lifestyle

An open letter to every man who has had to wait for a woman before he could leave the house.

On behalf of women, I’d just like to apologise for the amount of time it takes us to get ready. Apparently, we average one hour and 12 minutes prep time for a big night, meaning every time we go somewhere together, you’re left idle for an agonising average of 17 minutes. I can’t imagine how you could fill those long moments. It must be so frustrating.

But frankly? It’s no picnic on our side of the bathroom door. As you drum your fingers impatiently and resolutely ignore the unstacked dishwasher, remember this: we are not whooping it up in our wardrobe with gay abandon.

For us, getting ready for a big night is an endurance event filled with punishing mental and physical hurdles. That hour and 12 minutes is the tip of the getting ready iceberg. Gentlemen, you don’t know the half of it.

You see, our work starts hours, days and often weeks in advance. Almost immediately after we commit to going somewhere in the future, whether
it’s the office Christmas party, drinks with the girls or out to dinner with you, we imagine ourselves there. In this mental picture, we invariably look hot. Appropriate, comfortable, stylish and hot. Somewhere on the style spectrum between Cate and Kate (Blanchet and
Moss).

As the event draws closer, we drill down into this seductive image to work out what we’re actually going to wear. We picture ourselves in different outfits, mentally changing our clothes, like paper dolls, until we’re totally satisfied we’ve maxed our potential and our wardrobe. All too often, this wardrobe will be found wanting and we will be forced (forced I tell you!) to go shopping to find the outfit in our head.

And this is where we stumble. Cruelly, the reality of our bank accounts, outfit options and body shapes are no match for the Cate/Kate n our heads. So when it’s time to get ready for real, we plunge despairingly into the gap between how we’d hoped to look and how we actually look. Yes, most of this problem is imaginary. That’s why it’s a problem. You think we look great. But you want to have sex with us so of course you think that. We are more brutal in our assessment.

ADVERTISEMENT

Tick, tick, tick. You’re showered, shaved and shirted up. It’s almost time to go. You see cupboards overflowing with an infinite combination of clothes we could wear. But us? We’re engaged in a standoff with a terrorist in our head. Say hello to the Wardrobe Crisis. If it could talk, this is what a wardrobe crisis would say:

“You are fat and ugly. You are mutton dressed as lamb. Or lamb dressed as mutton. Whatever. The point is farm animal. You have nothing to wear. Nothing that doesn’t make you look sad, frumpy, inappropriate and unattractive. Or possibly slutty.  Were you on crack when you bought those shoes? What made you think you could look decent in that dress? Yes you are too old to wear that skirt and yes, your bum does look big in those jeans. Oh, and by the way, your jeans are tragic and wrong and did I mention you look ugly and old? PS: Fatty!!”

Sigh. Are you seeing where all our time goes? It’s not always like this thankfully. The wardrobe crisis monster is a sporadic and unpredictable visitor. But even without it, there are other time gobblers conspiring to make us late.

Like choice. It may surprise you to know that most women have quite a lot of clothes. Yep, you read it here first. But the tyranny of choice is time consuming. On holidays, I’m ready in three minutes tops. This is because I only have two frocks, one lip gloss and a pair of thongs to draw from. But at home, the infinite number of combinations blows out my prep time and does my head in.

Even when we get there, women don’t stop getting ready. Some of my most enjoyable times at parties have been spent in the toilet re-touching my hair and make-up. This task takes on a particular urgency when you are drunk. There in the ladies room, surrounded by other women who didn’t have nearly enough time to primp before leaving the house, some special moments are shared. “That lipshick is wow, like, sush an amazink colour. Whattizit?” “Oh, iss thish one by that place, um, wait! Wassit called….oh, Etsay Lauder! Yesh, iss all oranchy and they do the bess oranches…”

ADVERTISEMENT

The more you drink, the more important it becomes to compliment your fellow bathroom visitors on how well they got ready. On their choice of shoes, hairstyle, spray tan…no detail is too insignificant to warrant a supportive remark.

Of course this is all terribly ironic. Because the amount of time you spend getting ready is inversely proportional to the amount of fun you’ll have when you get there.

And the reverse is also true. When you have to go somewhere straight from work or you’re in a mad rush and have to grab the first thing you see on the bathroom floor, you’ll have a corker. The best possible nights are when you haven’t had time to wash your hair and your shoes hurt.

Which brings us to the high priestesses of Getting Ready: brides. The above-mentioned study found that over a lifetime women spend three years getting ready but the sample can’t have included many married women because some brides spend that long just getting ready for their wedding day. Hell, some brides spend their whole lives getting ready, Muriel-style. And in these days of the short marriage, it’s not unheard of for a woman to spend longer getting ready for her wedding than she spends being married.

So actually guys, I’m taking back my apology. Seventeen minutes?  That’s a bloody bargain.