New lip. Decent coat. Nails done before the shift
Nobody has to know the account. Looking costly is still the cheapest kind of rich I can manage on a warehouse wage in this city.
I know how it sounds. A grown woman with a maths degree, standing in the bathroom at 6.40am, painting a mouth on like it is going to change the standing order. It will not. I do it anyway.
There is a version of me that looks like she has it handled. She lives in the mirror. The other version lives in the banking app. They do not speak to each other until payday, and even then it is a short conversation.
The face I take to work
I am 5 foot 3. If I turn up looking tired, people talk to me like I am junior. If I turn up looking finished, they move. That is not feminism. That is the floor. Radios, rotas, men twice my height asking where the pallet is when it is sat behind them.
So I do the face. Not a full production. I have not got the time or the lighting. Concealer, brow, a lip that looks like I meant it. Hair that says I did not just roll out of a shared bathroom with two flatmates hammering on the door.
People call it vanity. Fine. Call it what you want. I call it armour you can buy in Boots when you are already late.
I catch myself in every reflective surface. The kettle. The lift doors. The dark window of the night bus. I am not admiring myself. I am checking the work is still holding. If the face is on, I can do smug. Smug gets you through a twelve hour shift better than honesty does.
What looking expensive actually costs
It is never the big purchase that does me in. I can talk myself out of a coat. I cannot talk myself out of the little stuff, because the little stuff is how I get out the door.
A lip product I did not need. Nails that make my hands look like they do not live in a warehouse. A blazer that still works over something tighter than it needs to be. Trainers I can walk the floor in that do not look like I have given up.
None of it is designer. That is the joke. I am not out here buying a bag that could cover a month of rent. I am buying the impression of a person who might. There is a difference, and my overdraft knows it even if the woman behind the till does not.
I add it up in seconds. I always have. Drinks, cab, extra pizza, the top I did not need. The degree shows up at the worst time, usually after the card has already gone through. I can tell you what a night cost before the receipt prints. I still tap.
Payday is a costume change
Money lands and my brain spends it twice. Once in the app. Once in my head, on the version of me that looks like she is winning.
For about forty eight hours I am generous with myself. Nails. A better moisturiser than the one that is already half empty. Something small from the chemist that smells like I have options. Then Wednesday arrives and I am eating toast like a student with nicer mascara.
The flat sees it. They always do. Two friends, one bathroom, a kitchen that looks like a crime on Sundays. Nobody says you should not have got the nails done. They just clock the bag from the shop and the way I go quiet when rent day sits in the group chat.
I hate asking anyone to cover me. It makes my mouth small. I would rather stay in than do that dance. Pride is expensive. So is pretending you are fine while you watch a standing order strip the account like it has a personal grudge.
Why I keep doing it
Because looking sorted is the one bit of the day I can control before the warehouse starts talking.
Because a promotion is still sat out there like a dare, and I have noticed that people take you more seriously when you do not look like you slept in your coat. Unfair. True. I can be angry about it on the night bus and still do my lip in the loo before the briefing.
Because sex makes me feel chosen for an hour and pretty things make me feel chosen when I am on my own. Different tools. Same job. I am not going to pretend I do not know that about myself.
And because if the outside looks expensive, I can walk into a pub, a date, a meeting about the next rung, and not lead with the fact I am calculating cab money in my head. Nobody has to know the account. That is the whole point.
I used to think that made me shallow. Now I think it makes me a woman who grew up learning that if you look finished, people stop asking if you are all right. Quiet houses teach you strange skills. Looking like you are winning is one of mine.
The cheapest kind of rich
Real rich is a buffer. Real rich is a taxi that does not need a committee meeting. Real rich is a Sunday that does not require a strategy. I want that. I want the title and the number. I am done being grateful for extra work that does not show up on the payslip.
Until then, I have this.
A decent coat over a warehouse life. Nails that will chip by Thursday and still did their job on Monday morning. A mouth that looks like I have somewhere better to be, even when I am going to the same floor I went to yesterday.
It is not a personality. It is a trick I have got good at. If I look costly, I can be cocky. If I am cocky, I can ask for the raise without my voice doing that small thing. If I get the raise, maybe I stop needing the trick so much. That is the hope, anyway. Hope is a stupid habit. I check the balance like it might have changed overnight.
Same number. Still I open the app.
What I am not going to do
I am not going to sit here and tell you to stop buying lipstick. I would be a hypocrite with a full makeup bag and no authority.
I am also not going to call it self care and leave it there. Sometimes it is self care. Sometimes it is me spending the feeling before I have to sit with it. Music up, telly on, diary if it gets too loud, face on if I have to leave the flat. That is the order of operations.
If you are skint and still getting your nails done, I get it. I am not going to do the lecture about lattes and discipline. I can run a spreadsheet at work and ruin it by Thursday for a night out. I know exactly what I am doing. That is the annoying part.
The honest version is this. Pretty things do not make me rich. They make me look like a person who might be. In London, on this wage, with this rent, that gap is where a lot of us live. Visually sponsored. Financially not. Both things can be true in the same mirror.
Before I leave the bathroom
I do the last check. Hair. Lip. Coat. The face that can do smug.
Then I pick up the bag with the boots in it and go to work like the account is a rumour I will deal with later. Later is usually the night bus, fluorescent lighting, me clocking my reflection in the window because I cannot help it.
Habit. Armour. A bit sad, if I am being straight.
Still. For the length of a shift, I look like I am winning. That has to count for something until the actual win shows up. I would like the actual win to be money. A door that is mine. A Friday that does not need maths.
Until it does, I will keep buying the version of me that can walk onto the floor and look like she already got it.
New lip. Decent coat. Nails done before the shift. Nobody has to know the account. That is the cheapest rich I have, and I am using it.
