HOT GIRL MAINTENANCE

A hot girl maintenance routine is the unglamorous half of looking good: the washing, shaving, exfoliating, soaking and resupplying that all happens before anyone sees you. The phrase started as a joke about how much invisible work goes into a look that reads as effortless, and it stuck because it is accurate.

Having it in one place is the point. Most of this gets bought in scattered trips. A shave cream here, a wash there, a toy cleaner remembered two days too late. Grouping it turns a dozen small errands into one order.

The part that surprises people is that most of this category rewards doing less. Fragrance free beats scented. A sharp blade beats any soothing cream applied after a dull one. The vagina cleans itself, so external washing is the entire job. Nearly every complaint in this aisle traces back to someone using more product than the situation called for.

Maintenance splits into the things you do on a schedule and the things you resupply.

• Beauty: lashes, tattoo products and body care. The visible half of the routine, and the half that gets all the credit.
• Bath Products: soaks, scrubs, bombs and bubble bath. The part of the routine that doubles as the reward for doing the rest of it.
• Personal Hygiene and Intimate Care: unscented washes, wipes, sprays and shave care, made for skin that ordinary body wash is too harsh for.
• Period Management: menstrual cups, leakproof underwear, drug free cramp relief and pH balanced comfort products for the whole week.
• Kegel Balls and Dilators: weighted trainers, vibrating trainers and stone eggs. Strength training that nobody can see you doing.
• Toy Cleaners: foaming cleaners for silicone, glass and steel. The step most people mean to do and then do not.