Careers, children and homemaking all come above preserving your appearance. Self-preservation is at the bottom of the scale.
As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to task.
Self-preservation is the first responsibility.
For the several thousands of years before they became firefighters and physicians, women were sirens, enchantresses, snares. At times it seems as if female powerlessness is male self-preservation in disguise. And for millennia, this has made for a zero-sum game: A woman's intelligence was a man's deception.
When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.