The Pleasure of a Pedicure:

Men, Give it a Try!

There’s something suspect about paying for tactile pleasure. There’s no moral opprobrium attached to dining at a fine restaurant, or traveling to admire a spectacular view, or shelling out hundreds of dollars for concert tickets. But paying to get a massage or a pedicure may bring out the puritan in you. I once had a massage so wonderful it frightened me: Her hands were simply too knowing. Although she avoided erogenous zones, the pleasure was close to sexual, and I never went to that particular masseuse again.

But I do get a massage once in a while, perhaps twice a year. I like it in the beginning, but after about fifteen minutes (that hedonic treadmill!) I get a little bored. At that point, I also feel guilty for my indolence, lying like a slab of meat while someone is paid to tenderize me. I remind myself that there’s a health benefit to all this pressing and pummeling: I’ll be very relaxed when I get up from the table. Even a committed hedonist needs to justify the fleshly pleasures.

I get a pedicure a lot more often, perhaps once a month. And it’s a lot easier to rationalize than a massage. First, there’s the health component. Then, there’s the beauty element. Finally, there’s the pleasure part.

I am greeted by nods and hellos when I enter the salon. Most of the women are Korean, and many wear masks (perhaps to avoid the fumes of the nail polish remover). The technicians are uniformly good. All go through about twenty-five different steps in caring for your feet. As many scarcely speak English, they do not give directions. They just hold your feet and maneuver them at will, indulging your passivity.

Today’s pedicurist is Angela. She reminds me that I’m sitting in a massage chair and can make it vibrate or roll, but I prefer to concentrate on what she’s doing. She brings my feet into and out of the basin of warm water. Then she uses nail polish remover to take off the old polish, a job I abhor. I do think toes (though not fingers!) look better painted, especially in the summer.

The technicians themselves never wear nail polish on their fingers because it would come off in  the course of their work. So it’s ironic that manicurists cannot have complete manicures themselves.  

Angela uses a large pumice stone attached to her hand like a shoeshine brush to scrape off my callouses. She points to a hard bump between my toes and indicates that I should see a foot doctor. (See? That’s the health part!)

She dips my feet into the water again, and brings them out to trim my nails, which she does with clippers and a nail file, not nail scissors.

To my right, a woman is scrolling on her phone while getting a pedicure, and I’m annoyed that she’s not concentrating on her feet. But why should I be indignant? Perhaps it would be a relief for Angela if I did the same, instead of gazing at her gratefully.

I’ve worn loose trousers to the salon, so now I can easily pull the pantlegs up above my knees for what happens next. I don’t know when a leg massage became a standard feature of a pedicure (do manicures involve an arm massage?), but this is my favorite part of the procedure.

First Angela smooths lotion up and down my calves. Then she gives my legs an abbreviated Swedish massage, ending up with my toes, each of which she pulls out, each of which is grateful for the attention. Then she dips her hands into some exfoliating lotion and goes up and down my leg with it. It feels like sandpaper . . . only good.

The piece de resistance (c’est le pied!) is the short hot-stone massage that follows. Angela takes a smooth, heated black stone and moves it up and down first one leg then the other. I am jelly.

Alas, she soon continues to the beauty part of this event. She uncaps the little bottle of polish I’ve chosen on the way in, from a rack that must hold two hundred such bottles.

I’d thought: What if I make the wrong decision and am stuck with Pepto Bismol toes for a month? I’d spent far too long mulling my choices before settling on a rakish maroon. I remembered an old Nora Ephron piece in which she admires the decisiveness of a friend who can glance at a rack like this and instantly choose “Carioca Pink”! (The fluff that sticks in your brain!)

At this point, most men are done with the pedicure, although some may opt for a clear polish. But for women, this final step is the climax, for they will have something to show for their money: color on their toes!

First, the toes are separated with a twisted paper towel. Then a multistep process ensues, involving a base coat, at least two coats of color, and a final drying coat.

Then you have to hang around for ten minutes or so until the polish dries.

This was not a problem for the middle-aged couple to my left. I’d noticed how cozy they were, with the woman initiating arm contact, and the man gazing into her eyes. Now I saw that they were each wearing wedding rings. They never stopped talking and cuddling, and I began to suspect they weren’t married to each other: they were adulterers, out in public, excited by the danger, engaging in a quasi-sanctioned activity.  

Men, just consider: the pedicure can be a hot date!

Photo of male feet by Rune Enstad on Unsplash