Hi Chris,

We all spend money on things which are important to us. As you will have gathered, my health is important to me. I live in a modest house on a reasonably sized block. I have a large pool in my very private back garden. I also have a fairly large area of brick paving, which requires no watering or maintenance. I have enough generally easy-care garden to make my surroundings interesting and it's all watered automatically from my bore.

I do my own pool maintenance and use just enough chemicals to keep it clean and safe. To keep chemical use to a minimum, no-one goes in my pool without first showering thoroughly. And no-one swims in clothes, undies, or bathers they've had on for a while. And dogs are not allowed in my back garden. I got this advice from a professional pool maintenance man.

Most of the year I start my day with a fast 200 metres. Not a lot, but a great way of waking myself up. In the hot weather, I'm in and out of the pool all day. I get value from my pool and I think that's the best way of judging if something is a waste of money or not.

One of my friends, a man who openly prides himself on making smart business decisions, called my pool "a hole in the ground to throw money into". He has a pool, but no-one in his family uses it. So I told him that he didn't make a smart business decision when he bought it. Maybe you're like that.

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If you want the complete reality of men~women spending power ,
I sudggest you take a stroll to the nearest mall and count the shops
catering to women and the ones for men , the proportion is about 20/1
this is true of the dollard value too , women are the biggest consumer
in this consumer society , made for them by the men .
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One thing the author seem to miss out on is that after a woman spends all this money on herself. More money gets spent on her as well.

Money that is spent on her by men, the cost of wining and dining. That little holiday up or down the coast, maybe overseas and all the hidden little extras.

Yep! women are truly are the worlds most expensive commodities.

Fellas, its a catch 22.

Consumption drives our way of life. Our standard of living is a function of the dough we make off the back of spending.

The players figured out a long time ago that the way to drive a consumer economy is...

1. create aspiration, envy, want, desire (easy to do)
2. feed constant message of dissatisfaction, that only buying stuff can molify
3. dont make things to last, design obsolesence,fashion and trends into everything. Continual replacement keeps the beast alive.
4. borrow lots of money and never pay it back in full... debt is the ball and chain, the drug that keeps us hooked.
5. never be happy, derive no independent sense of self, identity nor spirit which transcends the material... feeds the beast and creates a new area of consumption... behavioural/mood/self esteem pharmateuticals.

This is a pipe dream, but wiping out the pointless desire which drives spending would solve about 90% of the worlds unsustainable imbalances very quickly.

Its easy enuff to chastise women for their consumption, yet we do a lot of it too. In any event its what keeps the house of cards and hall of mirrors that is modern western consumer society in perpetual motion.

The typically diversionary 'we are bigger victims than you' and 'its all because of you' post by usual suspect(s) illustrates, there is a harsh and ugly truth that men need to acknowledge... for OUR own good.

Mens increasingly grudging, almost incidental acknowledgement of this self evident (but carefully concealed and sugar coated) truth is reflected in our lifestyle decisions, together with generalised disquieted disengagement.

Men are unplugging all over the place.

Mens choices are clearly reflected in the complaints about Peter Pans from Peta Pams and constant carry on about fear of making commitments (to them) from those with a fear of keeping commitments (to us). Men are choosing to detach, fly below the radar, vote with our feet (figurative and literal).

The harsh and ugly truth is...

THEY DONT CARE.

On rare occassion some of them claim to care, with words, whilst their actions (and inaction) stand in stark contrast to the claims. If you get enuff of a person going left and telling you to agree that they are going right, on the back of all sorts of mean-spirited game play... disrespect at the palpable lack of credibility ensues. From there, its down hill.

Easier to accept the awful truth, move on and make a happy, fulfilling life for oneself.

If they decide they WANT us AS WE ARE, we may start to change direction and make room for them. Women define the terms of relationship engagement... we adapt to their agenda, BUT only up to a point.

When people get too demanding and become unreasonable, unduring the nonsense gets tiring and eventually they're left to themselves. If they arent getting many takers, they need to look at THEMSELVES and wot they offer, tweak it up and they may start to get the sort of offers they want. No point complaining that the punters dont wanna buy my over-priced, under-performing, over-hyped product. Improve the offer (in this case just normalise/equalise the offer) and they will return.

If not, thats OK... life goes on.

Its very obvious and it bears repeating... THEY DONT CARE.

It is interesting that you regard buying cosmetics, etc as an integral part of being a woman – it isn’t, it’s optional. The, ‘we have to do it because men expect it’ argument is fallacious because everyman I know hates make-up. It doesn’t matter what you think it looks like – it tastes like perfumed dirt – try eating some sometime.

The income argument is interesting on a few fronts – if the opposite were true and women were earning more but men were spending more that would be interpreted as men exploiting women’s labour but the reverse is NEVER interpreted as women exploiting men’s labour.

These figures are also terribly skewed because an enormous number of women are supported by their high-earning husbands. The woman’s income is technically zero while their husband’s is astronomical but it is the women who live the life of Riley on that income. I know I used to run a Pilates Studio and my daytime classes were full of women supported by men but curiously not one man supported by a woman. These women spend their days, going to gym, shopping, having lunch with friends, shopping, playing tennis, going to the hairdresser, having their nails done, going home and paying the housekeeper/nanny and dressing up to go out to dinner – poor things – they are on zero income!

Latest stats show that women actually earn more than men for the same work with the same experience. There are other reasons, apart from supporting women why men might be paid more, men’s chances of dying at work in Australia are 3560% greater than a woman’s – men still do all the really hard, really dirty and really dangerous work in this culture.

I find it interesting that even ‘living longer’ is interpreted as a burden. What is consistent in this argument is that whatever situation a woman finds herself in – she will complain about it.