I’m not a girly girl and I’m always a lot more comfortable in jeans, bare feet, and no makeup than I am dressed to the nines. There’ve been times in my life when I’ve experimented with makeup, but usually that lasts for a few days and then I start sleeping late again and forgetting to put my makeup on before I rush out the door. Manicures and pedicures have always been lumped in with makeup as some frou frou thing that I didn’t really have time for.
That lasted until the time I experienced my first pedicure and realized that I really had been missing out on something. Hubby treated me to a spa day downtown and I had a shea butter wrap, a hot stone massage, a facial, and a pedicure. The hot stone massage was definitely a repeatable experience, the shea butter wrap was an exercise in wasted money, and I was ambivalent on the facial. It was the pedicure that really surprised me. I thought I’d be weirded out by the thought of someone messing with my feet, but it was the best experience of the entire day.
For those of you who haven’t experienced the bliss of a pedicure, let me give you the highlights. The first step is shoes off and feet in a sweet scented massaging foot bath. Now I do have a massaging foot bath at home, but it isn’t quite the same because I know that when I’m done with it, I have to dump it out and put it away. Once you’ve soaked your tired tootsies for a few minutes, the pedicurist will pull one foot out of its nice warm bath and begin using the the pumice stone to smooth away the dead skin and calluses. Once she’s done, she’ll ask you to switch feet and she’ll work on the other one. The next step in the pedicure, is to clean your nails of any old nail polish and to trim your cuticles. Once that’s done, it’s a mini foot massage and a new coat of polish.
The advantage that pedicures have over manicures is that you don’t have to pick nice safe colors that will go with your work clothes. You can play it safe with sweet pinks and subtle lavenders or you can let out your inner bad girl and go for dark reds, blues, greens or even black. Pedicures are like sexy lingerie in that you can choose to share your pedicure by wearing sandals or choose to keep it a secret by wearing closed toed shoes. Pedicures are empowering because every time you look down at your sexy painted toes, you know you care about yourself and that you took the time to do something just for you.
My daughter’s prom was this week and I took her for her first mani–pedi. We went to a nice little salon close to our house and although there’s no sign on the door that says “Girls Only–Boys Keep out,” walking in is definitely walking into the Girl’s club. We were enveloped in the scent of nice perfume and nail polish when we walked in and by the chatter of feminine voices talking about men, kids, jobs, and anything else that was on their minds.
When it was our turn to bliss out, we climbed into the pedicure chairs, which had been recently enhanced as massage chairs and sunk our feet into the warm water. We let ourselves be pampered for the next hour as the skilled technicians transformed our nails into glorious symbols of femininity. I went for a hardcore pinkish red and my daughter went for the palest of lavenders to match her prom dress.
My daughter wasn’t so sure she liked her experience as she felt uncomfortable with people touching her fingers and toes, but my bet is that she’ll sign up to go the next time. As for me, I left Sunshine Nails in pure bliss feeling comfortable, confident, cared for, and of course blissed out.
Cairn by Cairn 