Haha, I appreciate that we are each like, “I think this…but also maybe not!” 
It drives my husband nuts during conversations because he’s like “but you just said X ten minutes ago!” and I’m like, “oh I was just talking, I think I’ve changed my mind twice since then.”
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Perception is everything and if I can’t change my mind while thinking aloud theeeeen we have a problem 
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This relates to the whole beauty discussion and I don’t know anything about the below quotation, do others know if this is accurate?
" They’re not wrong: Sociologists Jaclyn Wong and Andrew Penner found thatphysically attractive workers have higher incomes than average-looking workers, but that this relationship is eliminated when controlling for grooming in women. In other words, if you purchase the right clothes, makeup and haircut, higher wages are more within reach."
This is the linked source:
" The researchers found that overall, men and women who were considered more attractive earned more money than their less-attractive counterparts, according to the study, published online last month in the journal Research in Social Stratification and Mobility. But when grooming was factored in for men, the numbers evened out. For women, those who were well-groomed women actually had higher incomes than poorly groomed women, regardless of their “natural” level of attractiveness, the researchers found."
“For both men and women, grooming matters more than attractiveness: Being attractive is not enough; it is doing attractiveness appropriately [being well groomed] that proves one’s deservingness and is what gets rewarded in the labor market,” the authors of the study, Jaclyn Wong, a Ph.D. student in sociology at the University of Chicago, and Andrew Penner, an associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine, wrote in their paper"
THAT ^ is super surprising to me.
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I think that livescience source has several points that were brought up in the conversation earlier.
One possible explanation for this effect is that putting effort into one’s appearance signals that a person will put effort into other activities, such as his or her job, the researchers said.
Signals - not just to the researcher who is assuming this might be the case, but to others at work. And it becomes the perception/reality, even if they aren’t actually doing anything differently from a functional level than their peers.
When I decided I wanted to succeed more in the work force I changed my clothing, grooming and voice timbre. I never played the game fully, but I intentionally played the game and it made a difference, even though my work quality remained the same.
The findings show that grooming — which requires paying attention to social cues, spending money and conforming to certain social identities — “is the key that provides women with the [benefits] associated with attractiveness,” the researchers said.
I think this is what @ElleP was saying.
A previous study found that spending more time on grooming was linked with higher wages for men in minority groups. That study also suggested that for women, spending more than 90 minutes a day on grooming had a negative effect on wages. Excess grooming could signal that people are focused more on their appearance than on their job, the researchers speculated.
I think this is what @beep_boop was referencing. Trying too hard, being fake (huge racial, ethnicity, and class stuff going on here).
However, we also need to keep in mind for this research that the attractiveness and grooming scores were reported just by the interviewers, who would have their own biases around what constitutes these things. It would have been cool if they had measured symmetry or something else. And I wonder about measuring those things at the end of the interview vs. at the beginning - we all know people who seem much more attractive after we had a chance to speak with them. 
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Sorry, you are correct! I was mostly surprised that the grooming outweighed natural attractiveness. I had to be very well groomed when I worked in office because standards were high in my location, so I definitely experienced that. I had bosses mention things like manicures basically being mandatory, especially working retail, and being asked to wear skirts in office settings. But if you’d asked me, “do you get more benefit from grooming but being average looking or being naturally attractive and not grooming,” I’d have said the latter! I guess it also depends on what low grooming is, like is that just not wearing makeup or is it looking actively disheveled? Anyway apologies that the conversation had moved past this aspect!
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This conversation does have me considering my appearance as I WFH and only see people via Zoom 98% of the time. When I’m going to see people in person I do put on eye make up but when I’m home, nah. I try to have on a clean shirt and have my hair pulled back, but it seemed like no one would be able to tell if I was putting on a little eye liner when I’m a little 2"x2" thumbnail on their screen. Despite my considering this it hasn’t made me change my habits at all and it didn’t even occur to me to do anything different before my meetings this morning - I also have zero ambition to advance at my job, though, so 
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today’s episode is just perfection y’all – they are taste-testing moon juice “dust” products 
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Summary
Thank you for sharing this perspective. It’s given me a lot to think about!
