Pedicure Panic Attack

While I enjoy being a girl, I sometimes don’t have time for the higher pursuits of feminine beauty. I have two energetic boys at home, several writing projects going on, a house to run, a mom to take to Walgreens, and a husband to have fun with. Not to mention friends, church, work outs, and unexpected trips to the store for squeeze cheese. I’m a busy gal.

So I let things slide. I don’t shave my legs until I spot park rangers scouting for elk herds on my shins. I don’t pluck my brows until they’re no longer plural, but singular. I put off my haircut until my clips groan with the effort of holding up my mop. I go for weeks forgetting the existence of eye shadow, earrings, and conditioner.

My feet are probably my most neglected body parts. And unlike, say, my eyelids which pretty much stay the same whether I put eye shadow on them or not, my feet can get pretty, well, repulsive I guess is the word. When I do go in for my annual pedicure, the experience is nothing short of humiliating. Of course I can’t say for sure, but I imagine the conversation of the technicians, if translated, would go something like this:

“Holy French Tips, Tiffany, this woman has the most hideous feet I’ve ever seen!”

“Nah, Dianna. I’ve seen some stuff, girlfriend. Hers can’t be that ba—oh my great-grandmother! Those calluses are thicker than the Great Wall.”

“I told you, honey. I’m gonna be here for an hour.”

“Better you than me is all I can say.”

“You would say that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I know you want to get out of here early.”

“Oh, yeah? What makes you think that?”

“I saw you out with Stuart last week.”

“No, girlfriend. Wasn’t me.”

“Yes it was. You had on the Gucci heels. I saw you.”

“What Gucci heels, honey?”

“The red ones. You gonna wear them on your date tonight?”

“I’m not dat—wait a minute. What just fell off her foot?”

“I think it might be a raisin.”

“It was probably still a grape when she stepped on it. You better get out the gloves, honey. Who knows what else you’ll find.”


Does anyone else have these translated dialogues going on in their brains while the pre-law student working on your feet chats with her co-worker? Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but today as I sat in the ambiguously massaging chair with my dead skin flying around the very determined looking woman attacking my feet, I was sure she was judging my pitiful self-care habits.

Maybe it was the, “You come back. You come back often,” accompanied by the bead of sweat on her forehead as she battered and buffed my feet. Maybe it was the color of the water which started out blue but left the basin a murky, swamp-green color. Maybe it was the way the other employees of Lilac Nails gathered around to watch, slack-jawed, as my feet went from abominations to appendages over the course of an hour. I don’t know. But whatever the reason, I think I’m going to have to change to bi-annual pedicures if I’m to ever escape being labeled “That chubby woman with the disgusting feet.”

Anybody ever see that Adam Sandler movie where one of his feet is black from frostbite? Mr. Deeds. I can just see Winona Ryder’s face crinkle with disgust at the sight of his foot even as she pounds on the ice trapping her. I’d probably get the same reaction were I to offer my revolting foot as a means of rescue to someone stuck in a frozen lake. “Hmmm, on the one hand there’s a frigid, excruciating death. On the other, grabbing that gruesome foot. Let me think.”

More mani-pedi fun.