Zadie Smith bemoans girls 'wasting time' in front of the mirror

Prize-winning author Zadie Smith has said girls are “wasting time” in front of the mirror, revealing she’s imposed a 15 minute time limit on her daughter getting ready to leave the house.

Speaking at Edinburgh International Book Festival, the best-selling writer told of being “infuriated” by the amount of time her seven-year-old daughter Kit was spending on her appearance.

“It was infuriating me. I decided to spontaneously decide on a principle: that if it takes longer than 15 minutes don’t do it,” she said, according to the Times.

The rule came into effect after she realised how much more preoccupied her daughter was with her appearance than her son.

“I explained it to her in these terms: you are wasting time, your brother is not going to waste any time doing this,” she said.

“Every day of his life he will put a shirt on, he’s out the door and he doesn’t give a sh*t if you waste an hour and a half doing your make-up.”

Smith, whose novels include the acclaimed White Teeth and Swing Time, blamed the trend of contouring, a technique popularised by beauty bloggers which uses make-up to sculpt the facial structure, for the length of time girls are spending in front of the mirror.

“From what I can understand from this contouring business, that’s like an hour and a half and that is too long,” she said.