Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
5 — Friday, January 9, 2015

E

very winter, I ask myself the 
same question: Why do I live 
in this godforsaken icebox? 

In the morning, 
after 
pushing 

snooze 
at 
least 

twice, eventually 
I make the insane 
decision to trade my toasty cloud of 
a bed for the arctic atmosphere that 
is my apartment. A morning shower 
means at least a 15-minute commit-
ment to the blow dryer, a time com-
mitment which would have doubled 
had it not been for my five-inch trim 
in October. Walking to class with wet 
hair is not an option; I learned this 
when I spent most of 2012 sneezing 
and sniffling through class. Bundling 
up in January and February usually 
means leggings before jeans, at least 
two pairs of socks, waterproof hiking 
boots, three layers of shirts, a head-
band, gloves, scarf and the grand 
finale, a three-year-old down parka 
that is starting to lose feathers. Most 
days, I don’t even look good. Makeup, 
styling and further delays aside, it 
takes me — a self-proclaimed low-
maintenance girl — about 45 minutes 
to get ready in a frosty morning. Get-
ting ready to go to the bar on a Thurs-
day night, well, that’s a completely 
different animal.

We all know the drill, and if you’re 

new to Michigan and under the 
impression that November was the 
peak of our icy damnation, do your-
self a favor and invest in some Smart-
Wool socks while they’re probably on 
sale. People like to say that women 
and men are equal, but let’s get real. 
If you’re a girl, you should prob-
ably buy yourself two pairs, because 
you’re probably colder. The average 
American woman is 92 percent as tall 
as the average man, and weighs just 
85.5 percent as much. Statistically 
we’re shorter, smaller and surprise: 
have longer hair.

The additional tax we pay as 

women isn’t limited to an extra 
10-minute blow dry and an extra 
pair of socks. Forget makeup, nail 
polish and the cost differences of 
our clothing; in order for women to 
uphold societal standards of femi-
ninity, the cost is significant. Five 
products are the main culprits of 
this microeconomic division of the 
sexes: razor blades, conditioner, 
tampons, Midol and bras. Of course, 
men use conditioner and razors, but 
generally in much smaller quantities 
(as I’ll explain).

A wise woman once said, “Some-

body wrote in that book that I’m 
lying about being a virgin, ’cause I 
use super-jumbo tampons, but I can’t 

help it if I’ve got a heavy flow and a 
wide-set vagina!” She makes a good 
point. This does, however, mean that 
she’s a member of the female popula-
tion. An 18 pack of Playtex Sport tam-
pons at CVS costs $5.49: 30.5 cents 
each. At a rate of four per day for four 
days a month, the total monthly tam-
pon cost for women comes to a mod-
est $4.88. Cramps? That’ll cost you. 
Midol sells for $8.38 for a pack of 24, 
34.9 cents each. Two per day for four 
days out of the month comes to $2.79. 
Having your period every month? 
$7.67. Being a woman? Priceless.

I firmly believe that men and 

women are intellectually equal; how-
ever, men don’t have boobs. Victoria’s 
Secret sells bras for over $50 a piece, 
but as an Economics major, I can’t 
stomach dropping that much know-
ing they cost about four dollars to 
manufacture. In order to maintain 
as conservative an estimate as pos-
sible, I picked out my favorite bra by 
Gilligan & O’Malley, which goes for 
$16.99 on Target.com. If you’re a girl, 
you know that 
these 
stretch 

out 
and 
don’t 

last forever, so 
two 
bras 
per 

year is a frugal 
expenditure on 
bras. Since we’re 
calculating 
the 

extra cost on a 
monthly 
basis, 

this 
means 

women 
are 

spending $2.83 on bras monthly. Not 
bad, right?

Next, there’s everything that goes 

on inside the shower. I grew up with 
two younger brothers, who often 
accused me of using up all of the 
hot water. I typically ignored their 
complaints; I was older, smarter, a 
girl, and therefore entitled to use 
more water than them. I asked my 
brothers how much conditioner 
they used. RJ, who’s 18, poured out 
about one teaspoon. My 16-year-old 
brother denied using conditioner 
whatsoever, ran into the basement, 
and got back to his friends on Xbox 
live. At CVS, I picked out a seeming-
ly gender-neutral and cost-efficient 
conditioner, Garnier Fructis. The 
bottle costs $4.79 for 13.5 fluid ounc-
es, which comes to an average cost 
of six cents per day for my brother 
and 18 cents per day for me. Nick-
els and dimes, but still a difference 
of 300 percent. On a monthly basis, 
women are spending $3.60 more on 
conditioner than men.

