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Notes -
I was joking about women wanting the government to pay for those things, but only partially. The "someone else" part was somewhat less joking.
There are quite a few women in spaces like /r/aitah who will argue that a husband/boyfriend WBTA if he doesn't agree with his wife/girlfriend's assertion that her makeup, nails, and clothes should be considered a valid part of the household budget like food, rent/mortgage, and utilities, especially if they each have equal-sized "fun" accounts alongside their household account. Equal pay for equal work isn't fair, because it's just so much more expensive being a woman if she has to pay for her own essential upkeep. A father WBTA if he's not as enthusiastic about paying for his teenage or young adult daughter's make-up and thotty outfits as he is for his teenage or young adult son's sports equipment :jordan_peterson_daughter_question.mp4:
The payment from someone else need not be direct/explicit. I recall a Lived Experience of mine reading an AskaManager letter or comment thread chain where the writer was complaining that her coworker was treating nail (or lash, I forget which, maybe it was both) appointments like medical ones, and would guiltlessly ditch work for hours for her appointments and then return like nothing happened.
There were many sympathetic comments for both the coworker and the OP; the coworker being the victim in having no choice but to use the workday for her nail/lash appointments, and the OP for having to cover for her (in the sense that women have always been the primary victims of women's vanity appointments). I doubt the comments would had been as sympathetic if OP was male (why do you care so much? Her appointments are none of your business, just be a decent person and cover for your coworker), or if the coworker was a man ditching work to play vidya for a few hours.
And thus, in the absence of "someone else," why not the government to fill the gap?
It is kind of a Chadette move to ditch work for your vanity appointments, though. "Leaving for my appointment now, I'll be back when I'm back, be thankful I'm deigning to let you plebs cover for me 💅"
I mean, I've seen feminists ranting about the pink tax- how much more women's hygiene costs. This is usually illustrated with how much more pink razors cost than mens'(reality unisex) razors, despite no functional difference. Never does it seem to occur to them that if there's really no functional difference(I don't know enough about women's razors to say if this is true) just treating the cheapest razor option as unisex is their best option. One suspects that they don't actually care.
There are a substantial number of women who just want you to know how much of the extra mile society(=women) expects from them.
In many countries feminists complain that tampons and pads are taxed at the regular (which is higher) VAT rate, instead of the special (which is lower) one, usually reserved for food and beverages. That toilet paper is also highly taxed doesn't stop their campaign.
When Texas repealed the sales tax on tampons(and sales tax on tampons is at least an actionable complaint, even if reasonable people can disagree with it, unlike most of the 'pink tax' discourse) it also repealed it on diapers, which is an interesting example of consistency on the issue- and not one demanded by feminists.
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