M<\/span>ani-Pedi<\/strong><\/p>\n

Every now and then I go get a pedicure.\u00a0 Like once a month or less.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t get my first one till I was in my mid to late twenties.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure why I didn\u2019t get one\u2013I guess it was some residual tomboy bias against doing anything so indulgently impractical. Although it was probably a more aggressive, shoulder-chip based anger, like, \u201cWhy are people gettin\u2019 pedicures?\u00a0 What do they think they are, like, queens or somethin\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n

As if I worked on a loading dock.\u00a0 As if I worked in a coal mine.\u00a0 As if I worked on a dock, loading and unloading coal mines.<\/p>\n

I feel like a few years back pedicures reached a tipping point\u2014sort of like the thong tipping point.\u00a0 I remember when nobody wore thongs.\u00a0 It was pantylines as far as\u00a0you could see.\u00a0 And maybe it was my imagination but almost no one had a pedicure.\u00a0 Or\u00a0maybe a few\u00a0women had pedicures, but at least in my neighborhood, it was a certain kind of mom who would rock one\u2014an older MILF who would do\u00a0an endearingly\u00a0sloppy home-made paint job, a bright whoreish red that contrasted with paper white legs and skyblue ankle veins.\u00a0 Usually chipped.<\/p>\n

But then one summer everyone was rocking flip flops and suddenly every self respecting girl over age eight had a perfect little pedi\u2014little pink toes lined up clean and neat like freshly dyed Easter eggs.\u00a0 I\u00a0started dating a guy who had a vague foot fetish and I decided I had to fall in line.<\/p>\n

Things I like about pedicures:\u00a0the leg and foot massage.\u00a0 Crap, is that great.\u00a0 Also, I admit it looks nicer than having yellowy uneven nails sticking out of your shoe like little antlers.<\/p>\n

Things I don\u2019t like about pedicures:\u00a0 the sensation\u00a0that no matter how much I pay the chick tending to my feet, it still feels vaguely like having a slave.\u00a0 Like I\u2019m sitting in my throne while someone kneels below me, performing the most unpleasant of tasks, rubbing and clipping\u00a0as\u00a0I enjoy such luxuries as\u00a0a chair massage or reading about Britney\u2019s vagina in InTouch Magazine<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I know they are making a living, and I know its probably useless liberal class guilt, but I still feel like I\u2019m tryin\u2019 to be some sort of Queen Elizabeth or somethin\u2019.<\/p>\n

Oh, the other thing that bothers me is the filing.\u00a0 That hurts a little.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the whole business of choosing a color.\u00a0 This makes me feel like the biggest tool.\u00a0 I want to care as little as possible about this whole process, because when I see women being big old jerkos about their nails I wanna strangle them, and I see it all the time.<\/p>\n

Once I was getting my nails done because I was going to a wedding, and the chick next to me started yelling at the middle aged woman doing her nails: \u201cI need you to wash this off and do the whole thing over!\u201d<\/p>\n

I missed how the pedicure lady responded, but the chick yelled back, \u201cI KNOW MY NAILS ARE RIDGED BUT YOU NEED TO DO THEM AGAIN!!!\u201d<\/p>\n

Hi, nice to meet you. Go fuck yourself and your ridges, fucko.<\/p>\n

But I can\u2019t help but get hung up on the color.\u00a0 There are way too many choices.\u00a0 And it\u2019s not so much the colors\u00a0themselves as the NAMES of the colors.\u00a0 If it weren\u2019t for the names it would be easy, because most of the colors are about 1\/900th of a shade lighter or darker than the one next to it and you\u2019d have to be some kind of gay Rainman to tell the difference.<\/p>\n

But the names of the colors make it more about deciding what kind of person you are.\u00a0 There\u2019s an off-white I\u2019m always drawn to until I flip the bottle over and then I see its called \u201cLimo-o-scene.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019d rather put a gun in my mouth then know I\u2019m wearing something called Limo-o-scene on my bodyparts.<\/p>\n