We all know razors for both men 

and women are overpriced. Worse 

than that, they never go on sale. 
Before going and taking an inven-
tory of CVS, I was under the impres-
sion that women paid significantly 
more for razors. As I compared basic 
three blade razors for men and 
women, I realized I was wrong. An 
eight pack of Gillette Venus Classic 
for women costs $23.79 each, and 
an eight pack of Gillette Match 3 for 
men costs $22.99. Each razor costs a 
woman $2.97, and a man $2.87. Just 
a slight difference, right? Not when 
you account for the differences in 
total surface area women and men 
are expected to shave, prescribed 
by gender norms. For men, from the 
nose down to the chin until the ears, 
and the entire area of the front half 
of the neck, this came to 435.5 cm^2. 
For women, accounting for average 
surface area of two thighs, calves and 
armpits, this number was 7,323.08 
cm. Not only are we paying 10 cents 
more for a similar razor, we have to 
shave 16 to 17 times more surface 
area than our male counterparts.

Let’s assume 

that 
women 

shave a third as 
often 
as 
men. 

Let’s 
say 
the 

average 
man 

spends 
$22.99 

per 
year 
on 

razors, 
switch-

ing once every 
month 
and 
a 

half. This means 
that women who 

shave even one-third as much as men 
are spending 5.6 times as much for 
the same quality of shave, an annual 
fee which comes out to $133.224. 
Monthly, this means a woman would 
spend $9.20 more than men on 
 

razors alone.

Accounting for just five basic 

and necessary products, it’s clear 
that from a cost-of-living per-
spective, men and women are not 
equal. I’m not talking about fash-
ionable clothes, makeup or a girls’ 
nights out. For the bare-minimum 
hygiene, it costs the average woman 
approximately $23.30 more per 
month to live than the average man. 
Guys, next time you’re at Charley’s 
with your female colleague, consid-
er these baseline costs that she has 
to endure. If she’s wearing makeup, 
a stylish outfit or four-inch heels, 
the differential expands. Maybe 
next time, instead of splitting the 
bill for that fishbowl, you pay that 
$15. Plus tax.

— Lauren Richmond can be 

reached at lericho@umich.edu.

Why you should still buy her a 

drink at the bar

LAUREN 
RICHMOND

Home for the holidays

O

n 
my 
first 
flight 
home 
from 

Michigan in December 2011, my 
stomach bubbled with a familiar 

Pancheros 
burrito 
and 

knots of excitement wound 
themselves tighter as I flew 
closer to my at-the-time 
long-distance 
boyfriend. 

Sophomore year, I felt the 
relief of being done with a semester that I 
finally enjoyed and belted delayed laughs 
as a result of the talent show at Detroit 
Metropolitan Wayne County Airport. Junior 
year, the flight took off for San Francisco 
and I played Alt-J’s An Awesome Wave on 
repeat as I prematurely fantasized about 
my semester that was about to take place 
in Madrid while drifting in and out of sleep 
on the plane home. This year, however, was 
different; it was calm and platonic. Although 
it’s the last time I will be making this flight 
home for such a brief time, it felt tranquil 
and I felt accustomed to the typical waves 
of nausea and excitement that one associates 
with coming home, wherever that may be and 
whatever that may mean.

There’s this weird thing that happens when 

you are dropped off at college. You watch as 
your parents cascade down 5th Bartlett as 
the heavy blue metal door slams in your face 
and you think to yourself, 
“What 
now?” 
Presum-

ably, you have been caged 
in your house for a strong 
18 years and all of sudden 
you are let loose. Maybe 
it’s just my closest friends 
and me, but I felt con-
fused. For lack of a bet-
ter word or psychological 
term, I embarked on the 
biggest identity crisis of 
my life upon seeing that 
dorm room door crash in my face. The process 
of coming home and the nostalgia of the holi-
days only exacerbate this reminiscent feeling 
about my first day on campus and serve as a 
pivotal point to understand one’s growth.

