Phoenix forecast: Vain
When it comes to vanity, Phoenix ranks second only to New York City, according to a survey on how much time people spend on “personal care.”
Phoenix, you’re so vain you probably think this story’s about you.
And now we know exactly how vain: second in the nation.
Now it might be an insult to our vanity that we’re not No. 1, what with second place being the first loser and all, but at least we lost to the glamour capital of the world, New York.
We know all of this because a company you’ve probably never heard of (Quality Logo Products) surveyed 2,700 people across the country on a subject you’ve probably never cared about, namely, how much time do people spend on “personal care” each morning?
It also tracked things like how much people spend on grooming products, and a bunch of other weird (and kind of gross) stuff we’ll get to in a minute.
Phoenix checked in at 37.6 minutes, right behind New York’s 38.4. That means, we presume, that the average Phoenix resident spends nearly 38 minutes each day staring in the mirror. The
survey doesn’t specifically address this, but it’s probably safe to presume that Scottsdale skewed the results toward the high end.
Rounding out the top five cities were Charlotte, Miami-Fort Lauderdale and Philadelphia.
We totally get Miami, where a lot of beautiful people live, but Philadelphia? Really?
Checking in at No. 6 was Atlanta, and Nashville was No. 7. Two cities we expected to see at the pinnacle of the vanity index, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, were 8 and 9, and Cleveland was No. 10, a surprise we’d rank right up there with Philadelphia.
According to the survey, 31% of American spend 20 to 30 minutes getting ready in the morning. About 4% apparently just roll out of bed and spend less than 10 minutes, while 1.2% of the respondents spend more than two hours each morning.
Our advice to those folks: Ask Narcissus how that worked out.
Women spent more time (37.9 minutes) than men (28.7), and younger people (40.1 minutes for Gen Z) spent more time than older folks (30.6 minutes for Boomers and 22 minutes for the Greatest Generation.) We can only guess that the older folks know their time is running out and they don’t want to spend it in front of the mirror.
Now for the kind of disgusting stuff you’ve all waited for so patiently.
The survey asked about personal care “shortcuts,” and the results were, um, interesting:
❚ More than two-thirds of those surveyed say they pee in the shower all or some of the time.
❚ Roughly the same percentage said they often or occasionally pick their scabs.
❚ Nearly 75% said they often or occasionally pick their nose.
And in case you were wondering, the No. 1 city for peeing in the shower was — drum roll please — Washington, D.C.
Maybe we really do need to drain that swamp.
John D’Anna is a reporter on the Arizona Republic/azcentral.com storytelling team who doesn’t have much to show for the amount of time he spends in front of the mirror. Reach him at john.danna@arizonarepublic.com and follow him on Twitter @azgreenday.