Don’t you eat that cucumber; it is for my puffy eyes!

Most women I know would never leave the front door without a dash of lip gloss, eye liner, or at least running a comb through their hair. We can spend hours poring through magazines or walking from one beauty shop to another looking for the latest beauty products and tips. Call it vanity, but we were created beautiful creatures and intend to stay that way.

A man cannot fully comprehend the relationship between a woman and her body. While a man’s grooming kit comprises the bare essentials — basically soap and a toothbrush — a woman needs a regiment of creams and tools, each tailored for a specific part of her body.

“Shouldn’t all this stuff be in the kitchen?” hubby asks as he points at our bathroom shelf. I look at my “enriched with milk” lotion, olive oil, wimbi scrub, pineapple shampoo, avocado conditioner, carrot oil, egg mask, and body butter cream and smile.

“Nope, and please don’t try eating any of it,” I reply. I say that because the last time I had my nicely sliced cold pieces of cucumber on a saucer in the bedroom, meant for my eyes (guys, do not bother trying to understand this phrase), hubby had munched them.

Way back in my college days, I had a huge fight with my brothers one morning when I found one of them feasting on my avocado and the other watching over boiling eggs, all of which I had bought with my savings for use as beauty treatments.

We have heard about the wonders of the placenta and were it not for fear of lynching and being branded a sorcerer, I bet you some ambitious bloke would by now be hawking it on the streets of Nairobi and raking in millions in the process. In ancient Egypt, men must have gone off shaking their heads muttering: “Women! All that waste of milk. To think that they bath in it instead of drinking it.”

To add to our interesting mix, we have these demons called hormones, which work for, and against, us. They attack our moods, our skins, our digestive system, our hair, our nails, and generally our entire system.

Often, we are not aware why in an instant, our sunny disposition is followed by a depressive feeling of winter. Or why when I indulge in a tiny slice of cake or piece of chocolate my thighs, tummy, and backside suddenly look like they were pumped with fat, while hubby eats tonnes of the same stuff but remains lean.

But by golly, I am so grateful that these same hormones and those X chromosomes ensure that I do not grow a beard. Or, God forbid, hair on my back or thighs.

Now that we have the beauty conscious male following closely in our footsteps, I dare them to go full throttle. They should not just do the manicure and pedicure, they should also do the tweezing, threading, and waxing. But I have a feeling they would not stand this pain we women welcome.

Karimi is a wife and mother who believes marriage is worth it. Email [email protected]