The day after I found out I had passed my nursing boards, I thought, Well, now what? My kids were at day camp, my partner was at work, I’d given my old boss two weeks’ notice and my new boss notification that I’d be ready to start in three.
I figured I was due for some self-indulgence. I’d been wrangling
children and work and school for about six years. So on a whim I decided to get
my first mani-pedi.
People I know talk about these, but the idea of them has always
embarrassed me. I actually kind of like my feet, so that wasn’t it. It was just
imagining this army of women out there buffing and polishing other women’s
appendages. Something about it felt obscene.
I know, I know. We pay people to do all sorts of things. Like cut
our hair, for instance—except that doesn’t seem as personal. I get a massage
sometimes, too, but that’s got this health-and-wellness aspect to it that just
feels different somehow.
Is there anything on a par with having someone work on your feet
and toenails? Maybe paying someone to unplug your household drains(?). But
those people get paid handsomely to do your dirty work.
Despite these misgivings, off I went.
I knew ahead of time that this was a sociological experiment.
First off, although I’m a woman, half the time I feel like a fake. (Maybe
because I’m gay?) Secondly, the world of nail salons is peopled by a mostly
Asian workforce and a Caucasian customer base, so that impacts the dynamics. I
knew these things walking in, of course, but I was interested to see what I would
think and feel.
Something that surprised me immediately was how much of a “thing”
getting a mani-pedi is. After picking a color for my toes, I was immediately
seated in a giant, cushy massage chair, complete with a jetted foot bath. And these
weren’t pulled-together items. They were pieces of furniture quite obviously created
entirely for the nail business at large.
The woman assigned to me got right to work. Meanwhile, I looked
around. I was ensconced in the chair furthest into the salon, but there were
another ten or twelve chairs to my left along that wall. To my right was a
counter with a sink, and a basket of rolled-up hand towels, and along the wall
ahead of me was a long countertop at which four or five women sat with hands
extended to various manicurists. Above and behind them, an enormous flat-screen
TV. (I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a large set. I’m thinking that if
sports-minded men in this neighborhood understood this perq, they’d immediately
begin getting manicures.)
When I looked down again toward the towel-covered footrest, I was
suddenly appalled. Who knew such a pile of dead and calloused skin could come
off my feet? I think I blushed. If I didn’t blush, I should have. But the
manicurist was seemingly undaunted. Who knows? She may have thought I was the
grossest person ever, or maybe a significant pile of ragged skin bits are just
part and parcel of this work. I have no idea.
Another worker stopped at the sink area and exchanged a few words
with her in a language that was not English. When she walked away, I asked,
intrigued, “What was the language you were speaking?”
“Vietnamese,” she told me.
I nodded. “Is everyone who works here Vietnamese?”
“Most,” she said. “There’s one from China. She knows three languages.”
I raised my eyebrows in astonishment.
“You work long hours, don’t you?” I asked. (Their door said 9 a.m.
to 7 p.m.)
“Yes,” she said.
“Is it busy that whole
time?”
“Sometimes. We have days when we don’t eat or drink because there
are so many people.”
“Oh,” I said, concerned. “Be sure to eat.” (Yeah, I’m a nurse and
a mother, what can I say?)
“You want regular or deluxe?” she asked.
At first I thought I’d go for regular, but then I figured, Maybe
you aren’t ever doing this again—so I told her deluxe.
In addition to having had my cuticles clipped and heel callouses
scrubbed down, I got an additional calf massage with lotion and hot stones. She
also dipped my feet into plastic bags full of warm wax, which she later neatly
peeled off in a single motion. It felt wonderful, but again, I felt slightly
sick that my body could produce slough that other people had to handle.
Someone turned on the giant TV set to Netflix and an episode of
“Friends” began to play: Chandler and Monica going to the fertility doctor. I
can’t imagine that in real life that scenario would ever be funny, but the
writers made it zany enough that the plot tripped along with its accompanying
laugh-track.
The manicurist slipped a pair of orange disposable flip-flops onto
my feet, along with aquamarine foam toe-dividers, and swiftly and neatly
painted my toenails blood red. Then she doused my cuticles with oil and spread
it all over the skin. There were other steps in there, but I’ve lost tract of
it all. It felt amazing.
“Okay, come over here.” She directed me to the long table/counter,
and I sat down.
The woman to my left was tall and tan and athletic. Her nails were
being painted a gorgeous graying pink. “I love that you paint the ends first,”
she said to her manicurist, who looked like a medical professional, her mouth
banded with a paper mask so that she wouldn’t breathe in nail and nail polish particulates.
“I swear, this last time you guys worked on me, the color lasted six weeks. And
I worked in my garden, even.”
“Really?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she said. “There’s regular polish and then there’s this
powder type.”
“You want that kind?” my manicurist asked.
“Okay,” I relented. She helped me pick a color—this time a red
with a little more yellow in it as well as miniscule sparkles.
She shaped my extremely short nails and asked me if they were
okay.
“Oh, yes,” I told her.
She glanced up at me. “You’re nice,” she said.
“Well . . . I’m easy-going,” I replied, abashed. I took piano
lessons for umpteen years as a kid, so long, painted nails were a no-go. Plus,
mine just never seem to grow. I don’t even cut them with nail scissors—just nip
them off with clippers. Who can be bothered, I’d always thought. I was
beginning to reevaluate that idea.
So besides there being specialized manicure furniture, here was
another modernism I was not aware of: you don’t have to polish nails anymore,
exactly. I mean, she did paint on clear varnish, but then each finger was
dipped in a colored powder. She’d then lightly flick my finger, buff the nail a
bit, paint on more clear lacquer, and dunk the nail once again. I think this
occurred four or five times.
