The Beauty Tax

They say it hurts to be beautiful but I would have never guessed that it hurts like this.

I'm talking, of course, about my wallet. It costs a boatload of money to stay pretty. People blow billions every year on cosmetics and weight loss.

According to an article by InStyle, aggregated data from mint.com reveals that the average women spends $15,000 in her lifetime on makeup alone.

When you add in the gender pay gap, being a woman should basically count as a tax deduction.

I think it's fair to say that women are largely valued for their appearance. When you're valued for your appearance, it seems worth it to spend money to keep up your appearance. 

People made a big fuss about Angelina Jolie's double mastectomy but they don't seem to care as much about her hysterectomy. It's likely because her ovaries haven't made her as much money over the years.

Look. I'm not trying to close down Sephora. You can still wear your favorite brightly colored lipstick and spend $27 on that moisturizer that you really love because, well, makeup is complicated. 

As a coach, I tell my clients it's not the act of doing things like eating kale, exercising regularly, or wearing makeup that betrays your commitment to feminism or even makes you unhealthy, it's HOW you engage with these items. 

I obviously love kale. I wrote a whole blog about it here. I also love exercise. I really love putting lotion on my face. 

The essential work of intuitive eating is trying to learn how to eat to NOURISH your body instead of berating it. 

 When choosing your outfit, your makeup, or even your dietary supplement, focus on taking care of yourself instead of fixing yourself.

There's nothing broken in you so there's nothing to fix. 

Money is an exchange of value. So, if you're trading your hard earned cash, just make sure you're spending it because you know your own worth already. 

Kale: A Love Affair

Kale. The first time my brother mentioned it to me, I thought to myself: “What the hell kind of green thing grows in the middle of winter?” It must be disgusting.

Chuck is into really out-there things (this is the first blog post. I’ll tell you more about this later. It’s mostly a good thing). Then, one day, I had a miso soup with Kale in it during an illness at what I would later learn was the infamous “Sun in Bloom” café in South Brooklyn. Miraculously, I was healed. I felt intrigued by this new discovery.

Like any nervous and sweet young lady, I didn’t want to be too aggressive with this mysteriously handsome new vegetable but I found myself titillated. Once the summer came, I looked up a recipe for kale chips and since then, our love affair has “bloomed.”  On sunny weekends, we would meet at afternoon  farmer's markets and walk back to my place imagining our lives together in between the covers of a fresh baked loaf of bread. Later that summer, we moved in together in Brooklyn.

Below is my simple recipe that does the trick every time:

A bunch of kale

2 cloves of garlic (minced)

Olive oil (2-3 capfuls)

Salt and pepper to taste

Making kale is a sensuous experience. Start by rinsing your kale first.  Cleaning your vegetables before you chop them helps to retain a certain supple nutritional quality.  Then, tear the leaves right off your kale. Put into a bowl and pour the oil all over your leaves. Add salt and pepper as you feel is appropriate and massage the oil and garlic into the kale until you feel it is sufficiently moist. Then, put on a cookie sheet and bake for 10 minutes at 400 degrees.

*Any resemblance to 50 Shades of Kale is completely coincidental.