Gettin' Done
Overbooking beauty costs your brains
Every three weeks, Mimi hisses at my nails as she files them down. The same four oldies play on loop in here, and the wired connection is dying a creeping death, so the songs keep skipping. I’m about to find out, for the fifth time this session, whether the singer’s lover has tied a yellow ribbon ‘round the old oak tree, and I scoot to the edge of the spa seat, try not to bounce my leg too hard as he ponders his fate and Mimi pushes down my floating pinky finger. It’s in her way again. Sorry, Mimi.
The nail salon is almost exclusively a women’s space, aside from an old tenant of my parents’ who gets his cuticles pulled twice a week, and someone’s homework-aged son sprawled out on the couch in the waiting area, ignoring his sister as she toddles to the bathroom and exclaims to us all how badly she has to pee.
Her mother jumps up from the chair next to mine. The manicurist yelps for her unfinished work as mother chases daughter with hovering fingers and the son grows more accustomed to women flitting around him, for him.
She can do it herself, says the mother, She just needs someone to keep an eye. She can do it herself.
I resist the way submission has evolved. The way it’s slinked into sheepskin and sold itself as essential.
Nails are the only thing I “get done,” and it’s a decent investment, since it’s helped me banish my violent biting habit. Now I’m just tearing at the cuticles; but I must throw my first stone before I ever throw my second, and the first one took years to wind up behind my head.
Mimi dotes on me like a Staten Island mother. She rebukes my nail beds like Father Merrin to the demon, and her prayer knows power. “Short,” “fat,” “ugly.” She clucks and files harder. I pick my usual red. I’ll tip her extra for the honesty.
Routine offers purpose. And what is woman’s purpose? Good news: if you outsource your beauty, you’ll never have to think about it. Why think about anything? Nails seem innocuous until you throw in a pedicure, then they’re offering a wax, and suddenly you can't live without these extra two-and-a-half hours you used to use for the gym, or for your silent nature walk, or for rest. Do you trust yourself to sketch your line between comfort and burden?
Nails might be my gateway drug, though I’m a nightmare consumer. Averse to ads, irked by profit, infected with an ever-present Joy Of Missing Out, I chase instead the intimacy of personal ritual. That means I’m careful how and where I spend my money—and, even more importantly, my time. A woman’s time is currency, and we are swarmed by folks who want to yank it, wailing, from our arms.
Professional beauty sessions create a sense of completion that is difficult to replicate. How satisfying to walk out of the salon with a newfound sense of cleanliness. How fresh to feel lighter, rebirthed. Done just to your liking. Just as you imagined. (Or not, but the work is nonetheless entrusted in another’s able hands.) It might be only when you miss an appointment, or are forced to reschedule, or something otherwise upends your perfect pencil-ins (like a horrible result), that you must face the reality of your own performance. When does it end? Will it ever?
Every three weeks, I sit captive in Mimi’s chair. I get the gel that cooks my fingers as it cures, and I do the trick my mommy taught me: press down hard and push away the pain.
Since recovering from nail biting, my hands have been a sudden source of pride, and of beauty, and they bring me joy; therefore, my happiness feels worth the discomfort (and so does the rock-solid cling of the Light Concept gel). It’s a practice in surrender, to trust another with your face, your hands, your image. And I’m always tickled by the women I meet, the colors they suggest, the children they talk about in passing. I want to be right here and know my fellow women.
But I want to know myself.
Do you?
If you busy yourself to exhaustion—nails, wax, threading, laser, haircut, dye, tanning, eyelashes, Botox, fillers, drugs, surgery—what do you learn? Maintenance? Convenience? Who are you for? Tight skin, treatments, adornments. Chasing your body away. Shame on you. Shame on us. Have you ever glimpsed yourself through your own eyes, alone, and wondered if you even like it?
Choose a ritual you “get done” somewhere else, and cancel your appointments. Do it yourself. Get done.1 In your bathroom, at 1 AM, on the phone with your best friend Benedetta, and giggle with her to keep yourself from giving up. Or do it yourself, with music. Or in silence, and let yourself think.
You’ll learn a few things: first, that the cost of slow self-maintenance is imperfection. It is inconvenience. Painting your toenails, stretching awkwardly, making streaks, staining your skin, knocking over the bottle. It’s challenging, infuriating. A privilege.
You’ll also learn about yourself. You’ll learn that you can problem-solve, improvise, embrace an imperfect result.
I stopped getting my hair cut professionally years ago, and my stomach still twists each time I grab my shears, but the thrill of rebellion keeps my hand moving. I’ve given myself haircuts of varying quality, yet the excitement of self-experience keeps me out of the salon.2 What greater feat than to measure my own progress over time? What greater joy than to struggle an amateur’s struggle, to take my own image into my very own hands?
Convenience suffocates creativity. Take it back where you see fit, and feel yourself bloom.
Feel yourself breathe.
Please do not try Botox and fillers on yourself in the bathroom. In fact, please do not try them ever, at all. More on my hatred for destructive beauty procedures another time.
So does the fact that I’m outrageously fucking cheap.