The Primordial Pedicure

I'm having a professional pedicure this afternoon. It's my very first one; I am a pedicure virgin.

My main pedicure goal is to pick a nail polish color louder, even, than my self-illuminating white skin. So that it will distract people from my paleness. I know I was all over the self-tanning products a while back, but sometimes you have to just embrace who you are.

I've avoided pedicures in the past, not so much because of the cost, but also because they have all kinds of scary-looking tools. It seems a little too much like going to the dentist, only without the prize basket at the end.

Then there's the whole ticklish factor. I cannot abide by people touching my feet, and tend to be un-lady-like in my response to certain pressure points.

As nail salons tend to be, you know, public, this could cause problems for me should I expect to be taken seriously by well-groomed people in the community. And these are the people I don't want to get on the bad side of, because they're the ones I'll probably run into one day as witnesses for the prosecution. ("Well, I don't know anything about the accident, Your Honor, but I swear she's unstable.")

For these, and other equally silly reasons, I have always done my own pedicures. The major difference between home pedicures and professional pedicures, I'm guessing, is that in home pedicures, you just slap some paint around, and get on with your life, whereas during the professional-variety pedicure, they somehow take 45 minutes to get the paint on there, and they usually color in the lines.

My best home pedicures took place when I was pregnant. They were better (by definition) because I couldn't see them at all. Ignorance is bliss, when it comes to toenail polish.

Up to this point I've contented myself with making smug fun of those little toe-separating-doo-hickeys, and the women who wear them. Now here I go, submitting to the same indignity, all in the name of beauty.

We do a lot of silly things in the name of beauty, don't we?

We comb our hair, and then tease it. How much sense does that make?

We pluck out our eyebrows, and then draw them in with pencils.

We wear panty hose, for crying out loud.

Whiten our teeth, darken our lashes, highlight our hair, spackle our wrinkles, emphasize our eyes, conceal our hips, paint our lips, cinch our waists, hoist our cleavage, clamp our feet at absurd angles. Brush, tease, tweak, pinch, pluck, squeeze. Yikes.

I suppose I should just feel grateful that I don't live in a part of the world that thinks that a hockey puck, inserted laterally into the lower lip, would really bring out my blue eyes. It's important that we remember that all these beauty rules are arbitrary. The more we buy in, the higher the personal maintenance ante goes.

For example, a mere ten years ago, women were simply expected to shave their underarms and lower legs, and really, only for a hot date, or a day at the shore. Which was bad enough, when you think about it from the point of view of the hockey-puck-lip folks, who were understandably baffled by such idiocy.

Now we're supposed to shave all sorts of things I don't even want to think about. What used to be cutting edge fashion now ranks at "minimum level personal maintenance." So a pedicure, once a luxury of the elite, now falls under the category of "basic grooming." At this rate, it won't be long before "basic grooming" will require stitches and anesthesia.

But I digress.

This pedicure is a big event for me. I planned it way in advance, made an appointment, and there it sits on the calendar, all by itself, taking up the whole afternoon part of today's calendar square! (I felt like I needed the time buffer for anti-ticklish meditation.)

In this economy, I also found it necessary to do some serious self-justification back flips to rationalize spending on foot-fancifying what would otherwise go toward family necessities or prescription chocolate. The "I'm worth it" argument only does the trick when times are good.

For the record, I feel that I deserve this luxury, because I am paying for it using spare change that I found in the couch cushions, which otherwise would have sat there until the children harvested it for candy purchases. So, by getting this pedicure, I'm actually cleaning, and saving my children from tooth decay! See what I did there?

I'll admit, I'm looking forward to this primordial pedicure, and having my toes look more festive than they ever have. They work hard, after all, at a thankless job. And we women know how that can feel.