Reya Shah ’27 is a student in AP English Language and Composition who participated in and won the 2026 Blueprint Op-Ed Contest.
My morning always starts the same: shower, wash my face and hair, and shave with my sparkly pink Billie razor that promises: soft skin, no ingrown hairs, and smooth strokes. Why want anything else? My razor works the best. One morning during my usual routine, my soap slathered hands dropped my razor. It shattered on the shower floor breaking into tiny pink plastic pieces. Desperate, I went to my dads bathroom and grabbed his dark blue razor that held a sturdiness to it, and swapped it for a fresh blade. When the razor touched my skin the smoothnesss and the invariable motion of the blade gave me a strange feeling of satisfaction.
After school I went to get a new razor. I found the dark blue razor and right next to it sat my old sparkly pink razor that shattered in the morning. I felt shocked when I saw that my old razor, priced at $11.79 compared to my dad’s sitting at $8.99 — it wasn’t even on sale. Same 5 blade razor, same flexible head design, same lubricating strip on the top; the only difference came down to the color: mine pink and sparkly, the other dark blue. I never paid more for soft skin and smooth strokes, I paid for the color.
Women’s versions of the same products tend to cost more since they get marketed as feminine ranging from razors and deodorants to clothing and even children’s toys. Imagine you were paying more without ever realizing it. A 2021 study published in International Journal of Women’s Dermatology found that women’s 4 blade razors cost on average $3.02 each while men’s 4 blade razors cost $1.94. That’s a 66% price difference for the same result. These added trivial costs, but over time their insidious nature reveals itself. The price gap’s not justified by better quality but rather the idea that femininity comes with extra costs.
According to research published by BOK Financial, the average woman spends nearly $2,381 more per year for the same services and goods as men. This then goes on to equate roughly $188,000 throughout a woman’s life. These extra costs pile up through tiny little charges: that shampoo says it will make my hair silky; that deodorant offers pink swirls on the packaging and says it helps with sweat stains in baby tees; or that razor promises a smooth and knick-free shave. That extra money goes towards your rent and groceries in a fair world, but instead it covers the cost of womanhood.
Companies make no mistakes, nothing happens by coincidence. The color, shape, image, material, and packaging all get considered by companies when they’re deciding how to market the product, so that the higher price lets companies claim “better quality”.According to the Indian Institute of Technology, 73% of purchasing decisions happen at the point of sale so it’s no coincidence that the pink sparkly razor features buzz words like “smooth” and “knick free”. Pink Tax doesn’t stop at your local Target though. According to the IMDEA Networks Institute, advertisers pay 64% more to target women in the hobby’s category, 53% more in fashion and style, and 49% more in travel. This means that companies already spend money to advertise products to women before it even hits shelves. Those costs weave their way into the final price which leaves the female customers paying the price.
So if women understand all of this, why not just buy the men’s version? To this I reply, what happens when there’s no men’s version? There’s a men’s version of a razor, but what about a lipstick? What happens when two choices stand in front of you to pick from, paying more or facing judgment for not fitting in? Products for women function as less of a choice and more of an expectation. It’s now a societal norm. Intruding its way into commonly used words: professional, presentable, and respectable. In the words of Nymia Jobe: “beauty has gone beyond providing social value – and that it is now an ethical imperative” Expectations for women to look “presentable” is exactly what keeps pink tax alive. It teaches women that the feminine choice isn’t just a choice, but rather an expectation. That pink packaging symbolizes that acceptance comes in the color pink.
An article by Girl Power Talk puts it simply as “Pink Tax is so much more damaging because it is not just a one-time increase in price; it’s cumulative.” Pink Tax may look like an easy fix, but in reality it’s more complicated than that. It’s a big mess of decades of marketing to women that’s tangled in the social norms that femininity equals a higher cost. The morning my pink razor broke it could’ve ended as an annoying broken handle, but it didn’t, it opened my eyes to pink tax not just existing as a price difference but the cost of fitting in. The first step in stopping it requires recognizing the problem and making a change.
