have no small children you are now caring for.

99% of the frum is not coming from older adults who have time to kill and do all these things. An elderly person on a tight budget who isn’t working a job and caring for kids is able to dress to the nines?

Wooop

deee

dooo

They have vastly more time than a working mom. And that makes a huge difference.

 

[Tulitas]

I wish people would just own up to what they say online. I’ve been lurking for a couple of years and I’m astounded at the number of people who backtrack once others tell them they are way off.
Great first impression of CAF.