I recently went out with a lady, a uni professor in engineering, who said, I kid you not:

"women feel so much pressure to keep up with their appearance, especially when they get older, THIS IS TRUE VIOLENCE!!". Her voice inflected at the point. I have heard the argument so many times and it only recently came up to me, that this is a completely sexist way to consider things.

To start with:

- yes, women do traditionally spend more resources into that and society responds to that with obvious ways. My counter-argument will not contest this reality.

But:

- Being a woman that takes her of her appearance does open doors for you, which is the counterbalancing aspect of this argument. And I don't mean your ability of a woman to flirt her way out of things. As a woman, one may attract interest faster than a man, especially if you take care of your appearance, which does provide social and work related benefits.

- There are jobs that are especially open for women on the basis of taking care the appearance - i.e. the minimum of maintaining proper body weight, having no white/facial hair (thing hotel Concierge, flight attendant).

- In most environments a woman is allowed to NOT take care of her appearance (save for some specific jobs). She is allowed to become fat, leave hair on her chin or whatever. She will just lose the above mentioned priviledge. She will live a life as an average man, mostly getting unnoticed. Abiding to this "pressure" is a choice.

- that being said, men are also facing pressure for their appearance, but in different ways. Physique Standards are becoming unrealistic (thank you entertainment industry), they are more pressured to show off wealth (i.e. a nice car etc), they are becoming the butt of jokes for aspects they can't control (white/falling hair), height, dick size or even thickness of facial hair. Women have hair on the chin, men have hair on their ears. So it is not a gendered issue in its core.

- The "pressure" is all in your head. Nobody ever forced you to do lip-fillers. You went for it. The same way a man with receding hairline went for hair transplants.

- This is also an option that is not available to a man. A man cannot wear make-up to feel empowered (it is a very special context, that he may be able to) or revealing clothes. Optionality is always nice to have.

- Oftentimes, the argument turns to ageism: In that case, first of all, especially today, older women are indeed well positioned on the dating market. Secondly ageism is way worse for men in the working field, especially for men who are handworkers.

Please add to the conversation with collected non-hateful arguments.