Some of us ladies can be high maintenance.

I”m not apologising for it either. Us females have to do a whole lotta shizzle to feel good by society’s standards.

As I type this, I have three … make that five, separate pimple breakouts happening on my face which I can’t stop obsessing over. I had acne as a teen and in my early twenties, and I tried every type of cleanser, cream and medication available to help fix my skin. It wasn’t until I was on Roaccutane for the second time that my skin finally cleared up. The minute I get more than one pimple at a time I start to regress into dorky-nerdy-self-conscious-acne Hannah with braces.

In addition to the planets on my face, my eyebrows are untidy, my eyelash extensions are falling out and my nails are on the brink of snapping off because they’re in desperate need of an infill.

It’s exhausting.

Whilst us as females have varying levels of maintenance to up-keep, I often feel like seeing mine written down makes it worse. You start to realise how much of your energy and dollar-dollar bills that go into keeping yourself looking and feeling good. Not that I resent this notion. In fact, I quite like feeling super feminine and paying the extra money to have a bit of extra on my lashes or nails so I don’t look like I have hobbit hands.

But honestly, sometimes the cycle of finding time for these appointments gets tiresome.

It’s true that sometimes I get annoyed that I feel the need to do all this extra shit.

Some days I really couldn’t care less about any of it and am happy to leave the house looking like a homeless, gypsy woman. Some days I have bigger issues to think about than my hair or my face or if a nail has broken off. Of course, the things I do pay for (such as my eyelashes and nails) are not necessities. Of course I don’t need them and I especially feel that way when I’ve returned home from Cambodia. Take a couple of those trips and you’ll realise none of it matters.

But all this stuff is relative and I get a few things done here and there to make myself feel a little better. So get the hell out of my face with your “you don’t need these things, Hannah” lectures. I’d say my confidence, self-esteem, attitude and general manner towards other human beings is way better when I’m feelin’ pretty.

I am thankful that I don’t have to deal with hair extensions or book in botox appointments (yet – the lines on my face tell me that that’s not too far off). I’ve put a hold on self-tanning and spray tans because:

• It’s summer
• I am aiming to get a real tan aaaannnddd
• CBF – this stand for “can’t be fucked” for those who are unsure of this acronym. I always wonder if my grandmother reads this and thinks¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Hi Mamwell!

I wear my hair pretty much the same way everyday, wear the same clothes and the same shoes everyday, because it’s easier. The minute I start styling my hair or wearing dangling earrings I have people commenting like I’m a six-year-old girl at a fairy party and the extra attention just makes me anxious. I also don’t need to feel the extra pressure of making more decisions in my life. Because again, anxiety.

And that’s just the surface of it.

If you’re anything like me, you’re responsible for remembering what the fuck (WTF) is in the fridge when trying to figure out what the hell you and other members of your household are going to eat each week. I’m the main person in charge of washing and cleaning; I’m the one who initiates the changing of bed sheets and who demands the bleaching of toilets on regular occasions.

There’s all the extra shit of paying for sanitary items, the contraceptive pill and dealing with PMS every fucking month (some could argue my PMS occurs more regularly). There’s the cost of makeup (because most of us feel the pressure to wear that too), and making sure we’ve got at least a few different “nice” things to wear when we go out, so people don’t wonder why the hell we wear the same bloody outfit every time we see them.

There’s the part where we need to make sure we exercise, stay fit and look fit.

We’re consistently searching for ways to calm our minds the fuck down, because we’re busy thinking about everything we could possibly think about all the time and if we get too chatty with all the noise in our head we’re labelled as “crazy”.

We finesse the art of stalking on social media, but have to play a good act of not coming across as a legit psychopath to new love interests, because we then get the label of “stage five clinger”. Even though the reason we’re probably stalking you and your friends is because we’ve seen one too many Law and Order episodes and value our lives, and have also already been screwed over by a notorious Gold Coast fuckboy and would like to reduce the risk of that happening again. #definitelyhappenedtoafriendofmine

We get labelled as sluts if we like having sex and labelled as bossy if we’re determined, headstrong and know what we want.

We’ve got to be good friends, partners, daughters and mothers FFS.

Seriously, my hat is off to all of the mamas out there.  I don’t even know what my life would look like with a child. But I know I definitely wouldn’t be getting my bloody eyelashes and eyebrows done and writing to my heart’s content on weekends. Definitely not. I’d probably look like I do now, but with more pimples from stress, bags under my eyes and reading blog posts like this one thinking “bitch, I can’t even get dressed some days anymore”.

And I’m not complaining – YOU’RE complaining.

Mature, I know. The reality is, whilst some of what I’ve written sounds like I’m complaining, I like my life. I choose to do those things because they either make me feel good, because I’m one part of a partnership, because they’re enjoyable (like stalking on behalf of a friend) or because I like to feel included in society. And whilst sometimes we have moods where we say “we don’t care” or “we hate people”, naturally we are going to care on some level. And we’re social creatures – we need human interaction to keep us sane.

I was summing up this post by trying to defend everything I said as I was concerned both men and women reading this would think I’m attacking a stereotype of women and/or men. Or someone would think I was saying that men don’t do anything. Or someone would make a comment about how we shouldn’t be defined by gender anymore, and quite honestly, C-B-F.

This was just meant to be a lighthearted take on how I feel as a woman at this very moment and I’ve got to keep trying to be unapologetically myself.

K thanks bye.

Han x