Prowling round the web like a creep today, I found some “stats” on how we birds spend our time in reference to our appearance. They came to light via a survey in which it was revealed women spend an average of 628 hours a year fretting about how they look.

Frustratingly it gave no indication of how much time we spend reading stats resulting from surveys.

Here are some them, and how much time we spend on them weekly:

What to wear – 50 minutes

Whether outfit / clothes then look okay – 1 hour and 32 minutes

Whether my wobbly bits are covered up – 1 hour and 26 minutes

What underwear to wear under an outfit – 39 minutes

Being bloated – 1 hour and 1 minute

Having spots – 56 minutes

Uneven skin tone – 50 minutes

Tan / lack of a tan – 36 minutes

Frizzy / greasy hair – 57 minutes

Total time spent worrying each week: 12 hours and four minutes

You probably won’t relate or agree with all of these.

I, for example, wear the same fetching silver and purple Lycra one-piece every day which I know looks fantastic, so I certainly don’t spend an hour and half worrying about my outfit each day. But some, like the frizzy/greasy hair, yeah… I get that. I spend FAR too much time on my hair. Each day I wake up and some of the first thoughts in my head are: Is my hair clean? Do I need to wash or style it? If it IS clean and good to go, how much more time in bed looking at Instagram does this permit me?

If it was more obedient and didn’t insist on being attached to my scalp and therefore prone to oiliness, life would certainly be a lot more swift, appearance wise. I probably will never do it again (or WILL I?) but when I had permanent “Japanese” hair straightening ten years ago, and I had wash and go hair, and rain and swim and gym proof hair, life was incredibly sweet. (You can of course mimic this effect without all the growing-outness by having keratin smoothing, and I might actually get that again soon, although it does tend to mess with your colour…)

Anyway. I felt their weekly breakdown was lacking some things:

Eyebrow shape scrutinising –  30 minutes

Spot picking regret – 50 minutes

Blackhead inspecting – 41 minutes

Curiosity regarding overuse of dry shampoo with regards to grey tinge on scalp – 24 minutes

Admiring a freakishly perfect eye liner application – 42 minutes

Fretting over the correct order of beauty products – 34 minutes

Looking at chipped, dry nails and feeling bad about not having time to do them – 18 minutes

Removing eye poo – 9 minutes

Wondering if hairdo is passable as a ‘hairdo’ and not just a scruffy bun/knot thingy – 23 minutes

Taking a stream of selfies because everything looks kind of great, actually – 10 hours and 22 minutes

Have I’ve missed any? By all means, add yours below.

Visual Aid:
The popular “car” or “taxi” selfie, taken in this case sans makeup (unusual for a selfie, unless posted by a supermodel in bed with moody filtering and a sexy piece of hair covering the face with the seemingly innocent caption ‘good morning’) to admire the fresh look a brand new brow shape and tint offers a dame.