It’s difficult to tell someone to embrace 

these times. To embrace the awkward hugs 
that you face in your local supermarket or the 
run-ins with your mom’s friends at her holi-
day parties, but these moments of discomfort 
are essential and inevitably shift through 
your college formation. These encounters 
give us something to laugh about and learn 
from when you are finally 21 and can sit 
around the bar ordering tequila shots with 
three guys you took Calculus with six years 
ago. It’s not that everything is entirely normal 
or comfortable now, but there’s a certain reas-
surance in the fact that life continues upon its 
meandering and ever-changing path. The dis-
comfort and fluctuations are normalized and 
you began to feel more and more prepared for 
what’s next even as the future gets more and 
more expansive.

Now, in the depths of my senior year Win-

ter Break, I see home as a different place. I 
recognize that where I am today was not by 
fault, and is much accredited to my time at the 
University.

At a bar the other night, I spoke with a guy 

in my graduating class from high school that 
had been crowned the biggest clown in our 
grade. He was that macho man who showed 
little emotion. This year, he told me he was 
into writing and screenplays. He reminisced 
about the time his babysitter thought he was 
sleeping and he stayed up watching “Silence 
of the Lambs,” consequently crying himself 
to sleep. He didn’t stop smiling as we prom-
enaded around the saloon looking at old cou-
ples rekindling flames, or more, often-new, 
love interests emerging from the woodwork. 
I am reminded to leave room for change.

At Christmas dinner, my friend Laura spoke 

to me about her friends who had developed 
eating disorders and their strange relation-
ships with food while at college. I told her I 
remembered those times. After my freshman 
year 20-pound extravaganza and my work-
outaholic sophomore year, I was ebbing into 
a normal relationship once again with food 
and my body image. Not to say these feelings 
won’t emerge again, but I feel at ease with my 
ability to take the turns as they come.

On the way home from skiing in Lake Tahoe, 

I was discussing an encoun-
ter I had with a friend to 
my dad. He thought for a 
second and asked me if I 
remembered the first page 
of the Great Gatsby. He has 
been reciting it for years, 
but reminded me again, 
“In my younger and more 
vulnerable years my father 
gave me some advice that 
I’ve been turning over in 
my mind ever since. ‘When-

ever you feel like criticizing any one,’ he told 
me, ‘just remember that all the people in this 
world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve 
had.’ ” Sometimes it takes the simple repetition 
of sacred words.

The holidays, fortunate or not, bring back 

shadows of the past. This year my dog wasn’t 
dressed in her holiday garb and our dear-
est family friend wasn’t cutting coffee cake 
in the kitchen, but we did have a new recipe 
for garlic mashed potatoes and one young 
child joined us at the kid’s Christmas table. 
Remember the time is now. Remember this 
as hard as you can, and as you hold on to the 
present moment it lightens the holiday shad-
ows as you remind yourself that now is not 
forever. What is now the present will next 
year be a memory. We will continue to won-
der who we were and are, but this knowledge 
that the undulations of emotions and inevi-
table growth are persistent keep us thinking 
as the new years roll through.

— Dani Vignos can be reached 

at dvignos@umich.edu.

T

he 
#BlackLivesMatter 

movement has taken over 
social, national and inter-

national media in 
recent 
months. 

Fueled by trag-
ic 
vignettes 
of 

police 
brutality 

against 
presum-

ably 
innocent 

African 
Ameri-

cans, the move-
ment is “rooted in 
the 
experiences 

of Black people in 
this country who 
actively resist (our) de-humaniza-
tion,” and “is a call to action and a 
response to the virulent anti-Black 
racism that permeates our society.”

The movement’s official media 

outlets have striven to make clear 
that all Black lives matter by call-
ing attention to the rampant sys-
temic injustices facing those Black 
individuals whose racial identi-
ties exist in conjunction with their 
sexual and gender identities, as 
well as their status within disabled, 
incarcerated or immigrant com-
munities. In vying for societal and 
judicial equality in this country, 
a movement which stresses the 
importance of solidarity across the 
spectrum of all personal identities 
serves as an example of what mod-
ern activism should be: inclusive 
and empathetic to the plights of 
similarly affected individuals.