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Oh, I’m excited this is a thread! (Sorry I’m late to the party). I really like this podcast and even support them on patreon, but also sometimes I have critiques of them that I’d love to discuss with folks.
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Summary
As an aside this is also very much reflected in infertility communities as well. Either when you’re out of options, or the next step costs $30k you don’t have, of course you’ll turn to whatever diet/herb/new thing you can try, because what… should we just throw our hands up and feel helpless instead? But people are incredibly derisive, especially of women turning to complementary medicine, even when it’s literally the last shot we’ve got to improve things. I just thought it was an interesting point of convergence, because while infertility isn’t a disability and doesn’t effect life the SAME way, it gets the same treatment vis-à-vis being really easy to be condescending toward the people going through it and the things they (we) try.
I hope that made sense, after I typed it I realized my neck is in a ton of pain and my thoughts might be mud.
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I’m a bit grumpy though, because as a patreon supporter I already got this episode as a monthly reward and I want more content! 
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same! but i didn’t get to listen last week – i always forget to look for podcasts on patreon!
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Do you use apple podcast app? You can get an rss feed so they populate right into your app! I’m not sure how other apps do it, but I think you can with others too!
Summary
YES! And, also an area where mainstream medicine can’t always help you. I have 2 friends with 7 miscarriages between them. One is now almost 43 and has had to give up on her own eggs even though that wasn’t the problem 7 years ago. The other is I think still in her mid 30s. They could spend tens of thousands of dollars that they don’t have, and still not get answers. RPL panel wasn’t helpful. I think I read that only 50% of people with repeat losses ever get an answer.
So when my friend talks about doing castor oil packs and seeing her naturopath and trying to balance her gut bacteria and whatever… I’m not gonna judge.
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i need to figure out how to do this in spotify!
I just googled it for you and spotify doesn’t let you 
one of these days someone is gonna make a really good podcast app! 
#manifesting
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Totally!
I think there is huge overlap with pregnancy and infertility and disability. Mobility becomes harder, your body becomes even more “public”, people touch you, ask personal questions, give advice, and blame you for things outside of your control. And for healthy women pregnancy is often the first time they’re heavily interacting with the medical field, so they’re suddenly aware of how bad thing are, but they often assume it has to do with infertility specifically.
But also, for many able people infertility is the very first time their body acts somewhat disabled. I think that’s partly why it’s understood to be such a huge issue. A lot of the pain is around the emotions of not being able to do what other people can easily do (you see this with breastfeeding and c-section feelings too IMO). It’s that shock that, omg, my body can limit what I actually want for myself and I have no control. And the answers the best of science has to offer are…really not great yet. Commence personal crisis mode.
Even with an easy pregnancy there is a lot of trickle down from ableism. Leave laws show this well, IMO. Infantilizing, too, “should you be doing that?!” And it’s the first time for healthy people that they experience any physical loss of control. They want to plan and suddenly realize…they’re not sure what they’ll be able to do in a few months, or what will happen. Their body looks suddenly different. It’s unclear how exactly delivery will go, there’s a plan, but things (big scary things) could happen.
I’m a big believer in groups with common overlap banding together to make issues more visible. And I hope that at some point disability activists and pregnant activists (if this is a thing, I assume it is) will see the tremendous overlap they have and team up. Because there are wayyyyyyy more people who deal with infertility and have a lot of money and power and influence than disabled people. Ditto with fat activists, but I think the overlap is much bigger with fertility things.
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Summary
I think one of the huge areas is “no, this isn’t “elective”, it’s time sensitive, my doctor approves, why TF do insurance companies get to just poopoo whatever they feel like?” Like, we definitely need a reckoning around all that, be it fertility coverage not existing at all, insurance acting like high risk pregnancy scans are optional, insurance saying your can’t possibly need more than 6 PT appointments a year (LOL) so on.
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Plus, you know, the medical people all know women’s bodies are fake bodies so period, pregnancy and infertility issues are also fake
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