<\/a>There\u2019s another one called \u201cMeet Me On The Jitney,\u201d and again, bullet to head.<\/p>\n

\u201cBallet Slippers\u201d would maybe be OK, but then I think of everyone I ever knew who took ballet and they were all anorexic snobs.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s \u201cSold Out Show\u201d which is a shade I think is pretty, but then I think about me as a performer putting on \u201cSold Out Show.\u201d Like that would seem like good luck for having a \u201csold out show.\u201d And even though that\u2019s not why I would put it on, just the thought that somewhere in the world\u00a0there might be one person\u00a0who performs who might do that makes me want to weep into my pillow.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s \u201cMucho Dinero.\u201d I mean, you might as well just get into the bathtub with your toaster.<\/p>\n

So I pretty much always go \u201cFiji.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s not \u201cI Own Fiji,\u201d or \u201cFuck Me In Fiji.\u201d Just \u201cFiji.\u201d It\u2019s not saying I\u2019ve been there or that I have a polo pony.\u00a0 It\u2019s a nice light pink and it makes my feet look tan.<\/p>\n

**************<\/p>\n

T<\/span>eeth<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve started to think that I need to whiten my teeth.\u00a0 But it\u2019s not that simple, because I have a\u00a0couple of issues with it.\u00a0 I guess I put teeth whitening sort of in the same category as the pedicures, insofar as I feel like ten years ago everyone walked around with their teeth the color of a coyote\u2019s and no one gave a shit.<\/p>\n

And then, gradually, no one was allowed on TV unless they looked like they just got their teeth, like, TODAY.\u00a0 And regular people follow suit and now there\u2019s a fucking \u201cBrite Smile\u201d on every corner.<\/p>\n

The thing is, I hate the way it looks when\u00a0people have insanely whitened teeth.\u00a0 I see an actor like Tom Hanks on Oprah<\/em> and he\u2019s like 55 years old and his teeth are glowing like that gem console from Land of the Lost<\/em>.\u00a0 So are Oprah\u2019s.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t match the rest of their body.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think you need to match your shoes to your bag, but I do think matching your head to your body is a pretty solid fashion \u201cdo.\u201d<\/p>\n

That said, I\u2019m tempted.\u00a0 I had braces for five years.\u00a0 Full braces.\u00a0 Top.\u00a0 Bottom.\u00a0 Rubber bands. (I don\u2019t think they even make those anymore.)\u00a0 Headgear.\u00a0 It was an epic struggle to get my snagglies in shape, but Dr Klapper (God bless him) won out.\u00a0 So I feel like I should try to honor that work by keeping them tippity-top shape, because they\u2019re pretty straight.<\/p>\n

But I have some teeth on the sides that are starting to turn a smidge yellowy.\u00a0 Not a great look.\u00a0 I mean they\u2019re not corn muffin yellow. But maybe, oh I dunno, the color a rich person would paint his kitchen.\u00a0 Like a \u201cLight Butter.\u201d<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know where to go or how to do the whitening.\u00a0 I tried WhiteStrips, which seemed really easy, but they are not.\u00a0 They\u2019re disgusting and they don\u2019t stay in place.<\/p>\n

Plus, you can\u2019t eat while you have them on, and you\u2019re supposed to have them on for half an hour. That\u2019s about fifteen minutes longer than my non-eating window.<\/p>\n

I also don\u2019t trust \u201cBrite Smile.\u201d\u00a0 Isn\u2019t whitening something that should be done in an actual medical facility?\u00a0 Going in there feels like dropping into a Quiznos to have your appendix out.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s something creepy about those places in general.\u00a0 A weird vibe.\u00a0 Sort of Scientologyesque.\u00a0 Like I\u2019ll get my teeth whitened but while I have the whitening thing in my\u00a0mouth they\u2019ll make me listen to some lectures about \u201cTechnology for Living.\u201d<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t need that. I just need to get rid of this Butteryness.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few years back, pedicures reached a tipping point…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2364"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2388,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2364\/revisions\/2388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}