In a December 26, 2014 op-ed in 

The Advocate magazine, freelance 
writer Randy Roberts Potts touch-
es upon this idea by attempting to 
draw parallels between the #Black-
LivesMatter 
and 
past 
LGBTQ 

rights movements. Potts calls for 
solidarity across movements, dis-
cussing how riots in Ferguson and 
subsequent rallies nationwide are 
reminiscent of the 1969 Stonewall 
riots. In these riots, LGBT-iden-
tifying individuals fought against 

police forces conducting an unso-
licited raid on the Stonewall Inn—a 
hub of sorts for impoverished and 
struggling LGBT youth in New 
York City’s Greenwich Village.

Stonewall served as a catalyst 

for the queer-rights activism of 
the 20th century and today, much 
in the same way, Potts says, that 
the recent happenings in Fergu-
son have reignited a national dis-
cussion on racial politics and the 
unequal treatment of minority 
populations. In his closing remarks 
on the topic, Potts suggests that 
respect be given to a movement rel-
ative to its importance in the public 
eye at a particular moment in his-
tory: “All lives matter,” he says, “but 
our focus must center on whichever 
lives, in our own 
time, in our own 
moment, matter 
least.”

In 
other 

words, activists 
must 
practice 

solidarity 
for 

similarly-rooted 
causes 
under 

the pretense of 
equity; provide 
the most ener-
gy to the most pressing of issues, 
only moving on to other problems 
once the most urgent matters have 
been dealt with. It’s a logical plan 
of action—at least for trauma sur-
geons. In the fight against social 
inequality, however, letting alone 
a seemingly small internal bleed in 
favor of a wound perceived as more 
threatening could prove to be fatal 
for the entire, commonly shared 
cause.

Why should combating social 

injustice be a matter of precedent in 
line with particular events? When a 
group of people who have been sub-
jugated into second-class citizenry 
experience a particularly unsettling 
event—as is the case with Ferguson, 

as was the case with Stonewall—
others should empathize and act 
for the larger cause of social, politi-
cal and economic equality for all 
groups. They should act not only 
against the wrongs made against the 
group directly affected, but also act 
in protest of a system which allows 
that wrong to occur to any minor-
ity group, regardless of color, creed, 
sexuality or gender.

Through my eyes, the reaction 

to the many instances of failures 
in the justice system pertaining 
to Black individuals over the past 
months should serve as an oppor-
tunity for the nation to reevaluate 
its handling of all crimes rooted 
in hate and social injustice. This 
reevaluation should be made in 

consideration 
of 
the 
Black 

population and 
their 
specific 

needs, but also 
in consideration 
of other subju-
gated 
minor-

ity groups in 
this nation who 
have 
experi-

enced 
similar 

wrongs 
as 
a 

result of their ascribed statuses.

All lives matter. Michael Brown’s 

life mattered just as much as the 
lives of Eric Garner, Larry King, 
and Brisenia Flores. This being 
said, combating social injustice 
should be a fight not based in equi-
ty. Rather, it should be a sweeping 
act in which all victims of social 
inequality in this country can par-
take and empathize, come together 
in solidarity and appeal for equality 
for all downtrodden groups for all 
time, not merely at a point in time 
which is most convenient for one 
group or another.

— Austin Davis can be reached 

ataustchan@umich.edu.

All lives matter

Combating social 
injustice should be 
a fight not based in 

equity. 

It’s clear that from 
the cost-of-living 

perspective, men and 
women are not equal. 

DANI 
VIGNOS

AUSTIN 
DAVIS

The holidays, 

fortunate or not, 

bring back shadows 

of the past.

 
 

— U.S. President Barack Obama during his speech to Wayne County citizens on the 

resurgence of the American auto industry Wednesday afternoon.

“

NOTABLE QUOTABLE

One thing is for sure — we may not 
all root for the Lions, but America is 

rooting for Detroit.”

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