Battle of the sexes: time out

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Battle of the sexes: time out

Here at bh, we often ponder over the big questions in life: gloss or lipstick? Liquid versus kohl. But even we were astounded to hear recently that we girls spend 3,276 hours of our lives getting ready. Just in case you were wondering, that’s 136 days.

Hair is the biggest time-guzzler. Swiftly followed by make-up and then nails. And it seems that even in this day and age – where the word ‘equality’ is bandied around as often as Brangelina add to their brood – we’re not quite equal in preening time. Men apparently dedicate a mere 1,092 hours of their life to grooming.

Never content to let facts and figures take over, we hit the streets, asking guys and girls to ‘fess up about their prep time. We also quizzed our male mates to get their true – read beer-induced – feelings on girls’ glamming up time. Watch the video evidence now.

So, how long do you spend getting ready?

“Start to finish, probably no more than 20 minutes. I get ready for work in the morning in half an hour but that includes dressing obviously.” – Ian

“About an hour or so, it could be longer – it depends if I straighten my hair or not.” – Kath“Two minutes. Literally a quick shave and moisturise (with) Clarins or something like that.” – Duncan “Between 30 minutes and an hour. The deciding factor is if I’m washing my hair or not. It’s curly so if I do then I have to add on extra styling time!” – Rachel

“Taking into account hair and shaving, I’d say about 30 minutes.” – Satender

“An hour from shower to heading out the door doing make-up and hair in between.” – Zoe

“Twenty minutes. That’s a shower and breakfast – no moisturising or anything!” – Michael

“I’m a model so I’m normally running out the door, I just have a shower and apply some mascara so about 30 minutes usually.” – Cristina

“Two seconds. I run my hands through my hair. That’s it.” – Brad 

“Forty-five minutes: a shower, make-up and then I whack my hair up.” – Miriam

And the winner is…

The general consensus seems to be that women spend around an hour sprucing themselves up while guys take considerably less than that (although we think there may have been some porkies in there: only taking two minutes to get ready but knowing a major skincare brand doesn’t really tally Duncan).

But on the plus side, the guys we spoke to seemed to think that was a reasonable amount of time to spend getting ready. Not that they get anything out of us looking pretty in the end or anything.

So, how long do you take to pretty up?

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