I hate feet. I hate both your and my feet. I hate touching them. I hate having my feet touched. Each pedicure is worse than the last, and they’re all mildly stressful at best. I still voluntarily get them though: I want pretty feet,sue me.
“You must not show any signs of weakness,” I compulsively repeat to myself as I make a half-hearted attempt to get comfortable in my intimidating-looking pedicure chair. Slow vibrations with back-kneading sounds fancy, but sometimes it really feels like someone is trying to punch me in the back. Or push my skull forward and get me off the chair.
I hand over a couple of disinfectant wipes and a nail tool-kit to my already weird technician, and giving a sheepish explanation about fungal infections and the kind. This is one part of my life where I let my freak flag wave proudly, the others are sort of a by-product of living.
The discomfort I feel is both physical and emotional. I am left with a tearful-kind of ticklish feeling by the time my technician starts to scrub the soles of my foot. It’s not a giggly-oh-so-happy tickle. It’s anxiety inducing, which leaves me nostalgic of the time my brother used to tackle/tickle me, until I couldn’t breathe and was terrified, begging him to stop.
Do not accidentally kick the nice-lady in the face.When I’m not feeling physically battered, it’s an emotional trauma of dealing with nail-judgement issue. Is that baby hair on my toe??? I sometimes give myself a pre-pedicure before I go for one, because I really don’t want my poor technician to see what a crusty mess my feet have become over the last month… Oh if only she knew how much I needed her validation!
My shining, golden advice to you: please don’t read articles about how underpaid technicians are, or about nail salons being the hotbeds of fungal infections. You CAN’T read a tell-all piece about salons not paying their employees WHILE YOU’RE AT ONE. What if they see your phone and get offended because this is a well-paying place and they think you’re judging them? Or what if you drop your phone and they see it, then throw you out for reading about the sad plight of their employees in front of them?
What if you accidentally drop it into your pedicure tub? (This has happened to me once.) What if you accidentally drop it into a strangers’ pedicure tub? (Even if my phone worked after that, I’d throw it away.)
Massages are another thing that sometimes make me feel weird, but more on that next week. Keywords to look out for: stress, blurred vision, and excessive greasiness. Sigh, oh well… beauty is pain.
saumya R chawla
@pixie.secrets
The writer loves to over-share, drink wine & watch period dramas