As you may know, I currently work in Jakarta. Previously, I stayed at my parents' place whenever I had to spend the night in Jakarta. Recently, my parents decided to move back to Bandung, which prompted me to search for my own place in Jakarta. Fortunately, I found a relatively affordable place in the middle of the city which allowed me to commute to my office under half an hour.
The thing is no matter how affordable the place is, it still makes a monthly dent in my savings. This additional expense has me rethinking a lot of my other expenses, i.e. my beauty expenses. Since I ended up doubling up on a lot of my products (for Bandung and Jakarta), I've come to realize that a rather good portion of a woman's income goes to consumer goods, more specifically, to beauty products.
Just today, I bought some hair products that I needed to stock up for the house in Bandung. Three products in total: shampoo, conditioner, and a curious hair mask that I willingly will admit bought out of sheer curiosity.
Total cost: IDR 109.500,-
That's effin' expensive!
For those who don't live in Indonesia, and don't know Indonesia living cost standards, just as a comparison, when I stay in Jakarta, I can buy a simple lunch of rice, chicken with veggies on the side for around IDR 15.000,- to 16.000,-.
My shampoo and conditioner could provide me 10 days worth of lunches!
My validation would be that my hair can no longer stand shampoos that contain SLS/SLES. Therefore any local-produced shampoo has to be written off. The validation for the conditioner is that my hair gets very dry easily. And for the hair mask, ...nope, there isn't any excuses for that one. It was an impulse buy, really.
Recently, a meme about lipsticks has been circulating in the social media. The tagline basically goes, "The reason why women need to work is because men have no idea how much beauty costs." It's illustrated by comparing a $5 lipstick with a $50 one.
Now, while I don't give two shits--pardon my French--about what men think about my lipstick, I find the meme does have a point in that a lot on a woman's income goes to appearance costs, whether it's apparel or beauty.
Back to the shampoo case: on one hand, I feel like I'm spending an awful lot on a fleeting sense of vanity. In the other hand, I don't want to live with an itchy scalp for the rest of my life.
This conundrum does get me thinking about how much of it is really necessary. Is it really necessary for me to spend more than a hundred thousand on hair products? Are the results worth the extra bucks? And do the results really have an impact on the quality of the life I'm living?
Where exactly is the line between spending in the name of comfort and spending in the name of vanity?
What do you think?