“Wow,” I exclaimed.
The athletic woman next to me said, “Yeah, and be sure to ask her
what to do when you want that back off. It’s not easy, and you should probably
come back in.”
“Oh, really?” I asked. “I never do this. I’ve never done this. I
had no idea what to expect.”
“Not ever?”
“No,” I said. “I have two kids with special needs, and I just
finished nursing school. I don’t have time for things like this, but I thought
I’d try it.”
She turned toward me. “You have kids with special needs?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I’m a physical therapist,” she said. “I work for Boulder Valley
School District.”
It turned out she had never worked with my kids but had been at
one of the schools they attended and knew who they were.
At this point, a dark-haired woman sitting on the physical
therapist’s other side said, “I have kids with special needs, too.” Hers were
in their twenties and now lived separately from her in group homes in the area.
We all agreed that our local developmental disabilities center, Imagine!, was
fantastic, that life with these kids was extraordinary, that school can be
amazing and frustrating—real life mimicking “Friends,” which in all honesty
imitates “Cheers.”
“This is crazy,” I said, shaking my head. The row of masked manicurists
were smiling with their eyes.
The dark-haired woman noticed this, too. “You guys probably see
this stuff happen all the time, don’t you? This place is like a bar—the girl
bar.” Her nails were nearly finished, and when she got up to go, we waved at
her and wished her the best. My athletic neighbor decided to have a pedicure
and removed to one of the cushy massage chairs, and I bid her adieu as well.
On “Friends,” another episode was playing. This time Joey and
Rachel were having a heart to heart at, of all things, a conference for
paleontologists, where Ross and Joey’s newest girlfriend had somehow dragged
them.
The manicurist gently pushed my right hand toward a miniature fan.
When she finished with the left hand, she pressed it toward a fan on that side.
Once my nails were dry, I got up to pay, but I stopped several
times to admire her handiwork before reaching the cash register. Then I pulled
out my card and paid, but I stumbled over the bill. What am I supposed to tip,
I wondered. I couldn’t land on a figure, so I did twenty percent.
But half an hour later, I regretted that I hadn’t given her more.
Usually, twenty percent seems right, but now I felt awful. The nail salon
economy doesn’t entirely follow what’s usual, in the gut sense. Though I
haven’t asked anyone else, so maybe I’m the only one who feels that way, I
don’t know.
In addition to that confusion, I didn’t know what to think of the
experience. I had a mixed response. Having a little color on one’s fingernails
and toenails is fun—simple fun. Delightful, really.
And it’s nice to be pampered. It was relaxing, though that aspect
was negated somewhat by my crazy self-consciousness. And my aversion to some of
the wholly-anticipated-but-still-ghastly aspects of this beauty regimen.
I don’t know, either, what to think about the privilege of those
of us getting primped versus those of us doing the work. Sure, the women
workers have jobs, but this may not have been what they really thought they’d
be doing when they relocated to the U.S. (and most of them were immigrants).
I’d read part of the 2015 exposé in The New York Times about nail salons in that city, an investigation
that made such places out to be sweatshops. That article must have led to
quite a kerfuffle afterward, because when I went online to find it again, my
search uncovered headlines about protests, rebuttals, and partial retractions.
The latter was somewhat reassuring to me. It would seem that, even in NYC, not
every nail salon was performing shady practices. At the one I went to in my
town, there was an ease about the employees that would seem impossible to me if
they were being mistreated or exploited the way The New York Times had suggested their city’s nail salon workers
were.
Still, the manicurists in this shop were hard-working, diligent
Asian immigrants. Their fingernails
and toenails were not shiny perfection. I’m not sure how they do economically
working there, but the situation is certainly stratified, culturally speaking.
I think that’s what made getting a mani-pedi different from other
beauty services I receive. For one thing, apart from the sound of the
television, and my interaction with the other customers, there was actually
very little conversation. During most of my session, I took my lead from the
manicurist and remained silent. I had tons of questions, but I didn’t want to
pry, so I have no idea if she has children, if she owns a house, if she drives
to work or carpools, if she’s married. I know these things about my hair
stylist, but here I didn’t ask. Even the few questions I threw out felt
invasive, to tell the truth. None of the other customers were having these
conversations either, so I’d chalk up the silent worker-consumer transaction in
this salon to the cultural differences across the counter. I can’t speak for
other places, but this one had mostly Vietnamese manicurists, and they went
about their duties with a particularly self-possessed, calm, and quiet air. And
that calmness and silence impacted me. I’m a regular Chatty Cathy, usually, but
I rather liked it.
I guess that eventually I’ll have to return to get the
powder-paint removed. I can’t go to work as a nurse with fire engine red
fingernails. But how to proceed after that? I really don’t know.
The only thing I’m certain of is that if I do go back, I’m going
to tip more. I know I’m going to want to bring the whole place snacks, but that’s
probably paternalistic. I guess I’m wondering how women do nail salon
treatments without feeling like self-conscious hucksters. Do most white women
feel as white as I do doing this sort of thing? Is getting a mani-pedi a common
recreation among women of different races? Is getting one’s nails done really different
somehow from other kinds of beauty treatments?
I’m still thinking about these things.
For the moment, I’m just enjoying my crayon-colored fingertips and
toenails. I hate to say it, but the five-year-old inside me is delighted. I’m
afraid that means I’ll probably go back. I wonder what episode of “Friends”
will be playing, who will sit down on my left and my right.
