Only Twenty Dollars?

Kristyn Schiavone is a new-ish fashion columnist in our paper and I’m on the fence about whether I like her or not.  Cons:  she’s not local (she seems to be out of Chicago), her writing style is a bit too “sorority girl” for me, and she’s quite peppy.  Granted, those last two might be a given with fashion columnists.  Pros:  Um, I keep reading her?
 
But today a sentence in the article took my breath away.  Check out #4.

Only twenty dollars?  To me, a fully-employed professional, there is no “only” about a twenty dollar bill. There’s not really an “only” about a five-dollar bill in my world.  So to read that a manicure is “only” twenty dollars is pretty jarring.  I think columnists/commentators make this mistake a lot.  They think that all their readers are in the same demographic as they are.  It’s not a good thing.

3 thoughts on “Only Twenty Dollars?”

  1. As someone who gets her nails done and likes bold colors, I can say that it does connect to me. And yet, I am not really a reader.

    But I do agree with you that such presumptions are annoying in any author.

  2. For most of my customers, $20 would be a "cheap" manicure. Even when I got manicures (due to the nature of my current job, it hardly seems to be a good idea any longer), I could only justify the expense maybe a few times a year. I honestly can't imagine having the disposable income to do it all the time.

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