I have a relative. He’s one of the most well-groomed people I know – always immaculately dressed, shaven, clean shoes, perfumed, even a fancy car. He’s probably the unfittest person I know of my age. But that excellent grooming overcomes, if not obliterates, the lack of fitness – as far as appearance goes.
I’m probably the fittest amongst all my relatives of my generation. I also probably rank in the bottom quartile of them in personal grooming. I don’t like wearing formal suits – even for work or social events. I don’t iron my tees and jeans – just fold them out of the drier. My hair is perennially a mess. I shave twice a week, at best. One of my shoe laces got shredded in bike chain 8 months ago – I’m still to replace it. And still, despite dressing like an undergrad hosteler, I’m modestly presentable (though never attractive) – the fitness bit covering up partly for the ill-groomed bit of the personality
Then there’s the person who connects me to the relative above. She’s almost as unfit as the relative above, if not more. And she may probably be the only person I know who’s worse at personal grooming than me. This combination of lack of personal grooming and personal fitness is not attractive. It’s often repellant.
It doesn’t help that both of her families – the one that she shares with me, and the one she shares with him – have a dismissive, almost repulsive, attitude towards personal fitness. It’s worse that she seems to have picked up from me the one trait that I don’t share with rest of the family – (lack of) personal grooming.
I’ve tried nudging, inciting, incentivising her towards improving her personal fitness, to little success. I believe the other person must have tried similarly on personal grooming, to little success.
I love her, and this lack of attention to her appearance, upsets me (her lack of fitness upsets me a *lot* more).
Yet there’s nothing I’m able to do. Help! :(