Tax Season for Women Never Ends. Here's One Way to Take Control.
Business Insider just documented what we’ve been saying all along - and the women they interviewed are defending it.
When a system makes you pay a tax to belong, and you pay it so many times it starts to feel like a choice, and then you start calling it an investment — the system is working exactly as designed.
A luxury real estate agent closes multimillion-dollar deals in Manhattan. She is objectively excellent at her job. And she told Business Insider this week that quarterly Botox is non-negotiable.
Not a personal choice. Non-negotiable. Business Insider ran a feature today on the new luxury real estate agent uniform. Seven agents broke down what they spend to look the part. One spent $100,000 on clothes in 2025 alone. Another has a standing manicure every other week. Laser treatments. Blowouts. The works. The article describes all of it as a personal and professional investment requiring constant attention.
I have a different word for it.
NOTE: this image represents only SOME of of what she pays in taxes.
Taxed more by the system that pays us less
If you’ve read my original Glam Tax article, you know the math. We spend more than men — a LOT more. Personal care products marketed to women run 13 to 17% higher than equivalent products marketed to men. And then there’s the category that doesn’t exist in most men’s professional lives at all: the standing manicure, the skincare routine, the quarterly Botox. A man’s grooming routine is optional. A woman’s is assessed.
That’s not a lifestyle difference. That’s the tax.
Meanwhile, back in the bank balance, we earn less. The pay gap is 18 cents on every dollar — and it’s widening.
Spend more. Earn less. One of those we feel. The other we probably don’t even think about.
That’s why we developed the Glam Tax Calculator — to give you agency over your decisions on the spend side. After all, we have little on the earn side.
Here’s what else makes me furious
These women are closing deals on $59 million homes. They are excellent at what they do by every measurable standard. And they have been so thoroughly conditioned by the system that they defend the tax. They call it non-negotiable. They call it a calling card. They call it an investment in how they show up.
I’m not angry at them. I’m angry for them. And for all of us.
Because that’s exactly how coercion works when it’s working well. You pay it enough times, you internalize it, and eventually you can’t remember what it would feel like not to pay it. The tax becomes the uniform. The uniform becomes identity. And somewhere in there the question — who decided this was necessary? — stops feeling worth asking.
Business Insider framing $100,000 in annual appearance costs as empowerment is the system doing its job. The system is very good at its job.
What’s a Woman to Do?
Before you pay your next installment, add it up.
And for the Wodaabe men, the pay gap math and the two questions you deserve to ask yourself, including the one that doesn’t leave me alone…
Read the original article
Lead ON!
Susan
If you’re following all the advice and it still feels like something’s in the way. You are not the problem.
You are working inside a system that’s withholding something from you.
I’m here to offer what that system can’t or won’t: the business, financial and strategic acumen that opens doors — through every article here, the Be Business Savvy Course and Your Business Savvy Coach.
❤️ Like, share or restack this article — it’s the best way to help other women find it
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Susan
Ironic that BI are leaping off your thought leadership about the Glam Tax Susan!